- 13 Oct 2020
- Cold Call Podcast
Can Entrepreneurs Make Mobile Voting Easy and Secure?
Making voting more accessible through technology could have tremendous payoffs for democracy—but also pose critical downsides if the product fails. Mitch Weiss, who teaches a course on public entrepreneurship, discusses his case study on Voatz and their plan to turn mobile phones into voting booths. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 02 Jan 2020
- Op-Ed
Medicare for All or Public Option: Can Either Heal Health Care?
A public insurance option could use its scale to hold prices down, but only if the approach avoids the financing gimmicks that are undermining Medicare, say Regina E. Herzlinger and James Wallace. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 29 Jan 2019
- Research & Ideas
'Green Bonds' May Be Our Best Bet for Environmental Damage Control
The popularity of green bonds as a way to finance environmentally friendly projects is on the upswing, say Malcolm Baker and George Serafeim. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 15 May 2017
- Sharpening Your Skills
The Promises and Limitations of Big Data
Recent stories chart the rise of big data, its impact on business, and how it affects our lives every day. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 19 Feb 2016
- Working Paper Summaries
‘Does 'What We Do' Make Us 'Who We Are'? Organizational Design and Identity Change at the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Both the design and identity of the FBI changed greatly in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. This study tracing the co-evolution of the Bureau’s organizational design and identity before the 9/11 attacks and through three subsequent phases finds that successful changes to organizational identity are likely to be delayed after a radical external shock: Management is likely to be constrained, appropriate design is probably unclear, or both.
- 18 Feb 2016
- Working Paper Summaries
Urbanization with Chinese Characteristics? China’s Gamble for Modernization
If the Chinese Communist Party has its way in the coming decades, it will urbanize hundreds of millions of people, transform agriculture, and sustain economic growth--all without political instability. This paper details the risks and opportunities of China’s new-style urbanization reforms, arguing that proposals for urbanization and economic transformation are not a radical departure from the institutions that have structured Chinese society for the last 30 years.
- 16 Feb 2016
- Working Paper Summaries
Diversity and Team Performance in a Kenyan Organization
A key question in organizations is whether there is an optimal balance between diversity and sameness within teams of workers. Findings from a field experiment within a nonprofit research organization based in Kenya suggest much of the tradeoff between diversity and sameness may come from the different effects diversity has along different dimensions of organizational structure. Diversity along the organization’s hierarchy improves both effort and performance.
- 11 Feb 2016
- Working Paper Summaries
Do Interactions with Candidates Increase Voter Support and Participation? Experimental Evidence from Italy
Elections in established democracies regularly attract less than half of the voting-age population. This low electoral participation raises concerns for the overall legitimacy and stability of the democratic regimes. This study of a mid-sized city in northern Italy during the 2014 municipal elections finds that while volunteers’ visits increased participation by a significant 1.8 percentage points, surprisingly the candidates’ own visits affected neither the average voter nor any subgroup of the population, whether defined by age, gender, place of birth, or turnout history.
- 11 Feb 2016
- Working Paper Summaries
Will a Five-Minute Discussion Change Your Mind? A Countrywide Experiment on Voter Choice in France
A countrywide field experiment conducted during François Hollande's door-to-door campaign for the 2012 French presidential election finds that one-on-one discussions with campaigners have strong potential to shift people's decisions even when the principal's control on campaign agents is limited. The implications reach beyond political campaigns to persuasive communication directed at consumers, donors, or investors.
- 10 Feb 2016
- Working Paper Summaries
Land Institutions and Chinese Political Economy: Institutional Complementarities and Macroeconomic Management
This paper shows the ways in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has used land as a policy tool. CCP leaders intentionally reorganized fiscal, financial, and land institutions to put land at the center of local government finances in the mid-1990s. Since the late 1990s, the CCP has used the land supply as a key tool of macroeconomic expansion and contraction. Local officials act as agents of the center: pursuing land development when pushed to so do by central authorities concerned about managing economic growth.
- 04 Feb 2016
- Working Paper Summaries
Risk Preferences and Misconduct: Evidence from Politicians
Risk-taking is widely understood to be a vital aspect of leadership, yet it may have a dark side. This study of financial risk-taking among politicians shows risk preferences to be an important antecedent of misconduct. Risk preferences as measured by portfolio choices between risky and safe investments were found to strongly predict political scandals. When employing risk-taking leaders, this suggests a potential tradeoff between performance and misconduct.
- 05 Jan 2016
- Working Paper Summaries
The Integrity of Private Third-party Compliance Monitoring
Michael Toffel and Jodi Short examine how conflict of interest and other risks lead to inaccurate monitoring of health, labor, and environmental standards.
- 20 Nov 2015
- Working Paper Summaries
Impact Evaluation Methods in Public Economics: A Brief Introduction to Randomized Evaluations and Comparison with Other Methods
Dina Pomeranz examines the use by public agencies of rigorous impact evaluations to test the effectiveness of citizen efforts.
Engaging Community to Create Proactive, Equitable Public Safety
Saint Paul, Minnesota Mayor Melvin Carter swept into office in 2018 promising equity. He wanted a new public safety framework that would be rooted in community. Then, with the COVID-19 pandemic wiping out much of the city’s budget and the May 2020 killing of George Floyd by a police officer in neighboring Minneapolis sparking calls to defund the police, how would Mayor Carter make these changes happen? Professor Mitch Weiss discusses the challenges and rewards of “possibility government” in his case, Community-First Public Safety. Open for comment; 0 Comments.