Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
309
result(s) for
"Besharov, Douglas J"
Sort by:
PROTOCOL: Early childhood education programs for improving the development and achievement of low‐income children: a systematic review
This project seeks to answer questions about the effectiveness of early childhood programs in meeting their important goals, paying careful attention to the effectiveness of program variations (especially in regard to particular demographic and economic target groups). This review will be guided by two overarching questions: (1) How effective are existing early childhood education (ECE) programs when it comes to improving the cognitive, socioemotional, behavioral, and health outcomes of low-income children? And what does the research say about these effects in the short, intermediate, and long term? and (2) What program variations are more effective than others? Setting this project apart from other studies will be its emphasis on reconciling the capacities--and needs--of parents with the ability of ECE programs and other social institutions to help provide what children need for optimal social and cognitive development. Findings are expected to recognize the reciprocal importance of parent-child (and, as appropriate, grandparent-child) relationships. Rather than using such findings as evidence that ECE programs \"work,\" the authors hope to use them as guidelines for how programs could be structured for greater effectiveness in particular situations. In doing so, they will attempt to reconcile early learning and development objectives with child care as a means for helping parents to work in the paid economy.
Journal Article
Innovation Inducement Prizes: Connecting Research to Policy
Innovation inducement prizes have been used for centuries. In the United States, a recent federal policy change—the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010—clarified and simplified a path by which all federal agencies can offer innovation inducement prizes, thus intensifying interest in how government agencies can most effectively design and apply such prizes. This paper aims to review and synthesize the academic literature on innovation inducement prizes, to clarify what has been learned that is relevant to current policy discussions, and to highlight unresolved questions that would be fruitful areas for future academic research and policy experimentation. Relative to the existing literature, this paper aims to bridge two gaps. First, I synthesize the academic literature in this area with an eye toward drawing lessons for the types of innovation inducement prizes under consideration by federal agencies under the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act. Second, I discuss the problem of how to evaluate the success or failure of innovation inducement prizes, arguing that careful empirical evaluations of innovation inducement prizes are needed in order to provide guidance to federal agencies (and others) on how to most effectively apply and design innovation inducement prizes.
Journal Article
Spurring Job Creation in Response to Severe Recessions: Reconsidering Hiring Credits
The continuing adverse labor market effects of the Great Recession have intensified interest in policy efforts to spur job creation. In periods when labor demand and supply are in balance, either hiring credits or worker subsidies can be used to boost employment hiring credits by reducing labor costs for employers, and worker subsidies by raising the economic returns to work. Historically, both types of policies have been used in pursuit of distributional goals as well, with hiring credits targeting employment of disadvantaged workers, and worker subsidies targeting low-income families. Hiring credits targeting the disadvantaged have generally been regarded as ineffective at both creating jobs and increasing incomes of low-income families, whereas worker subsidies have been viewed as more successful at both. However, in the context of the Great Recession and severe recessions more generally hiring credits may be particularly effective at spurring job creation, but only if they are designed quite differently from past hiring credits targeting the disadvantaged. Moreover, establishing a national hiring credit that kicks in during and after recessions may be an effective countercyclical measure a useful addition to the automatic stabilizers already in place, and one that specifically targets job creation. Copyright John Wiley & Sons. Reproduced with permission. An electronic version of this article is available online at http://www.interscience.wiley.com
Journal Article
An economic view of food deserts in the united states
Considerable policy and academic attention has been focused on the topic of food deserts. We consider this topic from an economic perspective. First, we consider how the components of a standard economic analysis apply to the study of food deserts. Second, using this economic lens, we revisit the empirical literature on food deserts to assess the progress that has been made regarding whether food deserts are problematic in the U.S. Overall, despite several studies documenting the existence of food deserts in local areas, shortcomings in available data have not allowed researchers to convincingly document the presence or absence of food deserts on a national scale, and virtually no research has provided insight as to why food deserts might exist. © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.
Journal Article
Improving the Quality of Public Services: A Multinational Conference on Public Management
In his plenary talk, The Intersection of Performance Measurement and Program Evaluation: Searching for the Counterfactual, Douglas Besharov of the University of Maryland argued that, besides measuring program outputs, performance measures should measure outcomes through a counterfactual, i.e., what would have happened without the program. 1 Besharov noted that, although conventional management focuses on inputs and outputs, outputs do not necessarily lead to the desired outcomes. Hence, focusing on outputs is insufficient, and managers should also measure and manage to outcomes. His parallel argument (that outcomes do not always lead to longer-term impacts) would imply that we should manage to impacts rather than to outcomes. But, Besharov argued, impacts usually occur too late to be useful for real-world and real-time performance management. Instead, he advocated using plausible logic modelsideally supported by high-quality scientific theory or evaluation evidence to choose outcomes for which the link to subsequent impacts is well supported. Besharovs proposal rests on the ability of public managers to identify and measure counterfactuals accurately. He suggested that performance measurement draw ideas from the field of program evaluation, including pre- and post-comparison, difference-in-differences, regression-discontinuity, and forms of randomization. Copyright John Wiley & Sons. Reproduced with permission. An electronic version of this article is available online at http://www.interscience.wiley.com
Journal Article
Presidential address: From the Great Society to continuous improvement government: Shifting from \does it work?\ to \what would make it better?\
In the 1960s, various social programs were started (like Head Start) or dramatically expanded (like AFDC). Loosely, this period of expansion is called the Great Society. Too many Great Society social programs, unfortunately, have been disappointments—at least when compared to the high hopes of the '60s. Even if they \"work,\" most of us wish that they worked much better. Some people take such statements to mean that the Great Society's social programs should be defunded. Most Great Society programs, however, are surely here to stay, for they serve important social functions. How many of us really think there could be an America without a social safety net? It is now time to do the difficult and unglamorous work of systematic program improvement. Instead of testing program efficacy over and over again, we should engage in ongoing and evidence-based efforts to increase program effectiveness (in both large and small ways). © 2009 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.
Journal Article