Public Policy Commons^™

Using Systems Archetypes And Generic Structures To Support Water Resource Management Studies : The Case Of Cropping Pattern Change In New Mexico State, Babak Bahaddin

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

A wide range of managerial problems are similar in nature, and yet they continuously appear in different forms and in different geographical locations. Compared to other sciences, it seems that in the field of management, managers have a hard time facing these similar problems. Part of this issues is caused by the extreme complexity of the systems and another part is caused by the lack of a universal language with which managers can communicate their lessons. This dissertation offers a set of tools that have been previously manufactured in systems science, and more specifically in System Dynamics.

Naral And The Art Of Playing Defense : How Interest Groups Act When They Seek To Protect The Status Quo Of Public Policy, Katherine Elaine Slye-Hernandez

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Why do interest groups take certain actions in policy debates and not others? How do groups seeking to protect the status quo of policy act? These questions, and others, cannot be answered well by the current interest group literature, and this dissertation seeks to delve into this line of research with a case study of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). While certain aspects of the interest group literature, and a large part of the venue shopping literature specifically, can help scholars understand some actions of groups like NARAL, there are a whole host of actions NARAL took that …

Modeling An Open Data Ecosystem : The Case Of Food Service Establishments Inspection In New York State, Mahdi Mirdamadi Najafabadi

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Open Government Data (OGD) is becoming an increasingly popular initiative around the world. OGD initiatives have a broad number of stakeholders from different sectors and are influenced by many political, societal, and technological factors. In this thesis, I used the notion of Open Government Data Ecosystem (OGDE) as a holistic perspective to the OGD phenomenon, which encompasses important actors, their reciprocal interactions, and their impacts on the OGD environment.

An Exploratory Mixed Methods Study Of Geographic Mobility And Homeless Service Use In Northeastern New York State, Amanda Aykanian

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This study used a mixed methods design to explore the geographic mobility of homeless service users in northeastern New York State and the relationship between mobility and homeless service use, engagement, and delivery. For the quantitative component, a sample of Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) data—that includes adults accessing homeless services in 2017 across 21 counties in northeastern New York State—was used to describe service users’ mobility and the demographic, background, and service use characteristics associated with mobility. For the qualitative component, semi-structured interviews with homeless service providers in those same counties were used to understand providers’ views of mobility, …

Leveraging Big Data : Predicting Traffic Risk And Providing Early Warning Due To Adverse Weather Conditions, Sreekumar E. Nampoothiri

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The proliferation of big data has allowed researchers to delve deeper into data and gain better understandings within almost every field. In the fields of transportation planning and traffic management, past research has shown direct relationships among weather conditions and traffic speed, volume, and congestion. However, these studies have mostly relied on static data that were spatially and temporally sparse or collected on a specific roadway for a specific time period for research purposes. With the need to address the impacts of climate change, including an increasing number of extreme weather events as well as an increasing intensity of such …

Awareness Of Sex Offender Registration Policies And Self-Reported Sexual Offending In A Community Sample Of Adolescents, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Hayley M. D. Cleary

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Sex offender registration laws are widely implemented, increasingly restrictive, and intended to serve both specific and general deterrent functions. Most states have some form of policy mechanism to place adolescents on sex offender registries, yet it remains unclear whether adolescents possess the requisite policy awareness to be deterred from sexual offending. This study examined awareness of sex offender registration as a potential sanction and its cross-sectional association with engagement in several registrable sexual behaviors (sexting, indecent exposure, sexual solicitation, and forcible touching) in a community sample of 144 adolescents. Results revealed that many adolescents were unaware that these behaviors could …

Sanctions And The Proliferation Of Terrorism: Cases Of Iran, Libya, And Bosnia-Herzegovina, Savanah Courtney

Public Administration & Policy

This study tests the hypothesis that the use of sanctions as a foreign policy tool produces favorable conditions for an increase in terrorism activity using cases of sanctions against Bosnia-Herzegovina, Libya, and Iran. Using literature as the basis for this hypothesis, data suggests that there is not significant evidence to support this theory using these cases. The circumstances surrounding the political environment and stability of each country tells different stories, where attributing rising terrorist activity to sanctions themselves ignores the complexity of foreign economies their political and social atmospheres in which they operate. This thesis alludes to several questions and …

Understanding The Adoption And Implementation Of Body Worn Camera Policies In State And Local Governments And Their Effects On Police Behavior, Sunyoung Pyo

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The body worn camera (BWC) policy in the United States was introduced as a response to public demand for governmental action to decrease police use of deadly force after several highly-visible police shooting incidents involving Black residents occurred. Given the recent introduction of BWC technology, past studies on BWCs have primarily focused on examining whether BWC implementation influences the desired outcomes including a decrease in police use of force and citizen complaints. However, a deeper analysis of why BWCs were adopted and implemented and how their implementation influences everyday police work activity can provide a more comprehensive understanding on the …

Human Error In Police Involved Shootings, Paul L. Taylor

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Police use of deadly force has become one of the most contentious and controversial aspects of the U.S. criminal justice system. Yet, the vast majority of police shootings never rise to the level of public consciousness (Zimring, 2017). Instead, the public discourse and controversy tends to center on a handful of cases that appear excessive and/or are difficult to understand (Pickering & Klinger, 2016). As a result, these cases have a disproportionate impact on the public’s perception of police legitimacy and competence, particularly when it comes to their use of deadly force (Gua, 2014). The outcomes of many of these …

Winners And Losers In The Remaking Of American Healthcare Payment Systems Following The Aca : A Theory Of Private-Actor Policymaking And Implications For Democratic Decision Making, Heather G. Bennett

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law, thereby ushering in the most sweeping, expansive changes to the American healthcare system since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. Supporters, including healthcare advocates, celebrated the passage of the ACA as a defining moment in healthcare history. As broad policy reform influenced practice on the ground in the months and years after passage, physicians working in private practices and hospitals changed some things about the way that they treat patients. Yet, following interviews with doctors and medical office practice managers to talk …

Assessing The Sustainability Of Collaborations Between Local Health Departments And Nonprofit Hospitals For Population Health, Christopher Mierow Maylahn

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In 2008, New York’s health commissioner asked LHDs and nonprofit hospitals to collaborate with community partners to conduct community health needs assessments, identify two or three health priorities to focus on, and implement evidence-based strategies to address them. The actions taken as part of the New York State Prevention Agenda mirrored the IRS rules and PHAB recommendations that followed. The dearth of published studies on public health-hospital collaborations and the momentum to understand how communities in New York have responded to the IRS rules and PHAB standards are the impetus for this research.

Right Size Me : Policy Responses To The Obesity Eidemic And Behavioral Change, Wenhui Feng

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Obesity is a critical health and social concern. Almost 40% of American adults are obese, creating more than $300 billion dollars in annual medical costs. While obesity is a public concern that has been on the policy agenda for some time, obesity policies have proven difficult to formulate, adopt and implement in practice. In this dissertation, I explore three obesity-related policies – adoption of obesity prevention policies by local health department, calorie labeling on restaurant menus and food assistance benefits – and find the importance of ideological and political considerations for obesity policies at different stages in the policy process …

Endogenous Policy Design In Healthcare : A Case Study Of Emergency Department Crowding, Katrina Alexandra Hull

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The United States’ health care system has faced growing per capita use, and subsequent crowding, of the emergency department since the 1990’s, evidenced by longer wait times and the institution of ambulance diversions. Emergency departments are but one element of a complex system, with difficulties which persist despite policy efforts.

How Single-Payer Stacks Up: Evaluating Different Models Of Universal Health Coverage On Cost, Access And Quality,, Ashley Fox, Roland Poirier

Public Administration and Policy Faculty Scholarship

Described as “universal prepayment,” the national health insurance (or single-payer) model of universal health coverage is increasingly promoted by international actors as a means of raising revenue for health care and improving social risk protection in low- and middle-income countries. Likewise, in the United States, the recent failed efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act have renewed debate about where to go next with health reform and arguably opened the door for a singlepayer, Medicare-for-All plan, an alternative once considered politically infeasible. Policy debates about single-payer or national health insurance in the United States and abroad have relied …

Crafting Citizens And Immigrants : Israeli Immigration Politics In Comparative Perspective, Yeufen Hsieh

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation examines the role of shifting national identity narratives in immigration politics in deeply divided societies by focusing on the case of Israel. It raises a general question: why does a state established upon an ethnocentric national identity subsequently augment its self-definition to include certain non-co-ethnic migrants without applying the extension to all non-co-ethnic groups? I argue that although a country may initially be founded upon a seemingly-unequivocal ethnocentric national identity, this identity is not immutable. Rather, over time, a national dialogue may take place, causing the reexamination of the identity. During the transition, agents redefine “who we are” …

Race, Ethnicity, And The Great Recession : A National Evaluation Of Mortgages And Subprime Lending, 2004-2010, Meghan M. O'Neil

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The dissertation analyzes multilevel models to predict mortgage origination and the allocation of subprime credit pre-and-post Great Recession. With representative samples from two full years of mortgage applications filed in the top 100 U.S. metropolitan areas, the dissertation uncovers evidence of persistent disparities by race and neighborhood minority concentration despite controls for socioeconomic, demographic, assimilation and housing variables. Mortgage outcomes varied by applicant race, neighborhood racial composition and neighborhood racial change. Findings suggest evidence of Fair Housing Act violations and disparate impacts towards minority homebuyers and minority neighborhoods. Results lend support for spatial assimilation theories in explaining much of the …

Public Program Evaluation In Health Economics : An Empirical Study, Linna Xu

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation consists of three essays on public program evaluation in health economics. This dissertation explores the estimation of treatment effects of public programs on risky behaviors, health insurance status, labor market outcomes or other health-related outcomes among adolescents or young adults and addresses causality inferences based on empirical modeling, analysis and applications. The first chapter in this dissertation identifies the causal treatment effects of keg registration laws on underage alcohol consumption and related outcomes: alcohol-related traffic fatalities, by exploiting the substantial variations in the timing of the introduction of these laws across different states at different times. Using the …

Exploring Three Strategies For The Prevention Of Hospital-Acquired Clostridium Difficile Infection In Nys Acute Care Hospitals-- : Structure-Process-Outcome Model Of Quality Improvement, Danielle Jane Durant

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Those receiving medical care are at risk for developing serious hospital-acquired conditions (HACs), which include infections (HAIs) and other harm while receiving medical care. Pay for performance programs initiated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and private payers, linking reimbursements to quality of care, have created financial incentives for hospitals to address these HACs. The most common HAI in the United States, causing almost half a million infections, with 29,000 deaths within 30 days of diagnosis, results from Clostridium difficile. Infection with this bacterium leads to deadly diarrhea, and disproportionately impacts patients 65 and older, representing 80% …

For Better Or Worse? : Exploring How Decentralization Shapes Local Expenditures And Health Service Utilizations In Indonesia, Adenantera Dwicaksono

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Decentralization has become one of the most important public-sector reform programs globally since the 1990s with mixed results. In this four-paper dissertation, I explored how decentralization reforms affect public goods and services delivery, by analyzing how post-decentralization institutional changes shape local expenditure decisions and health service utilizations in Indonesia. The main goal of this dissertation was to improve understanding on a better approach to studying public goods and services delivery under a decentralized governance. I used primarily quantitative methods in this dissertation. I started with a systematic review of quantitative studies on the impacts of decentralization reforms and health system …

Investment Risk-Taking By Public Pension Plans: Potential Consequences For Pension Funds, State And Local Governments, And Stakeholders In Government, Donald Boyd, Yimeng Yin

Public Administration and Policy Faculty Scholarship

Public pension plans in the United States have $3.8 trillion of invested assets, more than two- thirds of which are in equities and similar assets. Unlike private pension funds, public pension funds have increased their equity allocations dramatically over the last two decades, making their investment returns and unexpected investment gains and losses far more volatile than before. This means that plan funded status and contributions requested of governments also are more volatile than before, increasing the risks to taxpayers, stakeholders in government services and investments, and workers and retirees.

One important way to examine the impact of investment-return volatility …

Legal Responses To Nonconsensual Pornography: Current Policy In The United States And Future Directions For Research, Cynthia J. Najdowski

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Technological advances have created new avenues for the perpetration of sexual violence. The widespread availability of cameras has made it easier to take covert recordings of an individual’s intimate body parts, and whether sexually explicit images are recorded with or without an individual’s consent, growing access to the Internet has facilitated the nonconsensual dissemination of those images. Yet criminal laws have not kept pace with technology in most jurisdictions across the United States, and victims of nonconsensual pornography typically have no avenue by which to seek justice. There have been efforts to reform laws in a variety of jurisdictions, some …

Cops And Cells : Theorizing And Assessing The Implications Of Smartphone Surveillance For Policing, Sean Patrick Roche

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In the United States, police officers are empowered to use force, and are often people’s first point of contact with the criminal justice system. Significantly, in the last decade, the majority of American citizens have acquired smartphone technology, which allows them to document and broadcast police behavior on a scale never before seen. Several high-profile police use of force incidents have been captured on video, and the resulting public outcries suggest that this technology now presents exceptional challenges to the maintenance of police legitimacy. Foucault (1977) argues that power in modern society is achieved by surveillance systems that work to …

Impact Of Substance Use And Overweight Status On The Relationship Between Domestic Violence And Bullying, Marcie Fraser

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Domestic violence has been shown to increase the risk of bullying behavior among youth. Substance use and excess weight have also been linked to bullying behaviors. The purpose of this study was to determine what anti-bullying interventions have been implemented throughout the United States, and to identify the role of three risk factors (domestic violence, excessive weight or substance use) on bullying behaviors. For this study domestic violence will be defined as experiencing domestic violence or witnessing inter-parental domestic violence. A literature review (Study 1) was conducted to identify studies and summarize interventions aimed at reducing bullying behaviors among middle-school …

Impact Of Employment Barriers On Individuals With Criminal Records : An Econometric Evaluation Of Criminal Background Checks In New York, Garima Siwach

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Individuals with criminal records face significant barriers to employment, -- a concern which has become stronger in an era of widespread criminal background checks. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has recently drawn attention to the need to balance employers' concerns about the potential risk of hiring such individuals, with increasing employment opportunities for individuals with criminal records, particularly if they are low risk. Despite a large number of individuals with criminal records in the United States working age population, there has been no research to demonstrate the implications of such background checks used for employment determination. This dissertation consists …

Demographic Challenges Facing Japan: Is The Solution Immigration Or Family Incentives?, Hui Lin

Public Administration & Policy

No abstract provided.

Adolescent Sex Offender Registration Policy: Perspectives On General Deterrence Potential From Criminology And Developmental Psychology, Cynthia J. Najdowski, H. M. Cleary, M. C. Stevenson

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Sex offender registration policies have expanded rapidly, now extending to adolescent offenders across the nation. Policies mandating registration are based, in part, on arguments that registration is needed to prevent dangerous sex offenders from committing additional offenses and that risk of registration deters would-be offenders from offending in the first place. Research suggests that registration does not serve the former specific deterrent function for adolescents, but less is known regarding the latter goal of general deterrence. The disciplines of criminology and developmental psychology both offer important theoretical perspectives, but these frameworks have yet to be applied to this unique context. …

Practicing Representation : The Impact Of Electoral Competition On The Home Styles Of U.S. Representatives, Michael A. Armato

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

A great deal of political science literature has illustrated that U.S. Representatives respond to different electoral competition scenarios through modifying voting behaviors, floor statements, and bill sponsorship activities. However, scholarship has yet to significantly assess if and how political competition impacts the ways members of Congress present themselves to their voters and explain policy positions to their constituents. This dissertation longitudinally explores if and compares how members of Congress in different and changing electoral circumstances alter their home style behaviors, or not, due to the presence or lack of robust political competition.

The New York State Nursing Home Transition And Diversion Medicaid Waiver Program : A Descriptive Cost Comparison, Joe Atsushi Katagiri

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The New York State Nursing Home Transition and Diversion Medicaid waiver program (NHTD) assists individuals with long-term care needs with the goal of living safely in their communities. This program is founded on two assumptions: it is less expensive to provide long-term care services to Medicaid recipients in the community as opposed to a nursing home and those who are willing and capable of living in a community setting should do so. However, the healthcare environment in the United States is facing the rising cost of long-term care. The first assumption, if true, could be used as a means to …

Application Of Cotter And Colleagues' Glass Ceiling Test To Examine Salary Disparity In Field Of Social Work, Kris Foote

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Abstract

Does Distrust Aid Network Management In A Regulatory Policy Context? : A Study On A Local Hydraulic Fracturing Policy Network In New York State, Jeongyoon Lee

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This study examines factors that explain the structure of a regulatory policy with a particular focus on how distrust plays a role in shaping the structure of a regulatory policy network. Understanding the mechanisms that explain the structure of policy networks has been an important subject in the era of collaboration. However, previous research have almost exclusively studied network structures in the context of social service policies. Little is known about what factors explain network structures in the context of regulatory policies where policy decision-making processes end up being challenged in court or the competing groups tend to manipulate scientific …