Are public managers more risk averse? Framing effects and status quo bias across the sectors

The article of record as published may be found at https://doi.org/10.30636/jbpa.21.3Modern reforms meant to incentivize public managers to be more innovative and accepting of risk are often implicitly based in the longstanding assumption that public employees are more risk averse than their private sector counterparts. We argue, however, that there is more to learn about the degree to which public and private managers differ in terms of risk aversion. In order to address this gap, we field a series of previously validated experiments designed to assess framing effects and status quo bias in a sample of public and private sector managers. Our results indicate that public managers are not more risk averse or anchored to the status quo than their private sector counterparts; in fact, the findings suggest the opposite may be true under some conditions. In addition, our results fail to confirm previous findings in the literature suggesting that public service motivation is associated with risk aversion. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these results for the study of risky choice in the public sector and for modern public management reforms

Fiscal Federalism and Tax Effort in the American States

In the 25 years following the Second World War, state governments doubled the amount of inflation adjusted revenue that they collected in taxes. That represented a growth rate more than double that of the federal government (see Maxwell 1972). On average, the increase in state tax effort flattened out markedly by the 1980s, but there has been tremendous variation in the degree to which individual states have raised or lowered the tax burden on citizens over the last four decades. This study argues that federalism, and particularly the grant-in-aid system, influenced state budgetary decision-making and ultimately tax levels within recipient jurisdictions over the past 40 years.Includes bibliographical reference

It's good for students when parents work with teachers to design and produce their education.

The New York City Department of Education has long recognized the role of parent involvement in student academic achievement. Indeed, parents and teachers can work together to 'coproduce' educational services to benefit student achievement. However, we do not know what kind of coproduction directly and effectively supports educational attainment. In a new research, Julio Zambrano-Gutiérrez, Amanda Rutherford, and Sean Nicholson-Crotty ..

How looking only at policy diffusion "successes" between states may be misleading

Ideas often have a way of spreading. This is certainly true in the case of American states; innovative policies are often adopted by others in a process known as policy diffusion. But in trying to determine which policies spread, could we be giving too much of a focus on those that are successful? In new research which examines interstate compacts, Andrew Karch, Sean C. Nicholson-Crotty, Neal D. Woods, and Ann O’M. Bowman find that an emphasis on successful policies may be leading scholars to overestimate the importance of some factors, such as neighboring state activity, and underestimate the importance of others, like the number of previous adopters

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Are public managers more risk averse? Framing effects and status quo bias across the sectors

Modern reforms meant to incentivize public managers to be more innovative and accepting of risk are often implicitly based in the longstanding assumption that public employees are more risk averse than their private sector counterparts. We argue, however, that there is more to learn about the degree to which public and private managers differ in terms of risk aversion. In order to address this gap, we field a series of previously validated experiments designed to assess framing effects and status quo bias in a sample of public and private sector managers. Our results indicate that public managers are not more risk averse or anchored to the status quo than their private sector counterparts; in fact, the findings suggest the opposite may be true under some conditions. In addition, our results fail to confirm previous findings in the literature suggesting that public service motivation is associated with risk aversion. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these results for the study of risky choice in the public sector and for modern public management reforms

How Historical and Social Comparisons Influence Interpretations of Performance Information

Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www. tandfonline.com/upmj.The article of record as published may be found at https://dx.doi.org10.1080/10967494.2018.1550129The ways in which managers use performance information is among the most salient topics in the study of public management. Drawing inspiration from several recent studies on the use of performance information by citizens, we adopt a behavioral approach to understand the influence of reference dependence on the interpretation of performance information by managers. Specifically, we run two experiments in a sample of professional managers, which allows us to test whether social and historical comparisons influence how respondents interpret performance information. The results suggest that framing an objective performance metric as poor relative to peer or competitor organizations leads managers to rate overall organizational performance significantly lower than managers in a control group who received the same metric, but no comparative frame. The results support expectations about the importance of social comparisons, particularly in the case of negative deviations from the reference point. The fact that we find no impact of historical comparisons on the interpretation of performance information deviates from recent work on citizen evaluations and suggests differences in the ways in which elites process such information. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our results for the study of performance management and the behavioral approach to public management more generally

Dataset: Qualtrics Managers - Historical and Social Comparisons

This project looks at how professional managers interpret performance information

National Election Cycles and the Intermittent Political Safeguards of Federalism

Scholars have challenged the notion of "political safeguards of federalism" in a large and well-developed body of work on the use of coercive policy tools by the federal government. This study suggests, however, that there may be some utility in re-examining the political factors that help to constrain the growth of national power. Specifically, it argues that the need to win votes from subnational constituencies makes national lawmakers less supportive of mandates, preemptions, and tax sanctions during election cycles and, thus, provides an intermittent safeguard of state authority. It tests and finds evidence for hypotheses related to that general argument in analyses of the passage of coercive federalist policies over the last thirty years. Copyright 2008, Oxford University Press.