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Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Sunday Liquor Laws And Crime, Paul Heaton Oct 2010

Sunday Liquor Laws And Crime, Paul Heaton

Paul Heaton

Many jurisdictions have considered relaxing Sunday alcohol sales restrictions, yet such restrictions' effects on public health remain poorly understood. This paper analyzes the effects of legalization of Sunday packaged liquor sales on crime, focusing on the phased introduction of such sales in Virginia beginning in 2004. Differences-in-differences and triple-differences estimates indicate the liberalization increased minor crime by 5% and alcoholinvolved serious crime by 10%. The law change did not affect domestic crime or induce significant geographic or inter-temporal crime displacement. The costs of this additional crime are comparable to the state's revenues from increased liquor sales.


Preliminary Findings From The New Leaders For New Schools Evaluation, Paul Heaton Dec 2009

Preliminary Findings From The New Leaders For New Schools Evaluation, Paul Heaton

Paul Heaton

Effective school leadership is widely seen as a key determinant of student achievement, yet it remains unclear what constitutes an effective principal. To address the need to develop new principals to lead urban schools, the New Leaders for New Schools organization was established with the goal of ensuring high academic achievement for all students by attracting, preparing, and supporting leaders for urban public schools. This working paper presents preliminary findings on the impact of attending a school led by a K-8 school led by a New Leader. Using longitudinal student-level data collected from the six cities in which New Leaders …


Hidden In Plain Sight: What Cost-Of-Crime Research Can Tell Us About Investing In Police, Paul Heaton Dec 2009

Hidden In Plain Sight: What Cost-Of-Crime Research Can Tell Us About Investing In Police, Paul Heaton

Paul Heaton

Many state and local governments are facing significant fiscal challenges, forcing policymakers to confront difficult trade-offs as they consider how to allocate scarce resources across numerous worthy initiatives. To achieve their policy priorities, it will become increasingly important for policymakers to concentrate resources on programs that can clearly demonstrate that they improve their constituents' quality of life. To identify such programs, cost/benefit analysis can be a powerful tool for objectively adjudicating the merits of particular programs. On the surface, all such programs aim to improve quality of life, but whether they actually achieve — or will achieve — what they …


The U.S. Experience With No-Fault Automobile Insurance, Paul Heaton Dec 2009

The U.S. Experience With No-Fault Automobile Insurance, Paul Heaton

Paul Heaton

No-fault automobile-insurance regimes were the culmination of decades of dissatisfaction with the use of the traditional tort system for compensating victims of automobile accidents. They promised quicker, fairer, less-contentious, and, it was hoped, less-expensive resolution of automobile-accident injuries. This monograph considers how these plans have fared. After reviewing the intellectual and political history of no-fault auto insurance, the monograph concludes that no-fault lost political popularity because of the perception that it did not deliver the promised consumer premium cost reductions. Analysis of data from a variety of sources confirms this view, demonstrating that premiums and claim costs have become substantially …


An Analysis Of The Incidence Of Recruiter Irregularites, Paul Heaton Dec 2009

An Analysis Of The Incidence Of Recruiter Irregularites, Paul Heaton

Paul Heaton

We examine the prevalence and consequences of irregularities by military recruiters. Recruiter irregularities are uncommon — using the services' data for tracking allegations between 2007–2009, we document about 1 allegation per 1,000 applicants. Between 1 to 3 percent of the recruiter workforce is involved in substantiated allegations in a given year, with concealment or falsification representing the most common form of irregularity. Exploring Army contract data, we compare the characteristics of those signing contracts at the end of the recruiting month — when recruiters are under the greatest pressure to meet their monthly recruiting quotas — with those signed earlier …


Information Technology, Organization, And Productivity In The Public Sector: Evidence From Police Departments, Luis Garicano, Paul Heaton Dec 2009

Information Technology, Organization, And Productivity In The Public Sector: Evidence From Police Departments, Luis Garicano, Paul Heaton

Paul Heaton

We examine how information technology (IT) contributes to organizational change, labor demand, and improved productivity in the public sector using a new panel data set of police departments covering 1987-2003. While IT adoption is associated with increased administrative and organizational complexity and use of more highly educated officers, IT itself does not appear to enhance crimefighting effectiveness. These results are robust to various methods for controlling for agency-level characteristics and the endogeneity of IT use. IT investments do, however, appear to improve police productivity when complemented with particular management practices–in this case, those associated with the Compstat program.


Cash Incentives And Military Enlistment, Attrition, And Reenlistment, Paul Heaton Dec 2009

Cash Incentives And Military Enlistment, Attrition, And Reenlistment, Paul Heaton

Paul Heaton

To determine whether enlistment and reenlistment bonuses are effective in maintaining or increasing the supply of personnel to the armed forces, the authors provide an empirical analysis of bonuses' effects. They developed models to assess whether bonuses have contributed to recruiting success and retention, whether they have been used flexibly, and whether they have been used efficiently, using data for each service, but with a particular emphasis on the Army. The authors find that bonus programs have been important in helping the services meet recruiting and retention objectives and have been managed flexibly by targeting bonuses to specific groups. Bonuses …