Migration Consequences of Welfare Reform

In this paper, we investigate whether or not recent state and federal changes in welfare policy -- the imposition of time-limited benefits, the use of financial sanctions for non-compliance, and the setting of strict work eligibility rules -- affect the migration of low-educated unmarried women. Estimates of welfare's effect on migration reveal that welfare policy does indeed affect migration. Recent changes in policy that have made public assistance a less attractive alternative are associated with greater migration among low-educated unmarried women. Welfare reform has motivated low-educated women to move greater distances more frequently, and to combine such moves with employment. Estimates also indicate that welfare reform is associated with more local (i.e., within county) changes in residential location that are associated with employment, although estimates of this effect were not robust to estimation method. The close link between residential moves and employment in the post-reform period is consistent with the idea that welfare reform has motivated people to move for economic reasons such as better employment opportunities. This evidence suggests that the traditional way of thinking about the effect of welfare on migration -- as a strategic move to obtain higher benefits -- is inadequate.

Teaching and Supplemental Material Development for Belmont University\u27s OTD Neuroscience Course

This capstone project focused on the development of the neuroscience curriculum with Belmont School of Occupational Therapy. Agency needs included strategies and materials to supplement student understanding in particularly difficult lessons. Project goals ranged from identification of difficult content areas to development of a variety of materials. Using research and stakeholder suggestions, a variety of materials were developed to address diverse learning styles and needs. Feedback was gathered on all learning materials to assess effectiveness and make necessary changes. In all, four case studies, two lectures, two labs, two worksheets, one instructor resource on research findings, and a series of five videos on neurological screenings were completed for future student use

Incredibly Good Performance: An Experimental Study of Source and Level Effects on the Credibility of Government

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from SAGE Publications via the DOI in this recordInitiatives to boost public trust of government often rely on better reporting of the efforts and accomplishments of government agencies. But if citizens disbelieve the performance reports of agencies, especially information about good performance, then these initiatives may be do little to enhance trust. We ask the following questions: Do citizens find performance information from government agencies to be credible, or do they trust more in independent sources? Do they believe some agencies more than others? And does credibility of the agency itself as a source depend on the level of performance that is being reported? To address these questions, we designed an experiment to test the credibility of a customer satisfaction index for two U.S. federal agencies, with random allocation of the specific agency (one politically less attractive, the other more so), the source of the index (the federal agency itself or an independent rating firm), as well as the level of performance reported in the index. Results from an online sample of nearly 600 U.S. adults show that credibility is lower for the politically less attractive agency and that citizens are especially doubtful about good performance reported by the government agency itself (as opposed to the independent rating firm). These results suggest that independent sources can boost credibility when reporting good news about government performance.The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research was supported in part by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Grant 2005-5-26 GAS)

Stochastic Dynamic Vehicle Routing in the Euclidean Plane: The Multiple-Server, Capacitated Vehicle Case

In a previous paper [12], we introduced a new model for stochastic and dynamic vehicle routing called the dynamic traveling repairman problem (DTRP), in which a vehicle traveling at constant velocity in a Euclidean region must service demands whose time of arrival, location and on-site service are stochastic. The objective is to find a policy to service demands over an infinite horizon that minimizes the expected system time (wait plus service) of the demands. We showed that the stability condition did not depend on the geometry of the service region (i.e. size, shape, etc.). In addition, we established bounds on the optimal system time and proposed an optimal policy in light traffic and several policies that have system times within a constant factor of the lower bounds in heavy traffic. We showed that the leading behavior of the optimal system time had a particularly simple form which increases much more rapidly with traffic intensity than the system time in traditional queues (e.g. M/G/1). In this paper, we extend these results in several directions. First, we propose new bounds and policies for the problem of m identical vehicles with unlimited capacity and show that in heavy traffic the system time is reduced by a factor of 1/m2 over the single server case. Policies based on dividing the service region into m equal subregion

Global Cities on the Web: An Empirical Typology of Municipal Websites

Municipalities across the world are rapidly adopting e-government to improve public service delivery and provide one-stop government access to citizens. Using data from a sample of world cities, we describe the features of municipal websites and employ cluster analysis to create an empirical typology. Our results suggest that world cities can be classified into four types: 1) digitally mature cities, 2) digitally moderate cities, 3) digitally minimal cities, and 4) digitally marginal cities. This classification of cities largely reflects the social, political and economic context of countries and the resulting clusters exhibit closely similar shapes and differ considerably in level, indicating the trend of staged adoption of e-government among world cities. Moreover, the cities in the digitally mature and moderate clusters are associated with a higher GDP per capita, and percentage of Internet users, however they are not necessarily in the most democratic nations. Based on our overall findings, we suggest some hypotheses that derive from our typology and lines of future investigation for e-governance researchers

Estimating unconstrained customer choice set demand: A case study on airline reservation data

A good demand forecast should be at the heart of every Revenue Management model. Yet most demand models do not incorporate customer choice behavior under offered alternatives. We are using the ideas of customer choice sets to model the customer's buying behavior. The demand estimation method, as described in Haensel and Koole (2011), is based on maximum likelihood and the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm. The main focus of the paper is the application case on real airline reservation data. The reservation data, consisting of the airline's daily flight offers, is used to unconstrain the underlying customer demand in terms of price sensitivity. Using this demand information per choice sets, the revenue manager obtains a clear view of the real underlying demand

Heuristics and political accountability in complex governance: An experimental test:

A growing body of empirical work suggests that identifying the actors formally tasked with implementing policy can focus attention away from incumbent politicians. We examine the effects on blame attribution and voting intention of (a) the identifiability of a responsible policy worker (administrator), and (b) the evaluability of the policy work or outcome (policy failure), in the context of programs at two federal agencies (loans by the Small Business Administration and inspections by the U.S. Department of Agriculture). Using a set of online survey experiments with 1105 US adults, we find that the evaluability of a (negative) outcome generally reduces voting intention, but that the identifiability of a policy worker (administrator) tends to shift blame away from the incumbent politician and thus to increase voting intention. These experimental findings provide at least partial support for our theoretical expectations

Examining Change in Therapeutic Alliance to Predict Youth Mental Health Outcomes

Objective—To examine the link between therapeutic alliance and youth outcomes. Method—The study was conducted at a group-home with 112 youth with a disruptive-behavior diagnosis. Therapeutic alliance was collected routinely via youth and staff report. Outcome data were collected using youth and staff reports of externalizing behavior as well as behavioral incidents occurring during care. Outcome data were collected following intake into services and at 6 and 12 months of care. Data were analyzed to examine (1) if youth behavior problems at intake were predictive of therapeutic alliance and (2) if changes in alliance were predictive of subsequent youth outcomes. These were conducted with a 6-month service-delivery model and replicated with a 12-month model. Results—There was some support for the first hypothesis, that initial levels of youth externalizing behavior would be related to alliance ratings; however, most of the effects were marginally significant. The second hypothesis, that changes in therapeutic alliance would be related to subsequent youth outcomes, was supported for the 6-month model, but not the 12-month model. Conclusions—Changes in therapeutic alliance may be predictive of youth outcomes during care. Additional research into examining therapeutic alliance trajectories is warranted to improve mental health services for youth

Behavioral public performance: making effective use of metrics about government activity

Oliver James, Donald Moynihan, Asmus Olsen and Gregg van Ryzin discuss how insights from behavioural science show the way managers, politicians and citizens make sense of, and act on, information about government performance