1. Even where central government has sufficient information to set relevant targets and measure outcomes, it still faces a basic implementation problem, because setting targets only affects behaviour by service providers, if they have an incentive and feel motivated to meet the targets. The main challenge for the UK performance management framework is therefore how funding mechanisms, organisat...

Many countries struggle to develop and implement strategies to monitor hospitals nationally. The challenge is particularly acute in low-income countries where resources for measurement and reporting are scarce. We examined the experience of developing and implementing a national system for monitoring the performance of 130 government hospitals in Ethiopia. Using participatory observation, we fo...

How can a central government monitor the performance of a decentralized poverty program when the incidence of the program’s benefits is unobserved at the local level? This article shows that, using a poverty map and the corresponding spending allocation across geographic areas, one can identify the latent differences in mean program allocations to the poor and the nonpoor. The national measure ...

Few days ago our advisory editorial board member Prof. Gholam A. Peyman was named as one of the 12 eminent researcher recipients of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in US. Eleven extraordinary inventors were also named recipients of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. This award and the National Medal of Science designations are the uppermost honors bestowed by the f...

and do not assume endorsement by the Federal Government (Edgar, 75.620(b)). ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We gratefully acknowledge Cindy Gruman and Allison Roche for their assistance in preparing this report. We also appreciate the helpful comments on an early draft of the report provided by David Stapleton.

1.1. Types of decentralisation In this paper, we shall be concerned mainly with forms of decentralisation other than federalism. Decentralisation is a very general term, conventionally used to describe the extent to which the political, administrative or fiscal powers of a central government have been shared or distributed, amongst territorially defined sub-national agencies or authorities. Thi...

I evaluate a reform in India which sought to provide a second teacher to all one-teacher primary schools. The central government paid for 140,000 teachers, which is 8% of the pre-reform stock of primary-level teachers. I find that less than half of these teachers were sent to the intended place. Additionally, teachers per school did not increase and class size did not decrease. The only effect ...

Ms. Whetsell examines the Bell Regulations, which limit New York's hospital residents' work hours and require increased supervision from senior doctors, in light of the currently pending federal bill that seeks to do the same. The article argues that the federal government should draw lessons from the New York experience before proceeding with similar guidelines. The article notes that many roa...

In the US, planning for the next influenza pandemic is occurring in parallel at the national, state and local levels. Certain issues, such as conducting surveillance and purchasing pandemic vaccine, require co-ordination at the national level. However, most prevention and control actions will be implemented at the state and local levels, which vary widely in terms of population demographics, cu...

Since 1978 the federal government has implemented a variety of programs to promote the adoption of children from foster care. A key part of these programs has been the use of subsidies to lower the cost of adopting and parenting children who have been in foster care. Although subsidies are a key part of federal policy, there has been little empirical research on the effect of subsidies on adopt...