This research mainly examines the influence of democracy on forest protection by employing an estimation of generalized method of moments (GMM) and data on 111 countries during the period 1991–2018. The empirical results suggest that democracies tend to do better at forest protection, which is supported when we conduct several robustness tests. If the regimes transform from lower democratic to higher

From a land-use planning perspective, informal settlements emerge because of dysfunctions in contemporary cities, leading to inequities in living conditions and exclusions of people in spaces outside the formal planned areas of cities. This paper explores how entrepreneurship in informal settlements contributes to the co-production of public services. The paper is based on social entrepreneurship frameworks

Rural households in Burkina Faso face serious problems of food security due to very low agricultural productivity. Our study investigates how the existing land property rights affect agricultural productivity in the country. Unlike previous studies, we use nationally representative data and take into account the indirect link between land property rights security and agricultural productivity. The

ABSTRACT Debate on smart working in the public sector is rich, yet poorly systematized. The article fills this gap through a domain-based literature review. A bibliometric investigation enabled us to cluster 72 relevant papers in 5 research streams based on bibliographic coupling. An interpretive approach was undertaken to analyse key themes addressed within and across the clusters. A blurred account

ABSTRACT This paper sheds light on how much citizens value different features of public sector algorithms, specifically whether they prioritize effectiveness over transparency and stakeholder involvement in algorithm design or instead see effectiveness as less important. It does so with choice-based conjoint designs that present variants of algorithms used in policing and health care to respondents

The land administration systems have witnessed many innovative technologies in the attempt to revolutionalize the task of recording land and property rights. One such revolution is the transition toward blockchain-based land administration. Like most technologies, blockchain-based land administration projects are not immune to failures, early adopters have encountered challenges, and several pilot

The Natura 2000 network is a system of managed natural areas exclusively designed to protect Europe's most valuable and threatened species and habitats and covers 18.6% of its land area, and 8.9% of its marine territory. Repeated Eurobarometer public opinion surveys show that European citizens are unaware of this broad network. Awareness is a prerequisite to successful participatory planning. The present

Being considered as a basic necessity and a key element in the development of sustainable communities, housing is a major concern for the Algerian government. Algiers is facing for the last years a challenging housing shortage and as a way to overcome this problem, many housing projects have been launched. However, the pressing need to address this crisis has disregarded what the pattern of landscape

Like many African countries, Ghana operates a pluralistic land tenure system – customary and state ownership exist conterminously. Land-use planning is largely a state function, but the involvement of chiefs who are custodians of about 78% of the lands is significant. The main aim of this paper is to examine how customary land ownership affects land-use change. This was done by specifically examining

The forms and presence itself of farming in coastal territories changed profoundly in the 20th century. By contrast with other interface farming systems, such as mountain or peri-urban farming, coastal farming has rarely been studied as such and has not, until now, been considered as a useful category to describe and analyse production systems. The aim of this article is thus to address the relevance

Patch-burn grazing, a combination of fire and grazing, has been identified as a novel approach to maintaining biodiversity in the Great Plains of the United States. Many ranchers, however, are not aware of the practice and very few of them had adopted it on their land. Utilizing the data obtained from a survey of landowners residing in the southern Great Plains of the United State conducted in 2021

This paper documents the relationship between maize price variability and forest loss in Ghana. Using the fixed effects regression technique while controlling for weather variables and accounting for spatial dependence, the study finds that an increase in maize price variability is associated with an increase in forest loss. Drawing on nationally-representative panel household survey data, the analysis

Namibia’s urban problems are traceable to the colonial-era planning system — a system that was based on spatial and racial segregation to the disadvantage of local communities. This article presents ideas on what planning authorities can do to ensure that its capital city, Windhoek, becomes inclusive for all residents. Through visual analysis, the article illustrates the Windhoek planning structure

This article assesses the efficacy of best-practice tenure reforms for conflict-affected populations, using a case study of Sri Lanka’s post-conflict Northern Province. In Sri Lanka, as in other conflict and post-conflict societies, increasing tenure security is a policy priority to build peace and foment socioeconomic development. This paper finds, however, that increasing tenure security through

ABSTRACT Municipalities´ service delivery choices are under constant public debate. To better understand the configurations of service delivery forms across different municipalities, we analyse all 309 Finnish municipalities’ delivery of 10 social and healthcare services. Five clusters emerge: Collaborators, Supplementers, Purchasers, Privatizers and Decentralizers (likely representing municipalities

Participation in land administration projects in the Global South is increasingly normalized, especially in processes like land formalization to ensure implementation is inclusive and responsible. This paper aims to extend land administration scholarship on participation with a focus on modalities of participation increasingly common in projects in the Global South: the central role of technology,

Reputation scholars in the field of regulation tend to focus on the strategic nature—or: “agency”—of reputation management. We know fairly little about the precise nature of the dynamics and conflicts between structural and agential factors that are experienced by regulators in practice, and how these dynamics impact reputation management and its outcomes. This study addresses these questions, using

The insurance as governance literature focuses on the ability of private enterprises to collectively regulate, pool, and distribute risks. This paper analyzes how governments support insurance markets to maintain insurability and limit risks to society. We propose a new conceptual framework grouping government interventions into three dimensions: regulation of risky activity, public investment in risk

For the first time in U.S. history, after decades of unprecedented growth in interior immigration enforcement disproportionately impacting Latinos, ten percent of the U.S. House of Representatives is Hispanic. Using congressional district-level data on all candidates participating in general elections to the U.S. House of Representatives between 2008 and 2018, we show that intensified immigration enforcement

We study how health insurance eligibility affects financial distress for young adults using the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) dependent coverage mandate─the part of the ACA that requires private health insurance plans to cover individuals up to their 26th birthday. We examine the effects of both gaining and losing eligibility by exploiting the mandate's implementation in 2010 and its automatic disenrollment

Master's degree enrollment and debt have increased substantially in recent years, raising important questions about the labor market value of these credentials. Using a field experiment featuring 9,480 job applications submitted during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, I examine employers’ responses to job candidates with a Master of Business Administration (MBA), which represents one-quarter

Smart mobility, one of the key smart city application areas, has been increasingly important in the daily management of cities. Smart mobility can improve citizens’ well-being and reach sustainability objectives by establishing an appropriate mobility system. However, despite the availability of research about practical smart mobility cases, the required smart mobility building blocks, and the technical

An innovative pilot project to facilitate the transparent transfer of rental rights for publicly owned agricultural land via an ascending-price online auction was launched in Ukraine in October 2018. This paper analyses publicly disclosed auction data and investigates how competition, auction design characteristics, and farmland-specific properties influenced the auction outcomes. This information

Bangladesh government has recently pledged to restore 0.75 million ha of degraded forestland as part of its commitment to the Bonn Challenge, however little is known about the potential challenges and opportunities involved in achieving that goal. Using secondary literature complemented by expert consultation and a field survey, we examined the outcomes and limitations of previous restoration programmes

ABSTRACT Climate policy has entered a new era as public investment is increasingly moving to center stage, including recovery spending and long-term climate investment plans. While essential for decarbonization, public investment is not enough – the carrots of investment need to go hand in hand with regulatory sticks. Public investment in clean technologies and infrastructure does not guarantee decarbonization

ABSTRACT Association football is popular and influential globally. Interest in how football relates to climate change, and the climate policy required for football, is growing. Clubs, players and fans increasingly call for action to reduce football’s impact on the climate, and for plans to adapt to climate impacts on football. However, well-intentioned actions must be underpinned by robust evidence

The ethnographical interpretivist study analyses how informal development is planned and regulated by customary land management systems (CLMS) and the collaboration between the customary regulation of informal development and urban planning of informal settlements in Cape Town. The combination of zoning bylaws and CLMS creates a legal grey zone in the townships. The CLMS has polycentric authority structures

Participation in non-parental child care arrangements is now the norm for preschool-age children in the U.S. However, child care services are becoming increasingly expensive for many families, and quality is highly uneven across providers and sectors, raising questions about the impact of child care costs and quality on parental employment and child development. The U.S. policy landscape is dominated

The previous expansion of EdTech as a substitute for traditional learning around the world, the recent full-scale substitution due to COVID-19, and potential future shifts to blended approaches suggest that it is imperative to understand input substitutability between in-person and online learning. We explore input substitutability in education by employing a novel randomized controlled trial that

Despite the salience of transparency in policy and democracy debates a global measurement of transparency has always been missing. It its absence, measuring the impact of transparency on accountability and corruption for a large number of countries has been difficult, with scholars using more or less adequate proxies. This paper introduces a new measurement of real transparency—the T-index—using 14

Evidence on the socioeconomic effects of the protected area status of affected regions is mixed. While some studies highlight positive outcomes for these regions, others point in the opposite direction. Consequently, this study aimed to add to the discourse on whether protected area status fosters the socioeconomic development of these regions or not. The study focuses on the agricultural sector in

Children of teen mothers have worse academic, labor market, and behavioral outcomes in the United States, but it is not clear whether these poor outcomes are caused by having a young mother or driven by selection into teen motherhood. Understanding the reasoning behind poor child outcomes is important for designing effective policies to improve child trajectories. Simple correlations using data from

ABSTRACT The world is currently facing two socio-technical transitions: shifting to a low-carbon society, and a digital revolution. Despite some claims to the contrary, evidence suggests that spread and adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) does not automatically lead to reduction in energy demand, if this stimulates new energy-using practices or wider economic growth. Despite

ABSTRACT The relationship between HRM autonomy, business-like HRM, and performance in government agencies has been of interest in research for decades now. Using survey data from 365 respondents working in Dutch government agencies, we studied to what degree HRM autonomy is a necessary and sufficient condition for HRM integration, distinguished between vertical and organizational integration, and,

The boundary of real property is the fundamental element for securing rights attached to land. Countries, even with a long-standing cadastral tradition, often face the challenge of interpreting the course of a parcel boundary on the ground based on the available evidence, as data quality is very heterogeneous. Various cadastral principles and procedures have been developed for the determination of

Nature-based solutions, such as reviving blue-green infrastructure (BGI), for climate adaptation in cities have been gaining global attention. In the case of India, the rapid urbanization since the end of the twentieth century has exacerbated the impact of climate change at significant environmental, social, and economic costs. Coastal cities in India commonly face climate change related hazards of

Although family-friendly policies (FFPs) accommodate the interests of both an organization and its employees, the extant literature has paid limited attention to how employee wellbeing can be a pos...

This paper examines the incidence of the cost burden associated with expanding public health insurance to low-income adults in the context of the Affordable Care Act. Using data from the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey (MEPS), I exploit exogenous variation in Medicaid eligibility rules across states, income groups and time. I find that public insurance eligibility reduced mean out-of-pocket spending

The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM) is happy to announce the winners for this year's Excellence in Refereeing Awards. Each year, three individuals are recognized for their contributions in providing the journal with timely, constructive, and insightful refereeing service over the past publication year. As recognition of JPAM's appreciation, the winners are each presented with a certificate

Using administrative data from Maine to quantify the effect of vocational rehabilitation (VR) services on employment outcomes for transition-age youth with disabilities, we exploited the variation in VR counselors’ propensity to develop Individualized Plans for Employment (IPEs) for VR youth as an instrument for service receipt. We found that among the estimated 36 percent of VR clients on the margin

Children of teen mothers have worse academic, labor market and behavioral outcomes in the United States, but it is not clear whether these poor outcomes are caused by having a young mother or driven by selection into teen motherhood. Understanding the reasoning behind poor child outcomes is important for designing effective policies to improve child trajectories. Simple correlations using data from

Recent policy debate on minimum wages has focused not only on raising the minimum wage, but on eliminating the tip credit for restaurant workers. We use data on past variation in tip credits—or minimum wages for restaurant workers—to provide evidence on the potential impacts of eliminating (or reducing) the tip credit. Our evidence points to higher tipped minimum wages (smaller tip credits) reducing

The process of corporatization in public services has led to the emergence of new, more autonomous organizational forms. However, while these reforms have been centrally about the development of management capabilities in public sector organizations, we know surprisingly little about what this process involves. To address this concern, we draw on the literature on administrative intensity (AI) to frame

Protected areas are threatened by an unprecedented intensification of land use. The effectiveness of protected areas depends on their ability to stop habitat loss not only within their boundaries but also in their surroundings. Based on the CORINE Land Cover data, we describe the land use-land cover changes in European National Parks, both inside and at distant surrounding areas (1, 5, 20 km), and

There is a paucity of research on the causal relationship between arts learning and educational outcomes. Investigating these relationships has become imperative as policymakers increasingly prioritize empirical evidence of educational impacts, which often leads to curriculum narrowing that favors traditionally-tested subjects. Employing a randomized controlled trial with 42 elementary and middle schools

There is a broad consensus in the academic and policy communities over the need to shift the focus from fire suppression to fire prevention. To inform policies that effectively promote this shift, we distinguish between prevention actions aimed at more fire-resilient landscapes and those focused on the protection of people, i.e., wildfire mitigation and adaptation (WM&A), respectively. With the goal

ABSTRACT Several EU countries have targets for the reduction of CO2e emissions that go beyond the target set by the EU. We study what would be the optimal carbon tax policy in such EU frontrunner countries, focusing on two questions: 1) How should national climate policy be coordinated with the European Emissions Trading System (ETS), and 2) How should an EU frontrunner country address the risk of

ABSTRACT How do non-governmental organizations (NGOs) target governments for climate shaming? NGOs increasingly function as monitors of states climate performance and compliance with international climate treaties such as the Paris Agreement. Lacking formal sanctioning capacities, NGOs primarily rely on ‘naming and shaming’ to hold states accountable to their commitments in climate treaties and to

ABSTRACT Although absenteeism is a key concern in most western societies, research on reducing absenteeism in public sector organizations is scarce, particularly regarding the impact of organizational relationships. By building on the concept of workplace social capital (WSC) and using a large longitudinal cohort of Danish municipal employees, this study shows that three types of WSC (bridging, direct-leader-linking

Urban design education research increasingly acknowledges the crucial need to create partnerships and collaborations with relevant stakeholders to support urban environments’ planning, governance, design, and decision-making processes in the most holistic manner. However, an inclusive and sustainable urban environment does not have the same meaning for every city, making its design more challenging

The 2008 Planning Act introduced a new approach for determining large (‘nationally significant’) infrastructure projects in a new national process that would unify consent regimes and speed up decisions within fixed timescales outside of local planning. Major housing schemes have been excluded from this process, despite repeated attempts by recent UK governments to allocate more land for housebuilding