A youth homicide reduction initiative in Boston in the mid-1990s poses particular difficulties for program evaluation because it did not have a control group and the exact implementation date is unknown. A standard methodology in program evaluation is to use time series variation to compare pre-...

Scholars emphasize that poverty in Britain has risen sharply since the late 1970s. Meanwhile in the United States, both official figures and traditional poverty scholars report sharp declines in poverty. We seek to provide a comparison of poverty levels in Britain and the US based on a set of...

Most members of the development community, and especially those in multilateral and bilateral organizations, agree that politicians are centrally important to development. Fewer agree, however, on how to ensure effective political engagement in development programs and reforms. It is...

Several important social science literatures hinge on the functional relationship between neighborhood characteristics and individual outcomes. Although there have been numerous non-experimental estimates of these relationships, there are serious concerns about their reliability because...

Authors propose two categories of situational moderators of gender in negotiation: situational ambiguity and gender triggers. Reducing the degree of situational ambiguity constrains the influence of gender on negotiation. Gender triggers prompt divergent behavioral responses as a function of...

A lie involves three elements: deceptive intent, an inaccurate message, and a harmful effect. When only one or two of these elements is present we do not call the activity lying, even when the practice is no less morally questionable or socially detrimental. This essay explores this area of...

When the Asian financial crisis broke in mid-1997, the expectation was that Indonesia would weather the crisis with minimal damage. Actual events soon proved these expectations widely wrong and the Indonesian economy was more severely affected than other Asian countries. In part this outcome...

In this paper we investigate a neglected aspect of financial systems of many countries around the world: government ownership of banks. We assemble data which establish four findings. First, government ownership of banks is large and pervasive around the world. Second, such ownership is greater...

Regulatory policy has long been a source of controversy, eliciting criticism and calls for reform from virtually all quarters. In recent years, reform proposals have typically sought to restructure the institutional environment of regulatory policymaking by changing administrative law and...

They say 'there are no atheists in foxholes.' Perhaps, then, there are also no libertarians in crises. Even those in favor of sharply reducing the role of the government usually agree that, for example, there is a valid Lender of Last Resort role for the central bank in the event of banking...