Himalayan Trauma: Administrative Thrombosis and Citizens’ Response

In this paper, the author uses excerpts from social media postings and traditional media to highlight how various citizen and volunteer responses to the 2015 earthquake helped fill in the gaps created by institutional dysfunction. Further, he shows how these two types of media played a critical role in facilitating communication between grassroots aid initiatives and earthquake affected people and their families and friends, not only in Kathmandu but also in neglected mountainous areas as well. The author uses a personal, reflexive approach to help situate the distinct experiences of earthquake affected people including trauma patients, people with disabilities, and volunteer aid workers

Georgia Welfare Leavers Study - Initial Results

Funded by the Department of Human Resources, the Georgia State welfare leavers study is tracking families as they leave Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). Using administrative data combined with the results of a telephone interview, the project monitors the impact of leaving welfare on the individuals, their families and their communities.2 The study includes both single-parent and child-only leavers and, unlike studies in some other states, does include individuals who have returned to the rolls. The response rate for this study approaches 35% and continues to rise as the project makes intensive efforts to locate respondents. Preliminary analyses of administrative data indicate that interview respondents closely resemble individuals whom the project has been unable to interview

Improving access for research and policy: the government response to the report of the Administrative Data Taskforce

This is the government’s initial response to the recommendations from The UK Administrative Data Research Network: Improving Access for Research and Policy, the report of the Administrative Data Taskforce (ADT). The UK government broadly supports the recommendations and will work with the research community to support the use and reuse of de-identified administrative data for research and policy purposes. This government response emphasises the importance of: building on existing activities, infrastructure and systems where feasible to develop a new UK-wide approachdeveloping the infrastructure to maximise the potential benefits to government analysts, the wider research community and citizensensuring that the full breadth of data sources, with analytical value and held in administrative systems, are accessible for researchThis document is a first response following the government’s initial consideration of the proposals

Foreign experience of public administration in the context of the economic equilibrium of synthetic economic crisis

This article identify catalysts of synthetic economic crisis. These catalysts are the subject of transnational corporations, international financial, trade organizations, regional integration groupings. Generalized mechanism for the flow of synthetic economic crisis and their types. This article also proves that the response of governments to the process flow of synthetic economic crisis with the help of the classical fiscal, monetary and administrative-legislative instruments are not effective

Sample Attrition Bias in Randomized Experiments: A Tale of Two Surveys

The randomized trial literature has helped to renew the fields of microeconometric policy evaluation by emphasizing identification issues raised by endogenous program participation. Measurement and attrition issues have perhaps received less attention. This paper analyzes the dramatic impact of sample attrition in a large job search experiment. We take advantage of two independent surveys on the same initial sample of 8, 000 persons. The first one is a long telephone survey that had a strikingly low and unbalanced response rate of about 50%. The second one is a combination of administrative data and a short telephone survey targeted at those leaving the unemployment registers; this enriched data source has a balanced and much higher response rate (about 80%). With naive estimates that neglect non responses, these two sources yield puzzlingly different results. Using the enriched administrative data as benchmark, we find evidence that estimates from the long telephone survey lack external and internal validity. We turn to existing methods to bound the effects in the presence of sample selection; we extend them to the context of randomization with imperfect compliance. The bounds obtained from the two surveys are compatible but those from the long telephone survey are somewhat uninformative. We conclude on the consequences for data collection strategies.randomized evaluation, survey non response, bounds

Insurers' Responses to Regulation of Medical Loss Ratios

The Affordable Care Act's medical loss ratio (MLR) rule requires health insurers to pay out at least 80 percent of premiums for medical claims and quality improvement, as opposed to administrative costs and profits. This issue brief examines whether insurers have reduced administrative costs and profit margins in response to the new MLR rule. In 2011, the first year under the rule, insurers reduced administrative costs nationally, with the greatest decrease -- over $785 million -- occurring in the large-group market. Small-group and individual markets decreased their administrative costs by about$200 million each. In the individual market, insurers passed these savings on to consumers by reducing their profits even more than administrative costs. But in the large- and smallgroup markets, lower administrative costs were offset by increased profits of a similar amount. Stronger measures may be needed if consumers are to benefit from reduced overhead costs in the group insurance markets

"Deregulation and Market Response in Contemporary Japan: Administrative Guidance, Keiretsu, and Main Banks"

Change is in the air in Japan, claim many observers: the government is radically deregulating crucial sectors of the economy, the large firms are unwinding their keiretsu corporate groups, and firms and banks are dismantling their main bank arrangements. Some observers see all three as exogenous institutional shocks, while others treat the last two as behavioral responses to the first. In fact, although the first phenomenon would constitute an institutional change if it occurred, it has not -- for Japanese bureaucrats had no substantial regulatory power to abandon. Although the last two would constitute market responses if they occurred, they have not either -- for firms and banks maintained no groups or main-bank arrangements to unwind or dismantle.

How Stressed Are Wisconsin Cities and Villages?

For the fourth time since 1997, a web-based survey of fiscal health was administered to administrative officials of Wisconsin cities and villages during the summer of 2010. A total of 195 municipalities responded to the survey. Of those administrative officials responding, 53 percent reported that their current revenue base was inadequate and more than 62 percent responded that their fiscal condition in five years will be inadequate. Some of the strategies most actively pursued in response to fiscal stress include the adoption or increase in user fees and charges, improved productivity through better management and pursuit of grants from federal/state governments. Strategies least likely to be pursued include laying off workers, increasing short-term debt and reducing hours of operation.