Policy Evaluation in the Era of COVID-19

Policy Evaluation in the Era of COVID-19
Author: Pearl Eliadis
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2023-04-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000862615

Did evaluation meet the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis? How were evaluation practices, architectures, and values affected? Policy Evaluation in the Era of COVID-19 is the first to offer a broad canvas that explores government responses and ideas to tackle the challenges that evaluation practice faces in preparing for the next global crisis. Practitioners and established academic experts in the field of policy evaluation present a sophisticated synthesis of institutional, national, and disciplinary perspectives, with insights drawn from developments in Australia, Canada and the UK, as well as the UN. Contributors examine the impacts of evaluation on socioeconomic recovery planning, government innovations in pivoting internal operations to address the crisis, and the role of parliamentary and audit institutions during the pandemic. Chapters also example the Sustainable Development Goals, and the inadequacy of human rights-based approaches in evaluation, while examining the imperative proposed by some authors that it is time that we take seriously the call for substantial transformation. Written in a clear and accessible style, Policy Evaluation in the Era of COVID-19 offers a much-needed insight on the role evaluation played during this unique and critical juncture in history.

Ex Post Economic Evaluation of Competition Policy

Ex Post Economic Evaluation of Competition Policy
Author: Fabienne Ilzkovitz
Publisher: Kluwer Law International B.V.
Total Pages: 563
Release: 2020-05-18
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9403512822

Competition authorities are increasingly interested in understanding the impact of their activities on markets and consumers. The goal is to improve competition policy rules and decision-making practices and to get robust evidence on the benefits of competition and competition policy for society as a whole. Discussions with competition authorities, practitioners and academics have shown the need to take stock of the experience gained in this field by the European Commission and to present it in an easily accessible way. The studies collected in this volume – prepared by senior Commission officials and competition policy experts – range from the ex post evaluation of specific policy interventions to the assessment of the broader impact of competition policy. The issues and topics examined include the following: objectives and scope of evaluations by the European Commission; description of counterfactual evaluation techniques used; conditions for a successful ex post evaluation of a competition policy intervention; a wide selection of individual cases covering a variety of economic sectors; applications in merger control, antitrust and State aid; direct benefits of competition policy interventions for consumers; deterrent effects of such interventions on market participants; and macroeconomic outcomes in terms of job creation, productivity and GDP growth. This matchless book assembles within a single volume all that is needed for competition policy analysts and practitioners to undertake ex post economic evaluations. While its collection of state-of-the-art ex post evaluation studies has a clear value for competition authorities, it is sure to be welcomed as well by competition law practitioners in the private sector, who will greatly appreciate the effort made to cast a critical eye on decisions taken in the past. Moreover, it allows for addressing some of the new challenges facing competition policymakers. Fabienne Ilzkovitz is Principal Advisor responsible for the economic evaluation of competition policy within the Directorate-General for Competition of the European Commission, and since 2014, she has coordinated various ex post evaluation projects in the Directorate-General. She is also Associate Professor of Economics in the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. Adriaan Dierx is Senior Expert on ex post economic evaluation within the Directorate-General for Competition of the European Commission. He has managed a number of studies aimed at assessing the economic impact of the European Commission’s competition policy interventions.

Impacts of Teacher Evaluation and Professional Development on Student Outcomes

Impacts of Teacher Evaluation and Professional Development on Student Outcomes
Author: Edward Crowe
Publisher: IAP
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2012-07-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1617358649

This particular case study is designed to explore the extent to which a teacher evaluation system is effective. It also addresses the challenge of measuring student achievement gains when the students in question are already at the high end of the scale, a different yet important—problem in an era when many concentrate on “low-hanging fruit” or students “on the bubble” between failure and marginal performance. By presenting a realworld case, various research methods for studying issues raised by the case, and the interchange among scholars engaged in this effort, this volume will allow educational policymakers and practitioners to decide if a proposed approach is compelling and relevant for their settings. Concurrently, a comparison of various research methods addressing a real school-based problem provides an important learning tool for the research community, and for those who study and make policy.We also believe that the case study and the research designs will be useful for those with responsibility for framing and funding a research agenda in education that utilizes strong research designs applied to topics that matter to student outcomes at all levels of the U.S. education system and at all levels of pupil performance. And finally, we hope that doctoral programs that seek to prepare the next generation of education researchers will find our approach helpful in their work.

Blue Marble Evaluation

Blue Marble Evaluation
Author: Michael Quinn Patton
Publisher: Guilford Publications
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2019-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 146254195X

Global thinking principle -- Anthropocene as context principle -- Transformation engagement principle -- Integration principle -- Transboundary engagement principle -- GLOCAL principle -- Cross-silos principle -- Time being of the essence principle -- Yin-yang principle -- Bricolage methods principle -- World savvy principle -- Skin in the game principle -- Theory of transformation principle -- Transformation fidelity principles : evaluating transformation -- Transformational alignment principle : transforming evaluation to evaluate transformation.

Efficiency of Health System Units in Africa

Efficiency of Health System Units in Africa
Author: Kirigia, Joses Muthuri
Publisher: University of Nairobi Press
Total Pages: 548
Release: 2015-03-16
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9966792155

Despite sending huge sums of money on health every year the African region's burden of disease is persistently high. Most of the countries in the region are lagging behind in achieving the health-related United Nations Millennium Development Goals. The African region's dismal health situation has largely been blamed on weakness pertaining to such factors as health leadership and governance; service delivery; health workforce; medicines, vaccines, and health technologies; health information; and health system financing that have undermined the capacity of health systems of countries in the region to improve population health without wastage of resources. Institutionalising health system efficiency monitoring, as a basis for the design and implementation of appropriate policy interventions, has been proposed as an effective way of curbing wastage of health system inputs. Efficiency of Health System Units in Africa: A Data Envelopment Analysis is the first book of its kind on application of the data envelopment analysis technique to examine the efficiency of health system decision-making units in Africa. The book interlaces lecture notes with research articles and case studies to equip students and practitioners of economics, operations research, management science, and public health with knowledge and skills for undertaking technical efficiency, cost efficiency, and total factor productivity analyses.

The Human Capital Index 2020 Update

The Human Capital Index 2020 Update
Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2021-05-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1464816476

Human capital—the knowledge, skills, and health that people accumulate over their lives—is a central driver of sustainable growth, poverty reduction, and successful societies. More human capital is associated with higher earnings for people, higher income for countries, and stronger cohesion in societies. Much of the hard-won human capital gains in many economies over the past decade is at risk of being eroded by the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. Urgent action is needed to protect these advances, particularly among the poor and vulnerable. Designing the needed interventions, targeting them to achieve the highest effectiveness, and navigating difficult trade-offs make investing in better measurement of human capital now more important than ever. The Human Capital Index (HCI)—launched in 2018 as part of the Human Capital Project—is an international metric that benchmarks the key components of human capital across economies. The HCI is a global effort to accelerate progress toward a world where all children can achieve their full potential. Measuring the human capital that children born today can expect to attain by their 18th birthdays, the HCI highlights how current health and education outcomes shape the productivity of the next generation of workers and underscores the importance of government and societal investments in human capital. The Human Capital Index 2020 Update: Human Capital in the Time of COVID-19 presents the first update of the HCI, using health and education data available as of March 2020. It documents new evidence on trends, examples of successes, and analytical work on the utilization of human capital. The new data—collected before the global onset of COVID-19—can act as a baseline to track its effects on health and education outcomes. The report highlights how better measurement is essential for policy makers to design effective interventions and target support. In the immediate term, investments in better measurement and data use will guide pandemic containment strategies and support for those who are most affected. In the medium term, better curation and use of administrative, survey, and identification data can guide policy choices in an environment of limited fiscal space and competing priorities. In the longer term, the hope is that economies will be able to do more than simply recover lost ground. Ambitious, evidence-driven policy measures in health, education, and social protection can pave the way for today’s children to surpass the human capital achievements and quality of life of the generations that preceded them.

Handbook on Political Trust

Handbook on Political Trust
Author: Sonja Zmerli
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 561
Release: 2017-01-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1782545115

Political trust – in government, parliament, or political parties – has taken centre stage in political science for more than half a century, reflecting ongoing concerns with the legitimacy and functioning of representative democracy. To provide scholars, students and policy makers with a tool to navigate through the complexity of causes and consequences of political trust, this Handbook offers an excellent overview of the conceptual, theoretical, methodological and empirical state of the art, complemented by accounts of regional particularities, and authored by international experts in this field.

The Rationalizing Voter

The Rationalizing Voter
Author: Milton Lodge
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 476
Release: 2013
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1107064759

Political behavior is the result of innumerable unnoticed forces and conscious deliberation is often a rationalization of automatically triggered feelings and thoughts. Citizens are very sensitive to environmental contextual factors such as the title 'President' preceding 'Obama' in a newspaper headline, upbeat music or patriotic symbols accompanying a campaign ad, or question wording and order in a survey, all of which have their greatest influence when citizens are unaware. This book develops and tests a dual-process theory of political beliefs, attitudes and behavior, claiming that all thinking, feeling, reasoning and doing have an automatic component as well as a conscious deliberative component. The authors are especially interested in the impact of automatic feelings on political judgments and evaluations. This research is based on laboratory experiments, which allow the testing of five basic hypotheses: hot cognition, automaticity, affect transfer, affect contagion and motivated reasoning.

Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior

Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior
Author: Russell J. Dalton
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 1010
Release: 2007
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0199270120

The Oxford Handbooks of Political Science is a ten-volume set of reference books offering authoritative and engaging critical overviews of the state of political science. Each volume focuses on a particular part of the discipline, with volumes on Public Policy, Political Theory, Political Economy, Contextual Political Analysis, Comparative Politics, International Relations, Law and Politics, Political Behavior, Political Institutions, and Political Methodology. The project as a whole is under the General Editorship of Robert E. Goodin, with each volume being edited by a distinguished international group of specialists in their respective fields. The books set out not just to report on the discipline, but to shape it. The series will be an indispensable point of reference for anyone working in political science and adjacent disciplines. What does democracy expect of its citizens, and how do the citizenry match these expectations? This Oxford Handbook examines the role of the citizen in contemporary politics, based on essays from the world's leading scholars of political behavior research. The recent expansion of democracy has both given new rights and created new responsibilities for the citizenry. These political changes are paralleled by tremendous advances in our empirical knowledge of citizens and their behaviors through the institutionalization of systematic, comparative study of contemporary publics--ranging from the advanced industrial democracies to the emerging democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, to new survey research on the developing world. These essays describe how citizens think about politics, how their values shape their behavior, the patterns of participation, the sources of vote choice, and how public opinion impacts on governing and public policy. This is the most comprehensive review of the cross-national literature of citizen behavior and the relationship between citizens and their governments. It will become the first point of reference for scholars and students interested in these key issues.

Processual Perspectives on the Co-Production Turn in Public Sector Organizations

Processual Perspectives on the Co-Production Turn in Public Sector Organizations
Author: Thomassen, Anja Overgaard
Publisher: IGI Global
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2020-12-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1799849767

Existing research understands co-production as leading to shifts in roles of the public sector institutions and their staffs. The shift is seen in the way that a discursive use of the term service provision with embedded logics encompassing fiscal accountability, performance measurement, efficiency, and process regulation has changed towards discourses that embrace collaboration between the public sector front staff and the citizens, with the aim of developing legitimate and effective welfare services that are co-produced by means of active participation and distributed decision making. However, this change requires new approaches to the way in which the implementation of new practices and tools is executed in practice as studied and researched, and how the new practices and tools are understood and evaluated in organizations. Processual Perspectives on the Co-Production Turn in Public Sector Organizations is an essential reference book that examines, unfolds, and develops approaches to co-production and implementation as dynamic, processual, collaborative, sensemaking, and as requiring and resulting in capacity building and learning. Moreover, the book examines new approaches to engage citizens and public sector actors in collaborative and co-productive processes, especially with concern for new goals pertaining to sustainability, social equity, democratic legitimacy, etc. Covering topics that include knowledge management and collective leadership, the book presents perspectives on capacity building, learning, change, and evaluation in organizations and current research in different areas of the public sector. It is intended for public sector administrators and managers investigating the relevancy, approaches, and methods in co-production. Furthermore, it targets civil actors and welfare service users, leaders and managers of public organizations, researchers, academicians, and students in programs that include social welfare development, public administration, political science, and organizational development.