Faculty Today
at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies

Awards/honors/grants

Gary Henry (Applied Research Center) and Steve A. Harkreader recently won a Joseph S. Wholey Distinguished Scholarship Award for "Using Performance Measurement Systems for Assessing the Merit and Worth of Reforms," American Journal of Evaluation, Vol. 21, Issue 2, 151-170.

James Ledbetter, James P. Cooney Jr. and Glenn Landers (Georgia Health Policy Center) acted as consultants on Georgia Public Television's two "Final Choices" documentaries on dying which recently won a first-place National Headliner Award for public service by television stations. The Press Club of Atlantic City has given the National Headliner Awards for 67 years. "Final Choices: Valley of the Shadow" and "Final Choices: Changing the Culture" explore end-of-life choices made by the terminally ill concerning treatment, quality of life and legal issues. Georgia Public Television produced the documentaries last year in conjunction with the Georgia Collaborative to Improve End-Of-Life Care.

Ross Rubenstein (public administration & urban studies/educational policy studies), along with colleagues Leanna Stiefel and Amy Ellen Schwartz of New York University and Jeffrey Zabel of Tufts University, were awarded a three-year, $650,000 grant from the U.S. Dept. of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement to conduct a study designed to investigate the best available methods of measuring school performance and identify factors contributing to high performance.

Recent presentations

Lloyd Nigro (public administration & urban studies), a co-authored paper on civil service reform in Georgia state government at the National Conference of the American Society for Public Administration in March in Newark, N.J. He also received the Public Administration Review 2000 Editors' Choice Award for service on the journal's board of editors. Nigro and colleague J.Edward Kellough of the University of Georgia have two articles on Georgia civil-service reform forthcoming in the Review of Public Personnel Administration.

Laura Taylor (economics), "New Evidence on the Value of a Statistical Life," Columbia Earth Institute's Environmental Economics Seminar Series, April 30 at Columbia University in New York.

On the Go

Jim Alm, chair of the Department of Economics, and Jamie Boex, senior research fellow for the International Studies Program, traveled to Awka and Abuja, Nigeria, in October to advise the Anambra state government on fiscal policy and management issues. Boex also visited Budapest, Hungary, in February, where he participated in the World Bank Institute's fiscal decentralization workshop, and Lilongwe, Malawi, in December and March as a team leader for a study on intergovernmental fiscal transfers.

Dean Roy Bahl recently advised the governments of Indonesia and South Africa on fiscal policies and lectured at universities in both countries.

Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, director of the International Studies Program, visited China in December to evaluate fiscal reforms at the subnational level on behalf of the World Bank. He also traveled to Indonesia to advise on intergovernmental finance issues for the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Economics professor Paula Stephan was an invited speaker at the International Symposium on Bioinformatics and Genomics in January at the National Science Seminar Complex, Indian Institute of Science Campus, Bangalore, India, and was an invited participant at the NPR Net Workshop on Science Policy May 2-4 in Paris.

New publications

James P. Cooney Jr., Glenn Landers and Julianna Williams (Georgia Health Policy Center), "Rough Passages for Long-Term Care," in the January issue of Long-Term Care Interface.

The Andrew Young School's Fiscal Research Program recently published the following reports: "A Single-Factor Sales Apportionment Formula in the State of Georgia: Issues and Consequences," by Kelly Edmiston (economics); "Impact of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games on Employment and Wages in Georgia," by Julie Hotchkiss and Robert Moore (economics), along with economics doctoral student Stephanie Zobay; "Estimates of the Effects of Education and Training on Earnings," by William Smith (Fiscal Research Program); "Trends in Corporate Income Tax Receipts," by Sally Wallace (Fiscal Research Program); and "School Flexibility and Accountability," by Ben Scafidi (economics), Catherine Freeman (Fiscal Research Program) and colleague Stanley DeJarnett of Morgan County Schools.

Bruce Kaufman (economics) and James Bennett, editors., The Future of Private Sector Unionism in the United States, M.E. Sharpe, forthcoming in 2001.

Greg Lewis (public administration & urban studies), with Pablo Alonso, "Public Service Motivation and Job Performance: Evidence from the Federal Sector," forthcoming in American Review of Public Administration; "Barriers to Security Clearances for Gay Men and Lesbians: Fear of Blackmail or Fear of Homosexuals?," forthcoming in Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory; and, with Arthur C. Brooks (public administration & urban studies/economics), "Enhancing Policy Models with Exploratory Analysis," forthcoming in Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory.

Christine Roch (public administration & urban studies), with Robert Howard, "Policy Change and the State Courts: The Case of Education Finance Reform," forthcoming in The Justice System Journal.

Ross Rubenstein (public administration & urban studies/educational policy studies) and Gary Henry (Applied Research Center), "Paying for Grades: Impacts of Merit-Based Financial Aid on Educational Quality," accepted for publication in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

David Van Slyke (public administration & urban studies), with Norma M. Riccucci, a book chapter, "The Politicized Administrative Environment: Public Administration in the United States" forthcoming in Comparative Administrative Systems; and, with Sue Faerman and David P. McCaffrey, a paper, "Understanding Interorganizational Cooperation: Public-Private Cooperation in Regulating Financial Market Innovation," forthcoming in Organization Science.