Laura Langbein

American University Washington D.C. | AU · Department of Public Administration and Policy

The public personnel system, particularly the compensation system, has long faced many criticisms such as inflexibility and un-competitiveness when compared to other sectors. This is especially true for compensation systems for K-12 teachers, who also care about public service values, even if they work in the non-public sectors. We examine wage com...

This study explores whether public personnel systems, particularly their compensation systems, are flexible and responsive to market wages in a competitive labor market. Focusing on registered nurses, we explore whether and how the public, private nonprofit, and for-profit labor markets influence each other in determining wages. We also examine if...

Introduction Previous research examines the effects of same-sex marriage on many child and family outcomes, but only a small subset examines the effects of laws on those outcomes. We evaluate the effects of same-sex marriage legalization in the USA on four socio-familial outcomes. Methods We use currently available public data from the U.S. Census...

As profit-seeking corporations, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have incentives to maximize profits from economic activities. However, subject to state ownership, SOEs are expected also to be more accountable for public welfare than their private counterparts. This study examines whether SOEs’ relative provincial dominance reinforces government’s de...

In theory, performance rewards motivate agents to undertake activities intended to generate desired policy outcomes, especially in an authoritarian regime. This study examines implementation activities before and after the introduction of performance incentives in China. Using two measures of province-level emissions of sulfur dioxide (satellite ob...

Little is known about the effects of two prominent public sector reforms – anticorruption efforts and high‐powered incentive systems – on the accomplishment of policy goals in the absence of the rule of law and in the presence of an extrinsic incentive to take advantage of corruption to achieve performance targets. This study explores how performan...

Employee turnover—due to retirement, moving from one work unit to another, or leaving an organization entirely—imposes considerable costs on organizations. While private organizations make use of several high-powered incentives to retain workers, public organizations typically lack comparable incentives. Fortunately, public employees frequently pos...

Using cross-sectional data, studies of the relation between merit-based bureaucracies and corruption usually find that nations with more professional and politically independent bureaucracies have lower corruption. However, cross-section designs cannot test this policy claim. This study adopts a pre-test‒post-test design using lagged data comparing...

China has a highly centralized bureaucracy that is no longer strictly monitored by political loyalty but by governance performance (e.g., economic growth), rewarded with promotion and monetary incentives. In the early 2000s, environmental criteria were added to this system. As part of this effort, a high-powered performance management system was in...

We are pleased that Professors Allen and Price (2015) have continued to investigate the empirical connection between state laws that permit (or do not ban) same-sex unions/marriages and the possibility of adverse consequences for families. Using updated information about state laws, and using their preferred coding of that information, Professors A...

Employee turnover imposes considerable costs on organizations. Turnover results from retirement, leaving one’s work unit for another, or leaving an organization entirely. While private organizations make use of several high- powered incentives to retain workers, public organizations typically lack comparable incentives. Fortunately, public employee...

This article addresses previous shortcomings in diversity management scholarship by testing an expanded diversity model borrowed from the work of Page (2007). Page's model assumes diversity can be measured as both a mean and a variance, and that it consists of cognitive, identity, and preference characteristics. We link Page's conceptualization of...

We examine the shape of corruption within a country characterised by stable democracy and thriving legal and illegal markets: Colombia. We look at whether city officials solicit an extra payment when citizens seek to use public services. Using individual level data on bribe requests in 55 cities from 2004–2011, we find that the level of corruption...

Scholars and advocates frequently rank the American states in terms of the favorability of their policy positions on a range of issues, including “women-friendliness.” We examine if this is an identifiable dimension among 32 policies selected by women's interest organizations as important “women-friendly” planks and adopted by 50 states. We identif...

This article summarizes what we can learn from personnel economics about the likely empirical veracity of the statements regarding the efficacy of pay for performance in the public sector: If pay is based on public service performance, and if people work for pay, then pay for performance will align motivation and performance. I argue instead that t...

Aggregate indexes of the quality of governance, covering large samples of countries, have become popular in comparative political analysis. Few studies examine the validity or reliability of these indexes. To partially fill this gap, this study uses factor, confirmatory factor and path analysis to test both measurement and causal models of the six...

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Objectives. Conventional theory regarding externalities and personal choices implies that in the absence of negative externalities, there is no economic rationale for government to regulate or ban those choices. We evaluate whether legally recognizing (or prohibiting) same-sex marriage has any adverse impact on societal outcomes specifically relate...

Previous scholarship has investigated why legislatures sometimes choose to delegate policy choice to executive agencies, but there is little research on the consequences of the choice to delegate or not. Using a multiple principal-agent framework, this paper provides empirical evidence regarding the impact of legislative delegation and agency discr...

I summarize what we can learn from personnel economics about the likely empirical veracity of the statements from OPM and ICMA asserting the efficacy of pay-for- performance for public employees. I then provide empirical evidence from the U. S. federal government showing that, controlling for indicators of human capital, agency location, and many o...

Using data on 4 years of courses at American University, regression results show that actual grades have a significant, positive effect on student evaluations of teaching (SETs), controlling for expected grade and fixed effects for both faculty and courses, and for possible endogeneity. Implications are that the SET is a faulty measure of teaching...

Aggregate indexes of the quality of governance, covering large samples of countries, are widely used in research and in aid policy. Few studies examine the validity of these indexes, however. This paper partially fills this gap by examining empirically the dimensionality of the Worldwide Governance Indicators. The six indexes purportedly measure di...

It is commonly believed that residential community associations (RCAs)-a.k.a. homeowners associations and condominium associations - enhance the value of residents' properties. If RCAs provide a level of services with benefits equal to or exceeded by residents' willingness to pay for them, then property values should remain constant or increase. Bu...

Objective. This study evaluates the impact of residential community associations (RCAs) on RCA property values by testing competing theoretical expectations about the efficiency and accountability of RCAs with empirical evidence. Method. We use pooled data on 195 units in six RCAs in one city, regressing sales price on RCA fees, a proxy for the imp...

Both formal theory and experimental evidence have shown that repeated interactions among actors foster norms of trust and cooperation. But real-world empirical evidence regarding the substantive effects of repeated interaction is scant and fails to disentangle the components of “social capital.” Using data from a 1994 survey of urban police in thre...

This paper uses a version of theBergstrom/Goodman median voter model toexamine whether there are aspects ofpublicness to public school music. It alsoexamines whether the provision of publicschool music is an example of the abilityof small groups to seek benefits forthemselves at the expense of larger groups. School music programs provide a uniquese...

This article explores the roots of white support for capital punishment in the United States. Our analysis addresses individual-level and contextual factors, paying particular attention to how racial attitudes and racial composition influence white support for capital punishment. Our findings suggest that white support hinges on a range of attitude...

This paper reviews the individual choice literature about the causes of the collective decision by legislators to delegate decision-making authority to executive agencies, and about the consequences of agency discretion. Discretion is the power or the right of deciding according to one’s own judgement. If the legislature decides to delegate to the...

Rulemaking agencies commonly delegate the implementation and enforcement of rules to affected parties, but they rarely delegate rulemaking authority. Regulatory negotiation is an example of this uncommon behavior. Compared to conventional rulemaking, regulatory negotiation is thought to be an attempt to make bureaucracy more responsive to affected...

Objectives. Previous research looks at the impact of school sports on participants’ delinquency, but not at the impact on delinquency in schools; further, it does not control for school size or for unobserved school-level variables. This research fills that gap. It uses social capital theory to frame the impact of sports programs on both participan...

Based on a survey of participants in eight negotiated rule makings at the Environmental Protection Agency and in six comparable conventional EPA rule makings, we find that, when the rule is negotiated, there is greater satisfaction with the substance of the final rule (e.g., net benefits to the respondent's organization, general effectiveness/effic...

Abstract This paper uses a sample of professional engineers employed in the public and private sector to investigate the effect of sector employment, indicators of task complexity, organization size, number of rules, importance, and attentiveness and agreement among various principals (customers or clients, peers, mid- and top-level management, and...

This paper uses a sample of professional engineers employed in the public and private sector to investigate the effect of sector employment, indicators of task complexity, organization size, number of rules, importance, and attentiveness and agreement among various principals (customers or clients, peers, mid- and top-level management, and politici...

Objective. Previous research has examined the connection between politics, race, and death sentencing, but either has overlooked the implementation of the sentence, or has omitted the influence of the heinousness of the crime on execution decisions. This research examines the impact of these and other factors on executions, given the number of peop...

The impact of student course ratings on retention has not been examined in previous research. This study begins to fill that gap. Methods. Using data on American University undergraduates and on the ratings of the courses in which they were enrolled, the study employs logistic regression to estimate the impact of the ratings, averaged over the clas...

Clinicians' decision making about involuntary commitment was examined, with a focus on the effects of patient and clinician characteristics and bed availability on decisions to detain patients, the first step in involuntary commitment. Eighteen psychologists and social workers in the emergency service of a community mental health center completed t...

Much disagreement over the status of public pay arises from the comparisons made: governments compare equivalent jobs while economists compare equivalent workers. We pursue a compromise: we apply the economists' model of salary determination of statistically equivalent workers to a sample restricted to people in equivalent jobs—electrical engineers...

This study shows why the conventional wisdom that cities with ward elections will spend more than cities with at-large elections is too simple and explains why the empirical findings have been so mixed. Ward vs. at-large elections will only affect the policy choices of city councils when the policy choice is one that is decided by the median legisl...

This study shows why the conventional wisdom that cities with ward elections will spend more than cities with at-large elections is too simple and explains why the empirical findings have been so mixed. Ward vs. at-large elections will only affect the policy choices of city councils when the policy choice is one that is decided by the median legisl...

A repeated finding in political science is the influence of a representative's so-called ideology on roll call voting in the U.S. House and Senate. Many of these studies attempt explicitly to separate the impact on roll call voting of "personal" ideology from that of constituency ideological preferences. In these studies, personal ideology is viewe...

The most common model for estimating the impact of regulatory program enforcement on intended outcomes is based on a standard version of deterrence theory. The corresponding estimating equation regards the amount of noncompliance by a firm as a linear function of enforcement by the regulatory agency, holding a variety of other variables constant. T...

Why do products purchased at airports cost more than those sold nearby? Why should readers of this journal care? This price disparity exists despite the facts that the Airport Administration (AA) is supposed to prohibit it and that competition among multiple sellers of the same product (at larger airports) should bring prices down. Laura I. Langbei...

Previous research has shown that PAC contributions from the National Rifle Association as well as letters and lobbying by Handgun Control, Inc. significantly affected Congressional voting on the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986, holding constant ideology, party, constituency characteristics, and a proxy for prior position on the issue. Using...

This study explores relationships between the use of evaluation research in the legislative setting and a group of factors commonly cited in the literature as influences on use. The study focuses on the health policy area, and data were collected by telephone interviews with 100 congres sional staff members who deal with health policy issues. Altho...

This paper compares gender and racial wage gaps in the government, regulated, and private sectors, using data from a national sample of electrical engineers. The results reveal that, for blacks and whites, wage disparities due to discrimination (as opposed to disparities due to differences in human capital characteristics) are greatest in the priva...

This study brings data on House members' use of time to bear on the traditional distinction between show horses and work horses in Congress. Analysis fails to produce the hypothesized two-dimensional structure in the time allocations of House members, calling into question the empirical validity of the show horse-work horse distinction.

Political scientists have pointed out that access is an important motivation for campaign contributions, but their evidence to date is based largely on case study observations, on the opinions of participants and observers, and on inferences from indirect quantitative evidence. This paper provides more direct quantitative evidence on the topic, usi...

Using a formal model of a regulated firm's decision to comply with regulatory standards, we find that decisions to comply depend not only on the level of the standard, but also on how the regulatory agency implements the standards. Firms will avoid immediate compliance if they believe that it is likely to be cheaper to negotiate a compliance agreem...

Some investigators argue that recent reforms in Congress have made it more difficult for Congress to do its job, while others contend that growing complexity in the larger congressional environment has had this result. We test these competing explanations using selected measures of congressional committee inputs and outputs over a period of eight C...

Writing more than twenty five years ago, W. S. Robinson assailed the assumption implicit in much empirical work that statistical measures computed for aggregate units—states, provinces, counties, cities, wards, school districts—could be used in place of corresponding measures for the individuals comprising these units. Robinson was not the first sc...

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