US legislators drive accountability measures

US legislators propose crackdown on toxic cosmetics.

cosmetics regulation, American legislators are proposing that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) be given the authority to ensure that personal-care products, including cosmetics, are free of harmful ingredients and that their labels fully disclose all components. The proposed “Safe Cosmetics Act of 2011” would give FDA the authority to demand safety assessments of cosmetics i...

Legislators' Patterns of Cooperation

This study attempts to identify the patterns of cooperation between legislators. We argue that if legislators decide to cooperate, they prefer to do so first with their colleagues who share similar affiliations and then across affiliations. In order to examine this hypothesis, we devised a unique cooperation scale and tested it using a sample of the private member bills that were initiated in t...

Isolated Capital Cities, Accountability and Corruption: Evidence from US States

The balanced scorecard--measures that drive performance.

Frustrated by the inadequacies of traditional performance measurement systems, some managers have abandoned financial measures like return on equity and earnings per share. "Make operational improvements and the numbers will follow," the argument goes. But managers do not want to choose between financial and operational measures. Executives want a balanced presentation of measures that allow th...

The Promise and Pitfalls of Using Imprecise School Accountability Measures

O ver the last decade, states have constructed elaborate incentive systems for schools using school-level test scores. By the spring of 2002, nearly every state and the District of Columbia had implemented some form of accountability for public schools using test scores. For instance, the state of California spent nearly $700 million on financial incentives in 2001, with bonuses of up to $25,00...