Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation Commons^™

Three Essays On Mental Health Courts, Taylor E. Le Moal

All Dissertations

Mental illness in the criminal justice system is a major issue, with 2 in 5 incarcerated people in the US having a serious mental illness (Criminalization of People with Mental Illness, n.d.). Prisons have turned into “de facto” mental health facilities when these facilities are not equipped to do so. This means once individuals are released from incarceration, they are often ill-equipped to return to regular life and may get caught up in the cycle of recidivism (Slate, 2017). One method that policymakers have used to solve this problem is mental health courts (MHCs), which are pre-trial diversion …

Oriented Data-Generating Processes: A Categorization Of Roc Curves, Claude Fluet, Murat C. Mungan

Faculty Scholarship

Decision makers attempting to classify a binary state of the world may commit two types of errors. Even when the two alternative states have equal prior probabilities and when the two types of errors are equally costly, a classification criterion may be chosen which leads to one type of error being committed more frequently than the other, because of asymmetries in the data that informs their decisions. We formalize this possibility through a categorization of data-generating processes (DGPs), which may be ‘oriented’ towards evidence favoring one of the two alternatives, or which may be ‘unoriented’. We identify the shape properties …

Black Women Policymakers And Black Feminist Approaches In United States Gender-Based Violence Policies: Analyzing Policy Making, Institutional, And Social Media Discourse Through The Narrative Policy Framework, Gugu Selela

All Dissertations

This research study examines how gender-based violence (GBV) policy in the United States marginalizes Black women through race-neutral language and punitive frameworks. Despite facing disproportionate violence, Black women are often excluded from policy narratives, debates, and institutional priorities. Grounded in Black Feminist Thought and the Narrative Policy Framework, this study investigates how exclusion operates across legislative, digital, and institutional domains, and how Black women in public service resist and reshape GBV policy through care-centered, survivor-informed practices. Focusing on the U.S. South, the study uses a qualitative, multi-method design. It analyzes ninety-three Senate committee transcripts from South Carolina, North Carolina, and …

Study Of Public Space Development Based On Preservation Of Cultural Heritage Areas: Case Study Of Muara Jambi Area, Farhan Rachmanda Graha Cahyadi

Cities and Urban Development Journal

Background: The development of public spaces in cultural heritage areas has an important role in supporting the preservation of historical and cultural values, while improving the quality of life of the community around the cultural heritage.

Aims: This study aims to examine the potential for developing public spaces that are in line with efforts to preserve the Muara Jambi Cultural Heritage area.

Methods: The method used is qualitative-descriptive with conceptual-contextual orientation. Data collection techniques are carried out through systematic literature studies, document analysis, and triangulation through stakeholder statements. Data are analyzed using thematic analysis to identify relevant key elements.

Results: …

Short-Run Fiscal Effects Of Expanding Michigan's Preschool Program To Be Universal, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

This policy paper provides some updated estimates of the short-run fiscal effects of expanding Michigan’s state-funded preschool program, the Great Start Readiness Program (GSRP), to encompass universal access for Michigan’s four-year-olds. This is an update to Policy Paper No. 2025-034, which analyzed the economic and fiscal effects of Michigan’s current GSRP program as compared to the state having no program. The update takes advantage of a high-quality recent study of the economic effects of universal preschool programs in nine states, authored by Jackson, Turner, and Bastian (2025). Using the estimated economic effects of universal preschool from this recent study, …

The Role Of Cultural Brokers In Community-Based Research, Rachel Boit, Joy Birabwa, Dhoha Altaki, Savannah Bayer, Michele Kamau, Linda Hestenes

Journal of Community Engagement and Higher Education

Cultural brokers play a critical role of helping researchers navigate cultural and language barriers to gain insight into communities. This paper focuses on one cultural broker who helped facilitate community-based research among the refugee community. Her professionalism, expertise and knowledge of the community made her a valuable resource for both the researchers and the community. This work acknowledges the position of power and privilege that cultural brokers hold in community research.

Nh Ece 2025 Data Snapshot Infographic, Harshita Sarup, Jess Carson, Tyrus Parker

New Hampshire Early Care and Education Research Consortium

The NH ECE 2025 Data Snapshot infographic provides easy access to data describing and explaining the early care and education landscape in New Hampshire. Learn about Granite Staters' need for child care, the high prices that families face, the low wages earned by child care workers, and the high operating costs of care. The infographic also offers a policy snapshot featuring the reach of the NH Child Care Scholarship Program.

An Alternative To The Liberal World Order: China, Brics, And Middle East Diplomacy, Brice Tseen Fu Lee, Kotchaphop Kornphetcharat, Juan Pablo Sims

Journal Of Middle East and Islamic Studies

This paper explores how China and BRICS are emerging as strategic alternatives to the liberal international order, particularly in the realm of diplomacy and mediation for periphery states in the Middle East. Drawing on a realist theoretical framework, the study argues that these platforms offer pragmatic, interest-based avenues for engagement that contrast sharply with the conditionalities and normative expectations of Western-led institutions. Through case studies such as China’s mediation in the Iran–Saudi Arabia normalization and the expansion of BRICS+ to include Middle Eastern actors, the paper demonstrates how sovereignty, non-interference, and multipolarity have become central organizing principles for a new …

Lessons Learned: Vincenzo La Via, Mercedes Cardona

Journal of Financial Crises

Vincenzo La Via joined the World Bank Group in 2005 as chief financial officer, in charge of financial reporting, accounting, strategic planning and budgeting, credit risk, corporate finance, market risk, liquidity and asset management, and product development. During his tenure, La Via took part in the bank’s response to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the subsequent European Sovereign Debt Crisis. He left the bank in 2012 to become director general of the Treasury in the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance as the Italian government took on reform of the banking sector. He left the public sector in 2019 …

Lessons Learned: Luis Jácome, Mercedes Cardona

Journal of Financial Crises

Luis Jácome was appointed president of the board of Ecuador’s central bank in 1998 by newly elected President Jamil Mahuad. He and other members of the board resigned in 1999 in protest against a number of crisis-intervention measures they saw as threatening the bank’s independence to set monetary policy. Since the 1970s, Ecuador’s economy had experienced a period of growth fueled by oil exports, but by the mid-1990s the economy was reeling from a series of shocks, among them: a sharp drop in the price of oil, the effects of severe flooding on the country’s agricultural production, and the cost …

Lessons Learned: Benoît Cœuré, Mercedes Cardona

Journal of Financial Crises

Benoît Cœuré held several positions in the French Treasury in the years leading to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). He was an economic adviser to the director general of the French Treasury from 1997–2002, deputy chief executive and chief executive of the French debt management office from 2002–2007, and assistant secretary for multilateral affairs, trade, and development from 2007–2009. He served as chief economist and deputy director general in 2009–2011. He joined the European Central Bank (ECB) during the European Sovereign debt Crisis and was responsible for market operations, market infrastructure supervision and European and international relations as a member …

Lessons Learned: Miguel Carcaño, Mercedes Cardona

Journal of Financial Crises

During the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), Miguel Carcaño served as head of the Spanish Treasury’s Fund for Orderly Bank Restructuring, the authority in charge of managing the restructuring process of the country’s credit institutions. The fund, known today as the Spanish Executive Resolution Authority, is integrated into the European network led by the Single Resolution Board (SRB) of the European Union’s banking union. Carcaño has held a number of posts within the SRB and in 2022 became head of the Single Resolution Fund, the SRB’s emergency fund, which serves as backstop for institutions across the banking union’s 21 countries.

Lessons Learned: Ignazio Angeloni, Mercedes Cardona

Journal of Financial Crises

Ignazio Angeloni was an adviser on financial integration, financial stability, and monetary policy to the Executive Board of the European Central Bank during the European Sovereign Debt Crisis and later became director general of financial stability. He coordinated the preparations for establishing the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), a component of the European banking union. The SSM was created to address macroprudential gaps identified during the Global Financial Crisis and the Sovereign Debt Crisis. Angeloni has advocated in his academic papers for completing the work of the SSM by establishing a regional deposit insurance scheme that would backstop the work of …

Lessons Learned: Mark Branson, Mercedes Cardona

Journal of Financial Crises

Mark Branson joined the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) as head of the banking division in 2010, during the European Sovereign Debt Crisis. He became deputy director of FINMA in 2013 and was named director a year later. Although Switzerland is not a member of the European Union (EU) or its banking union, the nation participates in bilateral agreements that govern trade with the EU, its largest trading partner. In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), it enacted a number of regulations to improve oversight of the financial sector. Branson left FINMA in 2021 to become head …

How Us Bank Regulation Failed Svb And Its Supervisors, Greg Feldberg, Carey K. Mott, Jill Cetina

Journal of Financial Crises

It is well known that Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) failed in March 2023 because of a toxic combination of uninsured deposits and underwater securities. This article argues that the bank’s failure could have been avoided if SVB had been subject to two global standards established by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. First, the interest-rate risk in the banking book (IRR-BB) standard, never fully implemented in the United States, would have identified the bank’s extremely risky asset-liability management strategy and required remedial action 10 quarters before it failed. Second, the liquidity coverage ratio (LCR), from which US regulators had exempted …

Emergency Liquidity Assistance And Monetary Financing In The European Union: A Case Study In Fiscal Cooperation?, Vincient Arnold

Journal of Financial Crises

In the European Union (EU), primary EU treaty law prohibits central banks from engaging in monetary financing, which includes lending to insolvent firms. This legal prohibition exists alongside, and in parallel to, various regulatory provisions of the Eurosystem. As a result, EU Member State central banks face unique legal limitations when acting in their roles as lenders of last resort, providing emergency liquidity assistance (ELA). In practice, European central banks—both members of the Eurosystem and not—lend to firms of questionable solvency with some frequency, often creatively employing fiscal guarantees to limit their balance sheet exposure and shift the lending risk …

United States: Rhode Island Limited Bank Holiday, 1991, Ayodeji George, Sophia Alden

Journal of Financial Crises

In 1990, the Rhode Island Share and Deposit Indemnity Corporation (RISDIC) was a private mutual deposit insurance corporation funded by member institutions. Late that year, after the failures of two of its insured institutions in July and October, other RISDIC member institutions faced large depositor withdrawals, as concerns began to focus on the financial health of RISDIC itself. RISDIC had maintained inadequate reserves, and on December 31, 1990, it found itself lacking the resources to cover depositor withdrawals from member institutions. RISDIC leadership requested a state-appointed conservator, which meant that all its member institutions no longer had the deposit insurance …

United States: Reserve Primary Fund Suspension, 2008, Anmol Makhija

Journal of Financial Crises

In 2008, the Reserve Primary Fund was the world’s third-largest money market fund with $62.5 billion in assets. Following Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy filing on September 15, the Primary Fund’s $785 million position in Lehman debt securities was underwater, and the fund faced severe redemption pressures from investors. In just two days, redemption requests surpassed $40 billion. Owing to the fund’s inability to liquidate assets at or above par value in the frozen markets and the inability of its sponsor, the Reserve Management Company, Inc. (RMCI), to support investors, the Reserve announced on September 16 that the Primary Fund had “broken …

India: Yes Bank Moratorium, 2020, Salil Gupta

Journal of Financial Crises

By December 2019, Yes Bank’s capital levels had dropped below the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) mandated threshold, as the bank was facing a combination of deposit withdrawals, losses from extraordinary credit provisions, and overexposure to stressed sectors. On March 5, 2020, India’s Ministry of Finance (MoF) and the RBI placed Yes Bank under a 30-day moratorium that restricted most banking functions and limited deposit withdrawals to INR 50,000 per person (USD 663). The purpose of this moratorium was to allow the RBI time to design a plan of reconstruction or amalgamation for Yes Bank to allow depositors limited access …

United States: National Bank Holiday, 1933, Ayodeji George

Journal of Financial Crises

By mid-February 1933, the United States was in the depths of the Great Depression and the banking system faced sustained depositor runs and currency hoarding. On February 14, the governor of Michigan declared a holiday for all banks and trusts in the state. There followed a wave of declared bank holidays and bank runs across the country. The public withdrew $1.8 billion in gold and currency from banks in February and early March, with nearly two-thirds of those withdrawals occurring in the week ended Friday, March 3. By that date, 25 of 48 states had implemented bank holidays or restricted …

Greece: National Bank Holiday, 2015, Stella Schaefer-Brown

Journal of Financial Crises

In December 2014, deposit outflows from Greek banks intensified owing to political uncertainty following the announcement of a snap presidential election and a subsequent crash of the Greek stock market. This led to a liquidity crisis in the first half of 2015. Intensifying political uncertainty, worsening liquidity, and volatility in the macroeconomic and financial markets environment peaked in the first half of 2015. The crisis was exacerbated by a February decision by the European Central Bank (ECB) that made it difficult for Greek banks to continue borrowing from its monetary policy-related liquidity programs. On June 28, 2015, the ECB announced …

Cyprus: National Bank Holiday, 2013, Stella Schaefer-Brown

Journal of Financial Crises

The Greek government debt crisis was especially hard on the two largest Cypriot banks. Bank of Cyprus (BoC) and Laiki Bank lost EUR 1.8 billion and EUR 2.3 billion, respectively, on their Greek government bonds after the European Union (EU) decision in October 2011 to haircut the bonds. Over the next year, Laiki Bank faced severe liquidity problems from depositor withdrawals, the Central Bank of Cyprus (CBC) extended to it significant emergency liquidity assistance, and the government owned 84% of the bank after injecting EUR 1.8 billion. The Cypriot economy also suffered negative effects and in March 2013, authorities negotiated …

Ecuador: National Bank Holiday, 1999, Bailey Decker

Journal of Financial Crises

After a series of exogenous shocks hit Ecuador’s economy in 1997 and 1998, foreign creditors reduced external credit lines to the country, draining liquidity. The newly created Deposit Guarantee Agency (Agencia de Garantía de Depósitos, AGD) administered deposit insurance and a new blanket guarantee and had the authority to resolve failing banks. Despite these actions, bank runs continued. After depositors reportedly withdrew USD 400 million from banks over a two-week period, on Monday, March 8, 1999, one hour before banks were supposed to open, the bank superintendent declared a surprise bank holiday effective that day; banks reopened a week later …

Argentina: National Bank Holidays, 2001, Owen Heaphy

Journal of Financial Crises

Starting in 1991, Argentina operated a currency board regime under which the central bank guaranteed a one-to-one peg of the Argentine peso to the US dollar. But in 2001, markets became increasingly concerned that the central bank would be unable to maintain the peg and would allow the peso to devalue against the dollar. At that time, more than two-thirds of Argentine bank deposits were denominated in dollars. Throughout 2001, depositors withdrew funds from banks; by November, peso deposits had declined by more than one-third and dollar deposits had fallen by one-tenth. On November 28, 2001, the systemwide banking run …

Survey Of Bank Holidays And Fund Suspensions, Rosalind Z. Wiggins, Owen Heaphy, Anmol Makhija, Stella Schaefer-Brown, Greg Feldberg, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

In this paper, we analyze seven case studies involving bank holidays and two involving mutual fund suspensions produced by the Yale Program on Financial Stability. Our main purpose is to assist policymakers who are considering utilizing a bank holiday in designing the most effective program as efficiently as possible. We find that a bank holiday may be most useful when designing and implementing a comprehensive remedy to an underlying problem distressing banks, particularly when an exogenous shock rather than balance sheet weaknesses is the cause of general distress to the system. A holiday is also useful to “ring-fence” one or …

Argentina: Mutual Fund Suspensions, 2019, Owen Heaphy, Anmol Makhija

Journal of Financial Crises

With Argentina facing a liquidity crisis and collapse in demand for government debt, on Wednesday, August 28, 2019, the country's minister of economy, Hernán Lacunza, announced after markets closed that the government was extending the maturity of USD 7 billion of its short-term public debt securities, among other measures. Lacunza stated that domestic retail investors would not be subject to the terms of the maturity extension and would be paid principal and interest on the affected securities per the original maturity schedule. This announcement caused confusion about the treatment of individual investors who held the affected securities indirectly through mutual …

Stewards Of Place, Stewards Of Democracy: The Role Of Regional Public Universities In Rural Political Well-Being, Katie Kleinhesselink

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative embedded single-case study explored how a rural-serving regional public university (RPU) contributed to the political well-being of its politically polarized service region ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Guided by the stewardship of political place theoretical framework, which integrates rural consciousness, the Community Capitals Framework, and the stewardship of place framework for RPUs’ public engagement, the study utilized policy discourse analysis to examine regional residents' and internal constituents' perceptions regarding WPU’s role in promoting regional political well-being. Data collection included semi-structured interviews, direct observations of campus civic engagement events, and institutional document reviews.

The study demonstrates that regional …

Options For Modifying The Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act In The United States: An Equitable Perspective, Dr. Amira Elshamy

Future Journal of Social Science

The Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act referred to as Affordable Care Act (ACA), is a United States (U.S.) federal statute, signed into law by former President Barack Obama in 2010, it is also known as Obamacare. The law has made health insurance more accessible and affordable for millions of Americans, yet many still remain uninsured or struggle with unaffordable coverage. In addition, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services started receiving a significant increase in complaints from consumers who reported being enrolled in Marketplace coverage without their consent, around 5 million people were wrongly enrolled in subsidized ACA coverage …

Plan Mano Dura: A Punctuated Political Act? Addressing Gang Violence In El Salvador, Carlos A. Arias

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

On July 23, 2003, Salvadoran President Francisco Flores introduced a punitive and militaristic gang-prevention measure, Plan Mano Dura (Plan Iron Fist), in an attempt to solve the gang phenomenon plaguing El Salvador. Although it turned out to be an abject policy failure, its future effects and significance would far outweigh its intended impact, essentially dictating how El Salvador would combat gang violence for the next 20 years and beyond. As such, it is essential to better understand how such an ineffective policy could arise as a policy approach. This paper examines whether Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET) can account for the …

Rule-Mediated Connectivity In Social-Ecological-Technological Systems: A Comparative Network Analysis Of Reservoir Operation Rules In Coyote Valley Dam (United States) And Ameghino Dam (Argentina), Tomás Olivier, Hoon C. Shin, David J. Yu, Margaret Garcia

Center for Policy Design and Governance

This brief summarizes "Rule-mediated connectivity in social-ecological-technological systems: A comparative network analysis of reservoir operation rules in Coyote Valley Dam (United States) and Ameghino Dam (Argentina)," co-authored by Tomás Olivier, Hoon C. Shin, David J. Yu, and Margaret Garcia in the Journal of Environmental Management.