U.S. welfare reforms, whether promoting work first or human capital development, have had in common an emphasis on employment as the key to improving the life chances of children living in single-mother families. We describe in this article a different type of reform-a “third way” in welfare...

The expectancy disconfirmation model has dominated private-sector research on customer satisfaction for several decades, yet it has not been applied to citizen satisfaction with urban services. The model views satisfaction judgments as determined-not just by product or service performance-but by...

A major reason the quality of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) varies widely is inconsistent use of the social discount rate (SDR). This article offers guidance about the choice of the SDR. Namely, we recommend the following procedures: If the project is intragenerational (does not have effects...

A number of states passed legislation in the 1990s requiring youths to wear helmets when riding bicycles. The effect of this legislation on bicycling fatalities is examined by subjecting data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System to a panel analysis, using a control-group methodology. A...

If manufacturing a safer cigarette is technically possible-an open question-then mandating that tobacco manufacturers improve the safety of cigarettes would likely have both positive and negative implications for the nation's health. On the one hand, removing toxins may reduce the incidence of...

Many analysts view collaborative institutions that attempt to forge consensus and build cooperation among conflicting stakeholders as a potential remedy to the pathologies of conventional environmental policy. However, few analyses have demonstrated that collaborative institutions actually...