Early Assessment of Environmental Interventions to Prevent Childhood Obesity

Outlines January 2006 discussions on evaluating the plausibility -- clear, shared goals, activities, and expected outcomes -- and feasibility of various environmental interventions to help prevent childhood obesity. Discusses evaluation design

How to Evaluate Choice and Promise Neighborhoods

Offers a framework for evaluations of placed-based, comprehensive community initiatives with service saturation and multi-dimensional goals. Outlines core questions; approaches such as performance management or theory of change; and strategy components

Desperately Seeking Selznick: Cooptation and the Dark Side of Public Management in Networks

Most literature on public-sector networks focuses on how to build and manage systems and ignores the political problems that networks can create for organizations. This article argues that individual network nodes can work to bias the organization's actions in ways that benefit the organization's more advantaged clientele. The argument is supported by an analysis of performance data from 500 organizations over a five-year period. A classic theoretical point is supported in a systematic empirical investigation. While networks can greatly benefit the organization, they have a dark side that managers and scholars need to consider more seriously

A Concurrent Perspective on Smart Contracts

In this paper, we explore remarkable similarities between multi-transactional behaviors of smart contracts in cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and classical problems of shared-memory concurrency. We examine two real-world examples from the Ethereum blockchain and analyzing how they are vulnerable to bugs that are closely reminiscent to those that often occur in traditional concurrent programs. We then elaborate on the relation between observable contract behaviors and well-studied concurrency topics, such as atomicity, interference, synchronization, and resource ownership. The described contracts-as-concurrent-objects analogy provides deeper understanding of potential threats for smart contracts, indicate better engineering practices, and enable applications of existing state-of-the-art formal verification techniques.Comment: 15 page

A brief social-belonging intervention in the workplace: evidence from a field experiment

Brief interventions that strengthen an individual’s sense of social belonging have been shown to improve outcomes for members of underrepresented, marginalized groups in educational settings. This paper reports insights based on an attempt to apply this type of intervention in the technology sector. Adapting a social-belonging intervention from educational psychology, we implemented a quasi-random field experiment, spanning twelve months, with 506 newly hired engineers (24% female) in the R&D function of a west coast technology firm. We did not find a statistically significant effect of the treatment on a core attainment outcome—bonus relative to base salary—that exhibited a significant gender gap, with women receiving proportionally lower bonuses than men. We did not find anticipated gender gaps in promotion rates or social network centrality, and we also did not find a statistically significant effect of the treatment for women on these outcomes. Drawing on meaningful differences between educational versus workplace settings, we identify four theoretical moderators that might influence the efficacy of social-belonging interventions adapted from educational settings into the workplace. Finally, based on the limitations of our study design, we provide four recommendations that future researchers might adopt.Accepted manuscrip

CREATING LEGAL PATHWAYS TO REDUCE IRREGULAR MIGRATION? WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM GERMANY’S “WESTERN BALKAN REGULATION”

The arrival of over 1 million people in Europe in 2015 and the sense of crisis it provoked have renewed debates on appropriate ways to establish a more orderly migration management system. How can we ensure pathways are available for those in genuine need of protection, while reducing the number of migrants arriving irregularly? “Legal pathways” are often presented as an essential tool toward this end. In 2015, Germany created such legal pathways in the form of access to the German labor market in a little known, and almost accidental migration policy experiment: the Western Balkan Regulation. Against the backdrop of large numbers of people arriving in Germany from the six Western Balkan states (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia) who had almost no chance of receiving asylum and then from 2015 the sudden increase of Syrians and others coming through the Balkan route, the regulation was part of a broader initiative in Berlin to reduce the numbers of people seeking asylum. The regulation, also known as section 26.2 (§26.2) of the employment regulation (Beschäftigungsverordnung), essentially opened the labor market for nationals from the six Western Balkan countries, without, more surprisingly, including any minimum skill or qualification requirements. The only pre-requisite was a valid job offer by an employer in Germany, subject to a standard priority check for third country nationals

Using Data in Multi-Agency Collaborations: Guiding Performance to Ensure Accountability and Improve Programs

A growing number of foundation- and government-funded initiatives are bringing together diverse partners within communities -- to create screening and referral systems, to coordinate and deliver services and to advocate for policy changes -- all in the interest of serving clients more effectively. Many of these efforts emphasize the use of evidence-based programs, and there is increasing recognition that to be successful, collaborating agencies must work together to collect relevant data and use it to inform and improve their programming