The purpose of this research was to investigate the implications of networked public management on the design, implementation, and utilization of federal performance measurement systems. A multiple, instrumental case study of four public health programs funded by CDC and implemented nationally through vertical and horizontal network structures was conducted. Cross-case findings suggest that the networked implementation structures for the four federal-level, public health programs have important implications for the design of the performance measurement systems. Specifically, the performance measurement systems were affected by four consequences of the implementation networks: the political influence of collaborative stakeholders; network variability; dependencies on voluntary, horizontal network partners to achieve outputs and outcomes; and jointly produced outcomes that compromise assigning agency-specific attribution and accountability. While these four factors did not deter the use of performance measurement by any of the programs, all had important consequences for the development and subsequent design of the performance measurement systems, including limiting the choice and types of measures, level of measurement, potential uses of the measures, and resources needed to implement and support the systems.

This dissertation examines the ways international research collaboration affects the ability of Colombian research teams to produce bibliographic outputs, and to contribute to local knowledge. Research hypotheses are tested using Zero Inflated Negative Binomial Regression models to account for the effects of international research collaboration on team output while controlling for team characteristics, partner characteristics, scientific discipline, sector, the characteristics of the teams' home institution, and team location. The study uses control groups and the Propensity Score Matching approach to assess the overall impact of international research collaboration on research team performance while controlling for the effects of endogeneity and selection bias. Results show that international research collaboration is positively associated with both team output and teams' ability to contribute to local knowledge. The study shows that such effects depend on the type of collaboration chosen and the type of partner involved. Particularly, it shows that while co-authoring with colleagues located overseas or receiving foreign funding positively affects team performance, hosting foreign researchers does not seem to affect a team's productivity or its ability to contribute to local knowledge once all other variables are held constant. It also finds that collaborating with partners from the South yields greater productivity counts than collaborating with partners from the North, but that collaboration with partners from northern countries is strongly associated with a team's ability to contribute to local knowledge, while collaboration with partners from southern countries is not. Theoretical and policy implications of these and other counterintuitive findings are discussed.

This dissertation project examines the effect of various state regulations such as Certificate-of-Need (CON) regulation, uncompensated care pools and community benefit requirement laws on hospital provision of uncompensated care and analyzes both for-profit and non-profit hospitals¡¯ responsiveness to the regulatory environment. The analysis of these regulations uses panel data econometric methods for a sample of hospitals in 17 states from 2002 to 2004. This study overcomes the limits of previous research that focused primarily on the effect of a single regulation in a given state. It uses three estimation methods: pooled Ordinary Least Squares (pooled OLS), random effects generalized least squares (GLS) and Hausman Taylor instrumental variable (HTIV) to obtain the parameter estimates. Weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each method, we interpret results based on the cross-validation of the GLS and HTIV estimates. Findings suggest that nonprofit and for-profit hospitals respond to some policy instruments similarly and others differently. For example, both nonprofit and for-profit hospitals respond to CON laws by increasing their uncompensated care provision. However, they respond to policy incentives such as community benefit requirement laws differently. Furthermore, regulatory interactions are found to significantly influence the uncompensated care provision by both nonprofit and for-profit hospitals. The dissertation helps policy makers formulate strategies to create incentives to enhance access to care for the economically disadvantaged. For example, implementing CON and providing public subsidies at the same time may offer better access to care for the uninsured than implementing either regulation alone. However, community benefit requirement laws do not appear to expand the amount of uncompensated care provided by nonprofit hospitals.

Societies frequently implement land use policies to regulate resource extraction or to regulate development. However, two important policy questions remain unresolved. First, how effective are land use regulations? Second, how do land use regulations affect socioeconomic conditions? Three issues complicate the evaluation of land use policies: (1) overt bias may lead to incorrect estimates of policy effects if implementation is nonrandom; (2) the policy may affect outcomes in neighboring unregulated lands; and (3) unobservable differences between regulated and unregulated lands may lead to biased assessments. Previous evaluations of land use policies fail to address these sources of bias simultaneously. In this dissertation, I develop an approach, using matching methods, which jointly accounts for these complications. I apply the approach to evaluate the effects of Costa Rica s protected areas on land use and socioeconomic outcomes between 1960 and 2000. I find that: (1) protection prevented the deforestation of only 10 percent or less of protected forests; (2) protection resulted in reforestation of only 20 percent of non-forest areas that were protected; (3) protection had little effect on land use outside protected areas, most likely because, as noted above, protected areas had only small effects on land use inside protected areas; and (4) there is little evidence that protected areas had harmful impacts on the livelihoods of local communities: on the contrary, I find that protection had small positive effects on socioeconomic outcomes. Furthermore, the methods traditionally used to conduct such evaluations are biased. In contrast to the findings above, those conventional methods overestimated the amount of avoided deforestation and erroneously implied that protection had negative impacts on the livelihoods of local communities. This dissertation contributes to policymaking by providing empirical measures of protected area effectiveness. Although annual global expenditures on protected areas are about $6.5 billion, little is known to date about the returns on these investments. This study also indicates that policymakers should give careful consideration to current proposals to compensate communities living in or around protected areas: contrary to widely held assumptions, the findings suggest that protection may not have harmful effects on socioeconomic outcomes.

Unanticipated economic fluctuations exert pressure on state governments to adjust their discretionary fiscal policies to accommodate the changing fiscal situation. Even though states adjust fiscal policy as the economy fluctuates, the typical cyclical economic factors are not the sole determinant of such adjustments. State governments budgeting systems in the United States operate under a variety of budgetary institutions. The most prominent state government budgetary institutions include balanced budget rules (BBRs), tax and expenditure limits (TELs), and supermajority voting requirements for tax increases. This dissertation examines how these budgetary institutions affect state government choices of fiscal policy under different economic conditions. To better understand the effect of state level TELs, a stringency index of state level TEL is constructed considering the major structural features. The fixed-effect panel regressions are used for the analysis of impact of TEL and BBR and tax changes and the fixed-effect Tobit is adopted to test the impact of TEL and BBR on spending cuts after the budget is adopted. The result suggests that TEL plays a more important role affecting states discretionary fiscal adjustment from the tax side, while BBR plays a more important role affecting states discretionary fiscal adjustment from the expenditure side. Results of this research show that TEL exerts pressure on states that hinder state ability to deal with volatile fiscal situations, especially in the case of periods of budget crises.

The dissertation explores how distinctive institutional factors related to property rights determine urban development patterns and housing tenure modalities in a developing economy context. The first part proposes a choice-theoretic model that explains the existence of the Antichresis contractual arrangement as a way to temporarily divide property rights. The model explains why the Antichresis contract dominates the Periodic-Rent contract in terms of landlord profits for certain types of property in which the gains in expected profits from solving the problem of adverse selection of tenants offset the loss of expected profits created by the moral hazard in landlords investments. The empirical section of the dissertation provides evidence in support of the model. Using data from Bolivia, I find that property types that require less landlord maintenance investment have higher capitalization rates under Antichresis contracts than they would under Monthly-Rent contracts and vice-versa. Additionally, the model shows that the Antichresis contract has limited capacity for helping the poor as suggested by recent literature. On the contrary, it can be hurtful for the poor in markets were landlords have limited information about tenants, in markets with inefficient court systems, or in markets with tenant-friendly regulations. The second part of the dissertation explores the issue of squatter settlements in the developing world. The theoretical model presented in this part explains how the landlord squatter strategies based on credible threats drive capital investment incentives and ultimately shape urban land development in areas with pervasive squatting. The model predicts that squatter settlements develop with higher structural densities than formal sector development. This prediction explains why property owners of housing that originated in squatter settlements take longer periods of time to upgrade than comparable property owners who built in the formal sector even after they receive titles to their property. The higher original structural density increases the marginal benefit of waiting in the redeveloping decision creating a legacy effect of high-density low-quality housing in these types of settlements. Geo-coded data from Cochabamba, Bolivia, support the hypotheses proposed by the theoretical model and raise questions about the unintended consequences of current policies affecting informal development.

Organizational development is a central purpose of evaluation. Disasters and other emergency situations carry with them significant implications for evaluation, given that they are often unanticipated and involve multiple relief efforts on the part of INGOs, governments and international organizations. Two particularly common reasons for INGOs to evaluate disaster relief efforts are 1) accountability to donors and 2) desire to enhance the organization's response capacity. This thesis endeavors briefly to review the state of the evaluation field for disaster relief so as to reflect on how it needs to go forward. The conclusion is that evaluation of disaster relief efforts is alive and well. Though evaluation for accountability seems fairly straightforward, determining just how the evaluation influences the organization and beyond is not. Evaluation use has long been a central thread of discussion in evaluation theory, with the richer idea of evaluation influence only recently taking the stage. Evaluation influence takes the notion of evaluation use a few steps further by offering more complex, subtle, and sometimes unintentional ways that an evaluation might positively better a situation. This study contributes to the very few empirical studies of evaluation influence by looking at one organization.

This thesis presents a challenge to policy initiatives that presume that patient-centered care will reduce racial disparities in health. Data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey were used to test patient assessment of provider behavior defined as patient-centered care according to the National Health Disparities Report of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality of the Department of Health and Human Services. Results indicated patient-centered care improves self-rated health status, but blacks still report worse health status than whites experiencing comparable patient-centered care. Further, black-white differences in patient-centered care had no affect on health status. Rival theories of black-white differences in health, including social class and health literacy, provided better explanations of disparities than assessment of provider behaviors. These findings suggest that policies designed to financially incentivize patient-centered care practices by providers should be considered with caution. While patient-centered care is better quality care, financial incentives could have a negative effect on minority health if providers are deterred from practices that serve disproportionate numbers of poor and less literate patients and their families. Measurement of the concept of patient-centered care in future health disparities research was also discussed.

The United States has been a very attractive destination for foreign science and engineering graduate students and postdoctoral scholars for a considerable period of time. Despite the important role of foreign doctoral students in the U.S, relatively little is known about the factors influencing their decision to attend an institution. One factor that is rarely explored is the effect of networks on institution selection. This study aims to provide both qualitative and quantitative information about the role networks play in foreign doctoral students institution selection. This three-part study utilizes different methodologies: (1) focus group interviews conducted with Turkish doctoral students at the Georgia Institute of Technology; (2) a web study of research laboratories in science and engineering; and (3) the estimation of Random Utility Model (RUM) of institution selection. Guided focus group interviews provide important qualitative information about the ways students, alumni, faculty and local community of same nationality influence institution choice. The web study of research laboratories provide evidence that labs that are directed by foreign-born faculty are more likely to be populated by students from the same country of origin than are labs that are directed by native (U.S. born) faculty. The results from RUM of institution selection provide strong and significant evidence for the relationship between the number of existing students from a country of origin at an institution and the probability of attending that institution for potential applicants from the same country of origin. Also, in some of the models there is evidence that the alumni and faculty from the same origin also play a role in student choice. The results of this study have several policy implications related to integration of foreign doctoral students, future enrollments, institutional mismatch , and the role foreign-born faculty play in U.S universities.

This study investigates the impacts of regional characteristics on the early-stage performance of New Technology-Based Firms (NTBFs) in catch-up regions where a mature industrial cluster has yet to be formed. It hypothesized that the average NTBF performance in a region is a function of its scientist job market conditions, cultural diversity, venture capital, academic research, industrial structure, and local entrepreneurial climate. Using the events of Initial Public Offerings (IPO) and Merger & Acquisitions (M&A) as an indicator of early-stage success of NTBFs, this study constructs a set of Zero-Inflated-Negative-Binomial (ZINB) models to predict the spatial distribution of such events in the U.S. biopharmaceutical and Information Technology (IT) service industries during the period from 1996 to 2005. Several empirical findings emerge from this study. First, the local entrepreneurial climate plays a significant and positive role on NTBF performance in both industries. Second, the positive impact of cultural diversity is more significant in the IT service industry than in the biopharmaceutical industry. Third, the scientist job market size and absolute salary level have positive impacts on NTBF performance, but the effect of relative salary level is negative. Fourth, proximity to venture capital firms has positive but non-linear effects, but the adverse effect of excess venture capital is stronger in the IT service industry. Fifth, there is little evidence of the direct effects of academic research in determining the NTBF performance in both industries. Finally, industrial specialization is significant and positive only in the IT service industry. The results suggest that promoting local entrepreneurial climate and cultural diversity are two effective policy instruments for catch-up regions to foster their NTBF growth.