Using a variety of data sources, the contributors explore how performance standards and incentives affect the behavior of public managers and agency employees, their approaches to service delivery, and ultimately, the outcomes for participants.

The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) increased accountability pressure in U.S. public schools by threatening to impose sanctions on Title 1 schools that failed to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) in consecutive years. Difference-in-difference estimates of the effect of failing AYP in the...

We compare older workers' plans for work and retirement with their subsequent work and retirement outcomes using panel data from the Health and Retirement Study. Among those with retirement plans, about half indicate they would like to cut back on their work hours or otherwise change the type of...

Daniel S. Hamermesh presents the first comprehensive evidence explaining how days of work, hours of work, and daily schedules are determined in the U.S. and Germany. Using an instantaneous approach to looking at unique data sets for each country, Hamermesh provides comparative analyses on...