Recent Publications
Reverse Deterrence in Racial Profiling: Increased Transgressions by Non-profiled Whites
Hackney, A., & Glaser, J. (2013). Reverse deterrence in racial profiling: Increased transgressions by non-profiled Whites. Law & Human Behavior, 37, 348-353.
2013-01-01A controlled experiment tested the possibility that racial profiling— disproportionate scrutiny of a minority racial group by sanctioned authorities—would have a “reverse deterrent” effect on the illicit behavior of members of a nonprofiled majority group. Research participants given a task involving extremely difficult anagrams were given the opportunity to cheat. White participants randomly assigned to a condition in which two Black confederates were obtrusively singled out for scrutiny by the study administrator cheated more than Whites in a White-profiling condition and a no-profiling control condition, and more than Black participants in all three conditions. Black participants cheated at comparable levels across the three experimental conditions. The effect of the profiling of Blacks was consequently a net increase in cheating. The results indicate that racial profiling may be counterproductive.
Accountable Care Organizations and Antitrust: Restructuring the Health Care Market
2012-12-11COMPREHENDING THE INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVES OF UNIVERSITIES: A Taxonomy of Modes of Engagement and Institutional Logics
2012-12-01The paper examines the behavior of universities at the level of the individual institution to create a taxonomy of actions and logics used to initiate international activities, engagements, and academic programs. The taxonomy is organized utilizing the concepts of activity clusters, modes of engagement, and institutional logics. Its purpose is to provide a framework for future research as well as a tool for scholars and practitioners to better analyze and understand what has become a rush by many universities to become more engaged globally. After a brief discussion of the importance of contextual variables such as academic discipline, academic program level, and the prestige hierarchy, the specific characteristics of the university as a social organization are considered. A central assumption is that the most meaningful and successful change in the university occurs when the decentralized nature of the organization and the significant formal and informal authority of faculty and academic staff is recognized and incorporated into decision processes in real and meaningful ways. The taxonomy of actions and logics is conceptualized as a list of modes of engagement that can be organized into seven clusters of activity. Clusters include individual faculty initiatives; the management of institutional demography; mobility initiatives; curricular and pedagogical change; transnational institutional engagements; network building; and campus culture, ethos, and leadership. Nine institutional logics are described and proposed as possible explanatory variables as to how universities interpret their global environment and justify strategies, policies, and actions they undertake. International and global realities have become a central strategic concern for many universities. The framework offered in this article is intended to help support empirical research on strategies, actions and logics at the institutional level and an on-going research project by the authors.
Private Sector Contracting and Democratic Accountability
Catherine DiMartino and Janelle Scott. 2012. Educational Policy. XX(X): 1-27.
2012-11-18Public officials are increasingly contracting with the private sector for a range of educational services. With much of the focus on private sector accountability on cost-effectiveness and student performance, less attention has been given to shifts in democratic accountability. Drawing on data from the state of New York, one of the most active contracting contexts, the authors examine how contracting poses challenges to democratic accountability and provide suggestions for how policy makers engaging with private sector providers might better attend to the broader public purposes of schooling.
Life Cycle Analysis of Distributed Concentrating Solar Combined Heat and Power
Zack Norwood and Daniel Kammen; Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley. Environmental Research Letters 7 (2012) 044016 (10pp).
2012-10-26We report on life cycle assessment (LCA) of the economics, global warming potential and water (both for desalination and water use in operation) for a distributed concentrating solar combined heat and power (DCS-CHP) system. Detailed simulation of system performance across 1020 sites in the US combined with a sensible cost allocation scheme informs this LCA. We forecast a levelized cost of $0.25 kWh-1electricity and $0.03 kWh-1thermal, for a system with a life cycle global warming potential of ~80 gCO2 eq kWh-1of electricity and ~10 gCO2 eq kWh-1 thermal, sited in Oakland, California. On the basis of the economics shown for air cooling, and the fact that any combined heat and power system reduces the need for cooling while at the same time boosting the overall solar efficiency of the system, DCS-CHP compares favorably to other electric power generation systems in terms of minimization of water use in the maintenance and operation of the plant.
The outlook for water desalination coupled with distributed concentrating solar combined heat and power is less favorable. At a projected cost of $1.40 m-3, water desalination with
DCS-CHP would be economical and practical only in areas where water is very scarce or moderately expensive, primarily available through the informal sector, and where contaminated or salt water is easily available as feed-water. It is also interesting to note that $0.40–$1.90 m-3 is the range of water prices in the developed world, so DCS-CHP
desalination systems could also be an economical solution there under some conditions.
Adaptation to Cyclone Risk: Evidence from the Global Cross-Section
Hsiang, S.M., Narita, D. (2012). "Adaptation to Cyclone Risk: Evidence from the Global Cross-Section." Climate Change Economics, Vol. 3 No. 2.
2012-10-02Understanding the feasibility and cost of adaptation is essential to management of the global climate. Unfortunately, we lack general estimates of adaptive responses to almost all climatological processes. To address this for one phenomenon, we estimate the extent of adaptation to tropical cyclones (TCs) using the global cross-section of countries. We reconstruct every TC observed during 1950–2008 to parameterize countries' TC climate and year-to-year TC exposure. We then look for evidence of adaptation by comparing deaths and damages from physically similar TC events across countries with different TC climatologies. We find that countries with more intense TC climates suffer lower marginal losses from an actual TC event, indicating that adaptation to this climatological risk occurs but that it is costly. Overall, there is strong evidence that it is both feasible and cost-effective for countries with intense TC climatologies to invest heavily in adaptation. However, marginal changes from countries' current TC climates generate persistent losses, of which only ~3% is "adapted away" in the long run.
Taxation and the Earnings of Husbands and Wives: Evidence from Sweden
Gelber, Alexander. Taxation and the Earnings of Husbands and Wives: Evidence from Sweden. Review of Economics and Statistics 2014, 96(2), 287-305. (Earlier version circulated as "Taxation and Family Labor Supply.")
2012-10-01This paper examines the response of husbands’' and wives’' earnings to a tax reform in which husbands' ’and wives’' tax rates changed independently, allowing me to examine the effect of both spouses’incentives on each spouse’s behavior. I compare the results to those of more simplifi…ed econometric models that are used in the typical setting in which such independent variation is not available. Using administrative panel data on approximately 11% of the married Swedish population, I analyze the impact of the large Swedish tax reform of 1990-1. I …nd that in response to a compensated fall in one spouse’s tax rate, that spouse’s earned income rises, and the other spouse’s earned income also rises. A standard econometric speci…cation, in which one spouse reacts to the other spouse’s income as if it were unearned income, yields biased coefficient estimates. Uncompensated elasticities of earned income with respect to the fraction of income kept after taxes are over-estimated by a factor of more than three, and income e¤ects are of the wrong sign. A second common speci…fication, in which overall family income is related to the family’s tax rate and income, also yields substantially over-estimated own compensated and uncompensated elasticities. Standard econometric approaches may substantially mis-estimate earnings responses to taxation.
Toward an Intersectional Understanding of Process Causality and Social Context
Gary L. Anderson and Janelle Scott. 2012. Qualitative Inquiry. 18(8): 674-685.
2012-09-06Maxwell and Donmoyer both argue in this issue of Qualitative Inquiry that narrow definitions of causality in educational research tend to disqualify qualitative research from influence (and funding) among policy makers. They propose a process view of causality that would allow qualitative researchers to make causal claims more grounded in the thick description of practice settings. In this article, we build on this notion of process causality, but further argue that unless we also broaden traditional notions of context in qualitative research, we will continue to seek policy solutions primarily at individual, local institutional, and cultural levels. Although qualitative researchers have made progress in acknowledging the intersectionality of race, class, and gender at the cultural level, this intersectionality seldom extends to macro level structures and forces, in part because current notions of causality make such links difficult at low levels of inference. Borrowing on Donmoyer’s notion of preponderance of evidence, we suggest a way to use process causality as a scaffolding for multilevel analysis.