Research

Published Research

Spatial Models of Legislative Effectiveness

Authors: Craig Volden, Alan Wiseman, Matt Hitt

Spatial models of policymaking have evolved from the median voter theorem to the inclusion of institutional considerations such as committees, political parties, and various voting and amendment rules. Such models, however, implicitly assume that no policy is better than another at solving public policy problems and that all policy makers are equally effective at advancing proposals.

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Published Research

The Role of Universities in Encouraging Growth of Technology-Based New Ventures

Authors: Bala Mulloth, Bharat Rao

In addition to typical university focus activities such as the education of students, dissemination of faculty research findings through publications, and partnerships with corporate firms and outreach, today, new venture creation has also gained substantial interest. In fact, universities worldwide are increasingly viewed as venues for spurring entrepreneurship and economic development.

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Published Research

Ideology, Learning, and Policy Diffusion: Experimental Evidence

Authors: Craig Volden, Daniel M. Butler, Adam Dynes, Boris Shor

We introduce experimental research design to the study of policy diffusion in order to better understand how political ideology affects policymakers’ willingness to learn from one another’s experiences. Our two experiments–embedded in national surveys of U.S. municipal officials–expose local policymakers to vignettes describing the zoning and home foreclosure policies of other cities, offering opportunities to learn more. We find that: (1) policymakers who are ideologically predisposed against the described policy are relatively unwilling to learn from others, but (2) such ideological biases can be overcome with an emphasis on the policy’s success or on its adoption by co-partisans in other communities.

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Published Research

Ideology, Learning, and Policy Diffusion: Experimental Evidence

Authors: Craig Volden, Daniel M. Butler, Adam M. Dynes, Boris Shor

We introduce experimental research design to the study of policy diffusion in order to better understand how political ideology affects policymakers’ willingness to learn from one another’s experiences. Our two experiments–embedded in national surveys of U.S. municipal officials–expose local policymakers to vignettes describing the zoning and home foreclosure policies of other cities, offering opportunities to learn more.

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Published Research

Health Effects of Economic Crises

This analysis summarizes prior research and uses national, US state and county‐level data from 1976 to 2013 to examine whether the mortality effects of economic crises differ in kind from those of the more typical fluctuations. The tentative conclusion is that economic crises affect mortality rates (and presumably other measures of health) in the same way as less severe downturns – leading to improvements in physical health.

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Published Research

The Changing Benefits of Early Work Experience

Authors: Christopher J. Ruhm, Charles L. Baum

We examine whether the benefits of high school work experience have changed over the last 20 years by comparing effects for the 1979 and 1997 cohorts of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Our main specifications suggest that the future annual earnings benefits of working 20 h per week in the senior year of high school have fallen from 17.4% for the earlier cohort, measured in 1987–1989, to 12.1% for the later cohort, in 2008–2010.

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Published Research

Teacher Turnover, Teacher Quality, and Student Achievement in DCPS

Authors: James H. Wyckoff, Melinda Adnot, Thomas Dee, Veronica Katz

In practice, teacher turnover appears to have negative effects on school quality as measured by student performance. However, some simulations suggest that turnover can instead have large positive effects under a policy regime in which low-performing teachers can be accurately identified and replaced with more effective teachers. 

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