Podcasts about public policy analysis

Let's cut to the chase: “The overwhelming majority of murders in the United States involve guns,” says economist Jens Ludwig. “And in fact, most of the difference in overall murder rates between the United States and other countries are due to murders with guns.” This may seem intuitively obvious to outside observers, but studying guns within the United States has long been a fraught endeavor, and the amount of research isn't commensurate with the impact on U.S. society. That said, Ludwig has taken on exploring the roots of American gun violence, work that serves as grist for the Crime Lab he directs at the University of Chicago and for many of his books, including his latest, Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence. What's he's found is that the folk wisdom around gun violence doesn't rally hold up to the evidence. In this Social Science Bites episode, he explains to interviewer David Edmonds how – using insights about ‘system one' and system two' thinking developed by Daniel Kahneman – cognition in individuals has more explanatory power than traditional variables like poverty, education and environment. “I think system one plays an underappreciated role in all interpersonal violence, all of the issues, and this way of seeing what is driving violent behavior among people is equally true for knife violence in the UK and on and on,” Ludwig says. “So I think this is really a universal thing about people's behavior. This sort of frame on the problem helps make sense of a bunch of patterns in the data.” Ludwig is the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, Pritzker Director of the Crime Lab and codirector of the Education Lab at that campus, and codirector of the National Bureau of Economic Research's working group on the economics of crime. He and his labs are routinely recognized for their work. The Crime Lab in 2014, for example, received a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, while eight years earlier Ludwig himself was awarded the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management's David N. Kershaw Prize for Contributions to Public Policy by Age 40. Some of the books he's co-authored or co-edited include 2000's Gun Violence: The Real Costs, 2003's Evaluating Gun Policy, and 2012's Controlling Crime: Strategies and Tradeoffs.

“Homeownership is the American Dream.” This saying is so ingrained in our zeitgeist that most Americans don't even pause to question it. However, according to the Black Knights Home Price Index, the average US home price increased nearly 80% from April 2015 to April 2023. Census data reveals that the median household income only increased by 4% during this period. Homeownership has thus become increasingly out of reach, especially for young professionals. So, how did the American Dream become an American nightmare?In his brand new book, “Stuck: How the Privileged in the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity,” The Atlantic's Deputy Editor Yoni Appelbaum offers a contrarian view, arguing that the crisis in American homeownership isn't actually about cost—it's about mobility. There are many places in America where housing remains affordable and even dirt cheap. The problem is that those affordable options are in less desirable locations, with fewer opportunities for high-quality jobs, education, and health care. Thus, young professionals continue to migrate to communities where opportunities are bountiful, but housing is not.Appelbaum joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss how Americans got “stuck.” Why does mobility matter so much? What are the implications of reduced mobility for Americans' faith in capitalism and the belief that our country is still the land of opportunity? If treating a home as an investment—which many of us do—means less mobility, is being “stuck” so wrong for society? Together, the three of them unpack this entangled question of mobility, homeownership, and what it means for the reformulation of the American Dream.Capitalisn't episodes mentioned:Shattering Immigration Myths: Data Beyond Borders, with Leah BoustanRaj Chetty's Surprising New Insights on How Children SucceedWhat Happened to the American Dream? With David LeonhardtRead an excerpt from Appelbaum's book on ProMarket (Penguin Random House)

This episode features audio from an in-person roundtable discussion at the 2024 Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Fall Research Conference. The roundtable focused on the five-year anniversary of The Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act and a recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on federal agencies' ability to assess their capacity to collect and use evidence. The panelists also discussed what needs to happen next to further strengthen the use of evidence in the federal government. The roundtable featured remarks from Erika Rissi, Nick Hart, Melinda Buntin, Rachel Snyderman, and Paul Decker. Rissi is the chief evaluation officer of the National Science Foundation, where she is also the Head of its Evaluation and Assessment Capability Section. Hart is the president and CEO of the Data Foundation. Buntin is a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Carey Business School. Snyderman is the managing director of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Economic Policy Program. Decker is the president and chief executive officer of Mathematica. You can also read a short blog by Decker summarizing key themes from the roundtable here: https://mathematica.org/blogs/advancing-and-enhancing-evidence-based-policymaking Listen to a past episode of On the Evidence featuring a discussion about the five-year anniversary of the Evidence Act with experts from government, think tanks, research organizations, and academia: https://mathematica.org/blogs/building-on-the-evidence-act-to-increase-the-positive-impact-of-federal-policymaking Listen to a past episode of On the Evidence featuring Robert Shea, an expert on performance improvement in government who served on the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking, a group whose recommendations informed the Evidence Act: https://mathematica.org/blogs/robert-shea-on-the-federal-governments-progress-in-using-evidence-to-improve-programs-and-policies

Join us on Wednesday, March 6 @ 6pm EST for an exciting conversation with Jana L. Carlisle, EdD, discussing her new book, Women Navigating Educational Leadership (Educational Leadership: Innovative, Critical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives). Dr. Carlisle has spent more than 30 years working to transform public education outcomes through leadership positions in the not-for-profit, public, private, and philanthropic sectors. Her roles have placed her in settings from urban districts to those focused on education advocacy, philanthropy, leadership, evaluation, and reform. She currently serves as Lead Consultant for Education Support Consulting, which provides strategy, planning, framework, and implementation support to clients. Dr. Carlisle studied political science and international relations as an undergraduate at Michigan State University's James Madison College, Public Policy Analysis with a focus on education when earning her Masters of Science at the University of Rochester, and educational leadership for her doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania's Mid- Career Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership. Dr. Carlisle designed her new book to deliver—in an accessible manner and in one volume—new and existing knowledge, insights, interrelationships, and practices about women in educational leadership. Women Navigating includes a comprehensive equation for women pursuing and serving as educational leaders. The book will appeal to practitioners who wish to gain understanding as well as those who teach in graduate schools of education. Women Navigating presents a view of what it takes for future leaders envisioning their own journeys as well as insights into what it has taken for women to serve as educational leaders. 

Cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide.   People living in countries affected by conflict and war, as well as those in politically, socially, and economically fragile countries, experience worse cancer outcomes compared to more stable regions. Conflict and war result in displacement, destruction of physical infrastructure and supply chains, and the breakdown of healthcare systems. As a result, preventive measures and crucial health screenings often do not take place. For example, Sudan, which was once a hub for cancer care, has seen its healthcare facilities and access to treatment disrupted due to war and conflict.   One individual working to address this issue is Dr. Susie Stanway, a cancer specialist and guest of the Purposely Podcast. After a successful career as a consultant oncologist, Susie shifted her focus to becoming a cancer advocate and activist for countries affected by conflict. She has played a crucial role in connecting fragile countries to funding and cancer resources, including treatment, doctors, and research.   Motivated to bring about global change, Susie co-founded London Global Cancer Week, a series of meetings that provide a comprehensive understanding of the rising global incidence of cancer, the challenges posed by the cancer pandemic, and the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on existing cancer treatment and research. These meetings also focus on strengthening cancer prevention and control in emerging countries, with a particular emphasis on the UK's contribution. Susie recognised that to bring about real change, she needed to go beyond the cancer world and influence people worldwide to understand the issue and help solve the problems. As a result, she collaborated with musicians to create a single titled 'More Than Fairy Tales,' which aims to raise funds for cancer care in war-torn Ukraine and Sudan. The money raised will be directed to the Challenge Fund, which supports organizations working on the ground to provide cancer care in these countries. Musicians from around the world, including Sudanese and Ukrainian singers, as well as English singer-songwriter Newton Faulkner, 19-year-old singer-songwriter and producer Jasmine Foxall, and British rapper Blackk Chronical, have come together to release this single as part of a campaign to support those in need of cancer care in war zones.   More about Dr. Susie Stanway:   Dr. Susannah Stanway is a consultant medical oncologist in London, specializing in breast cancer. She founded and chaired the steering group of the “Cancer control in low- and middle- income countries” conference held annually since November 2016 that in 2019 became London Global Cancer Week. She has co-founded the UK and Ireland Global Cancer Network. She teaches in the UK on global oncology (for example on the ICR MSc Course, UCL Global Health MSc and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on the Diploma of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Course) and internationally. She has received awards from the Global Challenges Research Fund to collaboratively contribute to research projects in sub-Saharan Africa. She sits on the ECO inequalities network and has historically been on the ESMO global policy committee. She is currently working with colleagues in several low- income countries and conflict zones to contribute to capacity building. She has recently studied Public Policy Analysis at the London School of Economics. Alongside reducing between-country cancer outcome inequalities she has interest in reducing within-country inequalities in the UK for example sitting on Breast Cancer now Inequalities Funding Committee, contributing to the recently published Health Policy Partnership toolkit (Inclusion by design: building equity in clinical trials through the lens of metastatic breast cancer) and advocating. She sits on the Development Board of Breast Cancer Now.   Source: London Global Cancer Week website --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mark-longbottom2/message

In this episode, we'll learn more about a city's journey toward racial conciliation. We talk with a team from Charleston, South Carolina, working to advance equity and inclusion in their city.  Our guests share their hopes and vision for this work, but also candidly share some of their challenges. Join us as we learn more about a 350-year-old city's struggle with race, one that started centuries ago with a legacy of slavery, traveled through the crucible that was the tragedy of the Mother Emanuel shooting, which led the city to formally apologize for slavery. We'll hear how that journey now leads them into the very real and challenging task of defining and achieving racial conciliation. You can find a full transcript HERE.Learn more about Charleston's Human Affairs and Racial Conciliation Commission.Learn more about the original Special Commission that was formed, the City's apology for slavery, and the earlier work that informed the creation of HARCC. Download the Special Commission on Equity, Inclusion, and Racial Conciliation Report - August 2021.If you enjoyed this episode, you might also enjoy these past episodes:Getting to Better in My Hometown - an interview with Rev. Stacey Mills about Greenville, South Carolina's Racial Equity and Economic Mobility initiative.Achieving Economic Mobility for Charlotte - an interview with Sherri Chisolm of the Leading on Opportunity Initiative in Charlotte, N.C. Guest Bios:Jerome C. Harris JR (retired)Jerry holds a BA in Sociology and an MS in Urban Planning and Public Policy Analysis from Rutgers University.  He has had over 50 years of professional experience in government, organization development, community and economic development, public policy analysis, and advocacy.  He has taught at both the graduate and undergraduate level. Mr. Harris is the former: CEO/President of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice; Chief Operating Office of the Shiloh Community Development Corporation; Business Administrator and Director of the Department of Housing and Economic Development for the City of Trenton, NJ; Executive Director of the Urban and Public Policy Institute at Rowan University of New Jersey; Assistant Secretary of State and Assistant State Treasurer for the State of  New Jersey.  He has also served as the Essex County NJ Administrator, City Administrator for the City of Plainfield NJ, and the Vice President for Government Affairs for the Metro Newark Chamber of Commerce.Jerry is Co-Chairperson of the City of Charleston Human Affairs and Racial Conciliation Commission. He is President of the Charleston Area Branch of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. He is also active with the Low Country African American Giving Circle, The Charleston Area Justice Ministry, and serves on the Board of Salvation and Social Justice Inc.Jerry is married to Dr. Gwendolyn Long Harris and is the proud father of two sons Rahsaan Harris PhD and Jamal Harris (MD) and grandfather of Langston, Avery, and Ellison. Jason Sakran, Charleston City Council MemberJason currently serves as the Director of Expanded Learning for the Charleston County School District, where he leads a team of 350 to oversee the delivery of the best after-school and summer programs in Charleston County. During his tenure with the Department, they have increased quality, streamlined operations, and increased access to free and/or reduced after-school and summer opportunities for thousands of students each year. He is also co-owner of Bon Banh Mi Southeast Asian Kitchen, which is home to 3 locations in the Charleston Lowcountry. He was elected to Charleston City Council in 2019. Jason was co-chair of the Special Commission on Equity, Inclusion, and Racial Conciliation and is the current co-chair of the Human Affairs and Racial Conciliation Commission. Jason currently serves as Mayor Pro Tempore for the City of Charleston. Jason is an alum of the Chamber of Commerce's Leadership Charleston Program as well as a past Riley Diversity Leaders Fellow.      

With news headlines proclaiming the UK has ‘narrowly avoided a recession', we decode the ‘r' word and explain why this sometimes misleading term is one the ONS is often cautious to avoid. We get the lowdown on GDP (Gross Domestic Product); discuss whether its time as the yardstick for measuring the success or failure of the world's economies is coming to an end; and hear how the ONS is already looking well ‘Beyond GDP' and introducing broader measures of social wellbeing and the environment to provide us with a more holistic view of how society is faring.  Joining Miles is ONS Director of Economic Statistics, Darren Morgan, Chief Economist, Grant Fitzner; and Director of Public Policy Analysis, Liz McKeown.  Links Latest GDP data Measures of National Well-being Beyond GDP   Transcript  MILES FLETCHER  Welcome again to Statistically Speaking the official podcast of the UK's Office for National Statistics. I'm Miles Fletcher, and this time, we're going to talk about a very famous and long running statistic that's still regarded as the single most important economic indicator of them all. I'm talking of course about GDP (Gross Domestic Product), the expansion or contraction of which is the yardstick against which the success or failure of the world's economies is measured. It's been around a long time, since around the time of the Second World War, in fact, but is its pre-eminence now coming to an end? GDP misses some things out - that which matters, as was once memorably claimed. So we'll be talking about how the ONS has been updating GDP to keep it relevant and developing new complementary measures of economic and social wellbeing that could perhaps, in future, supplant GDP itself. And in the current economic climate, we cannot avoid the “R” word. What exactly is a recession? How much does it actually matter, if it's only a technical one? Is it the difference between economic disaster and salvation? Spoiler alert, it really isn't.   Anyway, we have a panel of top ONS folk to explain it all: Darren Morgan is director of economic statistics production and analysis, Grant Fitzner is Chief Economist and director of macro-economic statistics and analysis, and also with us is Liz McKeown, Director of Public Policy Analysis, who is leading the drive towards these broader measures on social and economic welfare.   Welcome, everyone.   Darren to start with you. You are responsible for the production of the UK's GDP estimates. So let's start by reminding ourselves what precisely it measures, it's basically seeking to put a value on all economic activity over a given period.     DARREN MORGAN  Yeah, so we look at GDP and we measure the economy in three different ways. First of all, we do it via what you call the output approach, and most simply, that's everything that's produced in the economy, and that can be cars rolling off the production line, that can be a lawyer providing advice as a service, and it can be public services as well. So surgeries, GP appointments and so on. So everything we produce in the economy. We also look at measuring the economy, everything that is spent, so that could be you and I in household, spending money in the shops or on leisure activities. It can be businesses spending money on goods and services. And it can also mean the government spending money, so everything we spend as well. And the third way we measure GDP is the income approach, which is basically everything that's earned in the economy. So for us in terms of households that's wages and salaries, for businesses it's profit, for example. So we measure everything we produce, everything we spend and everything we earn, and in principle, they should all add up.    MF  And you're boiling it down then, a vast amount of data flowing into the ONS, boiling it all down to one single indicator.   DM  We do, and we do that by approaching thousands and thousands of businesses asking them about their performance. We speak to thousands of households about their behaviour. And we also use a lot of data already available withing government, so what we call administrative data - data that already exists. And we bring all those different data sources into the building, we look at it and we confront it, and we come up with ultimately, as you suggest, a single number on the growth of the economy.   MF What's changed in the in the collection of data now? How timely a process is this?     DM  So in the UK, we've got one of the timeliest measures of the economy in the world. And we only have one of two countries who produce a monthly measure the economy, so we do it much more quickly, and obviously it is completely different to how we did it say, even 10 or 15 years ago. We collect most of our data now from businesses online. Whereas previously we used to send a questionnaire to them, used to write the questionnaire and they would send it back to us, and that could take a week or weeks to do that. Businesses can fill the form in now sat at their desk online, do it very quickly and it reaches us straightaway.   MF  And you mentioned administrative data as well. So that's coming from other parts of government. What are the main sources there? How is that gathered?   DM  So that's correct. So what we try to do is minimise the burden on businesses and households, so some businesses may have to complete a tax return to HMRC for example. So we are able to use that information and bring it in, so that's one example. Pay As You Earn, people who use pay as you earn systems, will be well aware that we use that in our labour market numbers. But we use lots of different sources that are already available across government, and we reuse them for statistical purposes, like I said, to provide better estimates, because that data tends to be very good, but also to minimise the burden, as I said on households and businesses at the same time.   MF  And what is the coverage, in terms of what's included, how has that evolved in recent years?  DM  So in a way, in terms of what we call the boundary, the economic boundary, that has actually stayed very similar over a long period of time. It is very traditional in terms of the boundary we measure. So, like I said, it's sort of business activities, household activity and government activity. But it is along those lines about how much is produced, how much is spent, how much is earned, but the boundary for the economy has been very similar for 50 years.   MF  Nevertheless, there are some things included in GDP which might surprise some people. For example, in the most recent GDP release we talked about the fall in the number of pupils in classrooms in the last quarter of 2022.  DM  The public services was actually a really key indicator for the number that we published for December, and we saw a fall in the number of GP appointments, a fall in the number of operations, less vaccinations being given because the autumn booster campaign tailed off. And we also saw lower attendance in schools, because in the lead up to Christmas not so many pupils will go into school as we normally see. And the reason why we measure that, as you can imagine we measure teacher salaries, doctor salaries, we measure how much is invested in the health service, how much is invested in schools, and obviously those schools and hospitals buy goods and services. So, it's a really important part of the economy. So of course we measure the goods and services that they produce as well. It's a really important part of the economic measurement for GDP.  MF  And I think I'm going to use it to motivate my children in the mornings as well. When they go off to school I'll be reminding them of their contribution to our economic performance.  DM  They certainly are. So it's a really good way to get them through the school day, Miles.   MF  But there's a serious point underlying this, and there's a bit of a propaganda point for the ONS here as well, as it because we are actually taking real measurements of public sector activity, and it's been said that some countries just make broad assumptions about that activity. What do we do that other countries don't?   DM  You're absolutely right, Miles. And that became most marked during the lockdowns during, the COVID pandemic. So we measured, if I can give schools and education as an example, we actually measured how much education was being provided to pupils during a lockdown, whether that was face-to-face in schools, or whether it was remote learning, or whether unfortunately, in some cases, there was no learning at all. We measured that directly, whereas perhaps some other countries basically measured the number of pupils. So as you can imagine, the number of pupils is the same whether they are getting taught or not. So in the pandemic we showed a sharp fall in education during some of the lock downs, but we've seen a faster recovery in the years that followed. Whereas if you look at other countries, their measurement of education has been far more stable over the most recent years because the numbers of pupils doesn't really change.  MF   They are pretending that the schools were open, when in fact, they weren't. Anyway, that's just part of this enormous data gathering operation, bringing in all this data, and it takes around about six weeks to produce the preliminary estimate, which you say is among the quickest of the estimates, but of course that's only part of the story, isn't it?   DM  That's pretty quick, six weeks, but we do produce an estimate for all three measures, we produce a measurement how much is produced, how much is spent, and how much is earned at that point in time. So we do that, but obviously, we only have so much data at that point. You know, we have quite a lot of data to actually because those surveys are very timely, but not everything.  MF  As a percentage, it's about 40% isn't it?  DM  That's correct. But obviously our data collection doesn't stop at that point. We continue to bring new data in. And that's why we publish the latest estimate, which covers more detail, more granularity, different parts of the economy. And that additional data that's brought in allows us to do that at a later stage.   MF  You have a couple more months to produce that one, and that's based on pretty much all of the data we're going to get.   DM  Yeah, it's over 90% of that stage, it's about 90%. So yes, we have between the first estimate and the second estimate, we do get a lot more data in.  MF  And therein lies, what some people might say is one of the weaknesses of GDP, and particularly when making quick assumptions about the economy. There's a trade-off here isn't there, about wanting to know broadly where the economy is going, and making really, really hard and fast assumptions about what's happening. And therein lies the whole issue of revisions, revising GDP. Now, it's important for everyone to understand that when the ONS revises GDP, it's not correcting its mistakes is it.  DM  What you're describing there Miles is a classic tension in statistical production. So we could say to everybody, our users, no, we're not going to publish anything until we get all that data, all that 90% of data. But to do that, you're going to have to wait about 80 days. Or what we could do is drag an earlier estimate based on less data, but still not a really good estimate, but you could have that 40 days quicker, 50 days quicker. So you know, there's that tension between timeliness and quality. And I think the way we do it, I think it's brilliant. We published two estimates initially, and that's for the quarter. The one that's a bit quicker based on less data, and the one later based on more data content. But what we do to help our users is we have a really detailed revisions analysis between those estimates, so people can look and judge typically, how often and how much is that data revised when we publish. So they have the full information in front of them to make judgments if they have to. And I think we strike the right balance taking that approach.   MF  What is the ONS' track record in doing this? Because have there been occasions perhaps, as has been suggested, sometimes that the early data can be misleading, and in fact, the economy might be heading in the opposite direction.   DM  So if you're looking at revisions analysis, it's pretty good, you know, within the first estimate, and that second estimate, and so revisions are typically very small, and importantly, unbiased, they're equally likely to be a revision up or a revision down, and that's really, really important. I think when a real spotlight is shone on revisions, that's when the economy is around zero, you know if you have a 0.1 revision, which is a small revision if your economy is going along at 0.8, 0.7%. You know, whether it's 0.7, 0.6 and so on, people go ‘Ah, so what?'. But if the economy is going around zero, or 0.1 or –0.1, that 0.1 revision can change the sign, and people get very excited about that. But actually, it's a 0.1 revision, and that's when the spotlight is really, like I said, is shone on the revisions performance  MF  As it was in our most recent estimate of quarterly GDP, the final quarter of 2022 when there was a big fat zero in terms of growth. Now, that led to headlines in some very respectable media organisations that went “UK narrowly avoided recession”. Well, did we?  DM  So we did technically yes, we did. Absolutely. Because it wasn't negative. That was our Q3 estimate of the economy was for a four, so if Q4 fell for economic growth, a technical recession, which is widely recognised as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Yes, we would have been in a technical recession. But I think you've just highlighted how it makes sense to look more broadly at the economy because whether it was 0, or –0.1, 0.1, how different really was the economy at that point in time? I would say the economy was broadly flat.  MF  Because if you're beholden to this idea of a technical recession, a couple of months down the line we might say hang on, our better estimate based on 95% of the data says actually it was just slightly down, and therefore the headline writers say, “Oh, we were in recession after all.”  DM  Exactly. I think that just highlights, again, being sensible in terms of how you look at the economy overall, because really the economy, if it's a 0.1 revision ,if that's what happens in it in a few weeks time, is the economy fundamentally different to what it is at that moment? I would suggest not, but you're right, I would imagine that it would get splashed that the UK is now in recession, and coverage will be significant because of that.   MF  And it's fair to say that in the past these technical recessions, there was a double-dip recession wasn't there about 10 years ago, that made a lot of headlines at the time. It's not in the figures anymore.   DM  No, it's not. It's been revised and that period of our economic history when we were around that flat period for the economy. So the revisions have been relatively small in that period, but you're right, we were in recession and because we had revisions from later data, we no longer were. And as you suggested people got very excited about that. But really, Miles, the economy was in exactly the same position as it was in our first estimate.   MF  So a strong message there listeners, when you hear people talk about a technical recession, bear in mind, that may not be what it sounds like. In fact, it probably almost certainly isn't.  DM  Good advice, Miles.   MF   Grant, to bring you in on this then, from an economist's perspective, it's fair to say then that in fact, there's no definition of a recession that's really official or formally accepted anywhere. It's certainly not something that the ONS talks about.   GRANT FITZNER  No, I mean, ultimately, it's a matter of judgement. And of course, economists spend a lot of time arguing about these things. In fact, it was so bad in the US that academic economists, as part of the National Bureau of Economic Research set up a committee to discuss and agree on when business cycles were, well when recessions started and when they ended, so that when they were comparing their research they were all working off a common framework. Now, that sounds great, but the problem of course is with this being academics, they looked at a wide range of data, and they typically took several years after a recession had occurred before they would put definitive data out of it. Now, that's fine if you're publishing economic history, but if you're a journalist or indeed if you're working at the Office for National Statistics and you want to have an idea of what's going on now, you need something that's a bit closer to real time, and that does, as Darren said, involve a degree of judgement. But I think it's fair to say that the common sense understanding of a recession is a prolonged and significant downturn in economic activity. So not just one or two quarters, and not just a 0.1, but actually something a bit more substantial, as indeed we've seen in the 70s and the 80s, and of course, in the global financial crisis that kicked off in 2008. So they typically last for a while, and they do have quite a significant impact on the economy, households and business.   MF  In fact, that's a lot more serious isn't it, than the definition that's used as a sort of working rule of thumb, which is two consecutive quarters of economic contraction. In fact the origins of that are very murky, really, nobody actually seems to know precisely where it came from. One of President Nixon's speech writers seems to be the main suspect.   GF  Well, possibly, but it has been more widely used. I think journalists need something quick and simple to understand, and I guess this meets the bill. But imagine if you had a –0.1 in one quarter and then a –0.1 in the next, and then they were subsequently revised away, I don't think anyone would seriously call that a recession. And just the point about the length as well, if you look at the 70s, 80s, or 90s, recessions typically last about three years. That's how long it took for the level of economic activity to get back to the pre-recession levels, and indeed for the global financial crisis that kicked off in 2008, it took four and a half years before growth was back at pre-recession levels, so an incredibly long time. And I think just looking at the pandemic and the impact that that had in 2020, it's a very different set of events. We had two negative quarters and then the economy started to recover after of course, a very large fall. Now that's unusual. And of course that was because of this shock of the pandemic and lockdowns. Whereas typically, these things take quite a bit longer to kind of work their way through the system.   MF  And if you look at the path of GDP on the time-series graphic on the ONS website, it really goes off a ski slope doesn't it, really quite dramatically as the pandemic starts and then kind of sharply recovers, and then it's kind of clawing its way back now.   GF  That's right. And so things are often slower than we may be used to in recent years. And to give you an example of that, at the moment, we have the Bank of England raising rates quite aggressively so interest rates have gone up, mortgages have gone up, businesses are facing higher costs of borrowing, but the labour market still looks pretty robust. Now historically, if you look at past recessions, there's always a bit of a lag between, for example, central bank tightening or some sort of supply shock and for that to work its way through in terms of employment, business, profitability, and so forth. So these things often take longer than people expect. Now, I'm not saying of course, that that means we're in a prolonged economic downturn. I mean forecasters differ as to how severe and how long the current period of economic weakness is likely to be and indeed, people disagree on whether we may even enter recession this year. It's that close.   MF  But we'll know if we're in a significant downturn, a genuine recession or whatever label we want to apply, when it happens, but at the moment we seem to be in sort of somewhere in between. Disappointing though that might be for headline writers.  GF  And the sort of things that you would typically look at would be more businesses going out of business, so business liquidations, weak retail spending, which of course we have seen, driven by the big increase in the cost of living over the past six months, and significant increases in the level of unemployment. Those are three of the things that you would typically look at. Possibly also weaker industrial production is often associated with recessions as well.   MF  So does that suggest then, talking about the action being in those other indicators, does that period for the economy, perhaps an economy on the cusp of growth and contraction, does that highlight one of the major limitations of GDP as a measure? How seriously do economists regard it now? Does it remain that big, totemic bellwether of economic success or failure?   GF  Well it is a broad and pretty comprehensive measure, so it does include income, expenditure and output. So a lot of what you would typically consider economic activity, but of course it doesn't cover everything. It doesn't cover anything produced in households, at the moment it doesn't properly capture what's going on in the natural environment. So it's certainly not broad enough to cover every kind of activity that produces something of value. And it typically focuses on things that can be measured or quantified, or have a value ascribed to them. So the market sector is the largest part of the economy that we measure through gross domestic product, because there's also the non-market sector, public sector charities, etc. They are a bit harder to measure. One of the interesting differences between the UK approach and some other countries is that we spent quite a bit of time trying to measure not just how much we spend on health and education, but as Darren said, what actual activity, what outputs, are we getting from that investment?   MF  Yeah, I mentioned at the top of the podcast, there's this famous quote from Robert Kennedy, of course, famously US Attorney General and then presidential candidate. He actually said the problem with GDP is it does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It doesn't include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of public officials, etcetera, etcetera. It seems to me that the demand then for more holistic measures of well-being or progress, in fact goes well beyond economics, but is there more that economics can contribute? And what is the ONS doing towards that?   GF  Yes, there is more that we can do. And indeed, we have been doing that. So we've created a series of what we call satellite accounts, which measure either different parts of the economy or activity, or indeed measure things that are currently outside of what we call the national accounts. So for example, we've been publishing at the ONS for quite some time now an annual series of natural capital accounts, which tried to convey you what's been produced out there in the environment. Clean air, for example, is an output of trees and vegetation and parks. We try and put estimates around those. Now, of course, there's some challenging methodological issues about how you measure some of these things, but I think we've had quite some success in actually putting some values around those. And at the international level, the current system of national accounts was devised back in 2010, there's quite a lively, if indeed statisticians can have a lively debate, around what the next system of national accounts will look like, which is due to come in 2025. And one of those very issues is do we start to bring the environment more into those measurements.  MF  So not quite the beauty of our poetry but certainly the landscape, the value of our environment.   GF  Exactly. And I suppose the other misconception about GDP is people often see it as a measure of well-being. It was never really designed to play that role. It's a measure of economic activity. Now, of course, there's a clear link between economic activity, prosperity, and well-being, but they're not the same concept.   MF   So in order to be more inclusive, and to fully reflect activity in its broadest sense, we're having to go much further than that. And a bold initiative in that direction, started more than a decade ago now, was the national well-being programme launched by the then Prime Minister David Cameron.   Liz McKeown, the National well-being programme was, it was not taken wholly seriously. I recall at the time it was dubbed as Cameron's Happiness Index, and the idea that we could dump GDP and inflation and so forth was taken with some mirth. Ten years on, how far have we come to developing alternative measures like that, and how seriously have they been taken?  LIZ MCKEOWN  I think we've come a long way, but perhaps it's worth us looking back to those days of 2010 and what we did then, we wanted to know what matters most to people. And we went out and asked them and we had over 34,000 responses to that debate. And that allowed us to start measuring well-being for the first time as a national statistical Institute, that debate, understanding what really mattered to the public, getting those responses allowed us to develop 10 domains of well-being. These are the things that people were saying really mattered to how they felt as individuals, as a community, and you know, ultimately as a nation. And the domains that we developed there were personal well-being, they were our relationships, our health, what we do, where we live, our personal finances, our education and skills, the economy, governance, and the environment. And under those 10 domains, we developed a number of measures, both objective and subjective, which allowed us to begin to get to that question of how are we doing as the UK in a more holistic way than economic measures can do alone.   MF  And what story has that told over the years? How were we doing? How are we doing?   LM  I think it opens a new lens and allows us to think about that quite differently. Perhaps I could take an example of how we thought about well-being during the pandemic, there we were wanting to understand what's the impact of lockdowns more broadly, and we could use wellbeing measures to help us understand that. We could see how personal well-being and levels of loneliness were, you know, really negatively impacted during the lockdown, and then we could see the improvements as we came out of them. We could see how that differed by how men and women were doing. We saw during the pandemic women's well-being falling below men's for the first time, and so we could understand a different dimension of how society was reacting to one of the big issues of our time.   MF  And when we ask people how happy they are, they tend to give quite a positive response, don't they?   LM  Well, I think it's important to say that wellbeing goes beyond just asking people how happy they are. So personal well-being does look at people's happiness, it looks at their levels of anxiety, and it looks at how satisfied they are with their life and how worthwhile they think the things in their life are. But the broader concept of wellbeing is understanding how people are doing across these domains that I mentioned earlier.   MF  Now this isn't just suddenly what's been going on in the UK, there's something of a global movement to broaden out our approach to measuring not just personal well-being, but economic well-being as well. And an important part of that is the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. And put quite simply, it's a global initiative to find out if the world is becoming a better place, and to set targets and then policies from that.  LM  Yeah, absolutely Miles. And I think it reflects doesn't it that people do want to understand progress in that multi-dimensional way. They want to understand not just how we're doing economically, but actually what the impact on our environment is, what the impact on our society is. And those indicator-based approaches, be they the well-being measures that we've developed here in the UK, be they the Sustainable Development Goals, they're allowing us to take that broader check on progress or sort of multi-dimensional check on progress and allows us to see things that we couldn't see if we were only looking at the core economic statistics that you were discussing with colleagues earlier.   MF  Now on GDP day when the ONS produces its quarterly estimates of economic performance in that traditional sense that we talked about with Darren, there are two important publications that do get slightly overlooked on the day but are well worth highlighting now. And the first of those is one entitled quality of life in the UK. Sounds intriguing. Tell us about that.   LM  These two publications we added to the mix on GDP day last year, and why did we do that? I think it really wanted to reflect how important it is that we look at progress in that multi-dimensional way that I was talking about earlier. That we give people the chance to see not just what the latest economic data is telling us, but we are also looking at how life is going for people in the UK, and that's where the quality of life in the UK publication comes in.  MF  Break down the elements for that if you would, tell us what sort of narrative it's providing at the moment about our quality of life.   LM  Yeah, so this is a publication that every quarter looks across those 10 domains of national well-being, personal well-being, relationships, health what we do where we live personal finance, economy, education skills governance in the environment. It looks at the measures we have under those domains and says well, what news have we got from the last quarter. And I won't go through all that here, I encourage you to go and have a read of it, it makes interesting reading. But for example, on the personal well-being side, we have seen in the last quarter a drop in the percentage of adults who've seen very high levels of life satisfaction and happiness. There's been a decrease in that. So that's one to watch, and one to keep an eye out for. But the publication goes across the 10 domains and yeah, as I said Miles, well worth a read   MF  An interesting alternative view as well at a time when the classic economic data was showing a big zero reading. In fact, there's another aspect in which an awful lot is going on, and obviously a downward trend there in some respects, at least.   LM  Absolutely. And users are telling us that they want to understand what's going on across the country in a more holistic sense and understand a bit more about our societal measures, but also about our environmental measures. And I guess that sort of takes us on to the other publication that we put out on GDP day on climate change insights. And if you take all those three publications as a whole, so the quarterly GDP figures, the quality of life in the UK and the climate change insights publication, you're basically allowing the public policymakers to look and understand, okay, what's the latest developments in the economy? What's the latest developments in society and people's well-being and what's the latest environmental developments? And it's allowing us to begin to answer that question, how is the UK doing in a much more holistic way than we've been able to before.  MF  So I guess what I'm taking away from this lightning tour of a fascinating and extremely diverse environment, is that when you see headlines saying the economy is neither growing nor contracting, there's a much, much bigger story out there and there's a much bigger story to be learned by looking at the ONS data.   LM  That's exactly right. And we're not standing still either as an office as well. We want to make sure that what we're measuring is still what matters most to people. As I said, that's how we started the well-being programme in the first place by going out to the nation and asking them what matters most. That was over a decade ago, and obviously, a lot has changed over the last 10 years. So it felt like a good time to take that step back and think, are we still measuring the best things to measure in our well-being programme, and the National Statistician kicked off a review of those measures back in October. So we're working through that at the moment and in the spring we'll be presenting some recommendations for how we can do this even better in the future.   MF   And where do you think is going to lead? Do you think GDP might be toppled off its perch and we'll be able to produce one big comprehensive indicator that would bring in all that economic activity as well? Is that Is that where we're headed?   LM  I think GDP will always be an influential statistic. As a measure of the productive economy there are huge strengths to it. And strengths are continuing to increase as it becomes, as I think Darren mentioned earlier, more timely, better quality. So GDP is important and will remain important for ONS. But we also know that looking at progress more broadly than GDP is more important than ever to members of the public who want to understand how we're doing, but also to policymakers who are looking at future policies and providing statistics and insights that help both the public and policymakers to make the best possible decisions. That is what we are, as a national statistical institute all, about. So GDP, important, but actually having a full range of data and statistics and insights that go beyond that. That's where the future is.  MF  Darren, as the person responsible for producing GDP, that's a challenge for the future then?  DARREN MORGAN  That's right and I think Liz summed it up really well. I think GDP is important, but it's not everything.   MF   Well thanks very much to all our guests for a fascinating discussion there, and we'll put links to some of the ONS publications we discussed in the programme notes for further reading.   I'm Miles Fletcher. And thanks for listening to Statistically Speaking. You can subscribe to new episodes of the podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts, and all the other major podcast platforms. With thanks to our producer Steve Milne, it's time to say, until next time, goodbye. 

This episode of the Amazing Cities and Towns Podcast sponsored by Bearing Advisors, Jim Hunt interviews Janice Allen Jackson, host of the Local Matters Podcast.   A candid conversation about why local government matters How to get more young people involved in local government How the Local Matters Podcast helps promote involvement in local government What's the impact of the current state of national politics on local government How do City Managers balance their non-partisan roles and do what is best for the city How homelessness impacts smaller cities and how can local governments improve the situation And, much more   7 Steps to an Amazing City:   Attitude Motivation Attention to Detail Zing Inclusiveness Neighborhood Empowerment Green Awareness   Thanks for listening and look forward to having you join us for the next episode.   Links Mentions During Show:   https://janiceallenjackson.weebly.com/ AmazingCities.org AmazingCities.org/podcast to be a guest on the podcast   About  Janice Allen Jackson Mrs. Jackson has served as City Manager of Albany, GA, and Administrator of the consolidated Augusta, GA government. She also worked as one of four General Managers reporting to the County Manager in Mecklenburg County, NC, and Assistant City Manager in Albany. She began her career in local government as a Management Intern in Prince George's County, MD. Throughout her career, she has always enjoyed bringing major projects to fruition, building public trust in government, and empowering staff to become their best and most productive. Her unique talents revolve around her willingness to address issues head on with honesty, sincerity, and integrity, and in so doing, bring people closer to the organizations that serve them, and employees closer to the organizations for which they work. ​ Over the years, she has been active in various civic and professional organizations, to include the United Way organizations in Augusta, Albany, and the Central Carolinas, the International and Georgia City-County Manager's Associations, Women's National Book Association, Charlotte Chapter, and the National Forum for Black Public Administrators. She is also a graduate of Leadership Georgia, Leadership Albany, Leadership Charlotte, and Leadership Augusta. She is a Diamond Life member of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., and an active Rotarian/Paul Harris Fellow.  She has also served on the boards the Institute for Social Capital at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, Partners for Out of School Time, Caring, and the Steering Committee of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Women's Summit. She also served as a member of The Executive Leadership Team of the Central Savannah River Area (CSRA) American Heart Association Heart Walk. Additionally, she is an active member and Vacation Bible School teacher at Good Shepherd Baptist Church. A native of Augusta, Mrs. Jackson graduated from the Academy Of Richmond County. She was the first student at the College of William and Mary to pursue the interdisciplinary major in Public Policy, completing it with a concentration in Urban Policy.  Later, she was a recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan/Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Fellowship, and earned a Master's Degree in Public Policy with a concentration in Management from Duke University. About Your Host, Jim Hunt: Welcome to the “Building Amazing Cities and Towns Podcast” … The podcast for Mayors, Council Members, Managers, Staff and anyone who is interested in building an Amazing City.   Your host is Jim Hunt, the author of “Bottom Line Green, How American Cities are Saving the Planet and Money Too” and his latest book, “The Amazing City - 7 Steps to Creating an Amazing City”   Jim is also the former President of the National League of Cities, 27 year Mayor, Council Member and 2006 Municipal Leader of the Year by American City and County Magazine.   Today, Jim speaks to 1000's of local government officials each year in the US and abroad.   Jim also consults with businesses that are bringing technology and innovation to local government.   Amazing City Resources:   Buy Jim's Popular Books: The Amazing City: 7 Steps to Creating an Amazing City: https://www.amazingcities.org/product-page/the-amazing-city-7-steps-to-creating-an-amazing-city   Bottom Line Green: How America's Cities and Saving the Planet (And Money Too) https://www.amazingcities.org/product-page/bottom-line-green-how-america-s-cities-are-saving-the-planet-and-money-too   FREE White Paper: “10 Steps to Revitalize Your Downtown” AmazingCities.org/10-Steps   Hire Jim to Speak at Your Next Event: Tell us about your event and see if dates are available at AmazingCities.org/Speaking   Hire Jim to Consult with Your City or Town: Discover more details at https://www.amazingcities.org/consulting   Discuss Your Business Opportunity/Product to Help Amazing Cities: Complete the form at https://www.amazingcities.org/business-development   A Special Thanks to Bearing Advisors for the support of this podcast:  www.BearingAdvisors.Net      

Meet Our Guest: Ashley Thompson serves as the Senior Vice President for Public Policy Analysis and Development at the American Hospital Association (AHA). Since 2015, she has been instrumental in providing direction and oversight for the formation and promotion of the AHA's policy positions. Ashley leads the formal policy development process of the AHA, which includes gathering input from prominent hospital leaders to address issues related to advocacy, public policy, and field leadership. Her tenure with the AHA spans over two decades, during which she has held various roles in shaping policy.Key Insights: Ashley Thompson discusses the current state of the healthcare landscape and the challenges faced by hospitals and the workforce.● Post-Pandemic. Ashley suggests that the pivot out of the pandemic should be used as an opportunity to change the way healthcare is delivered and financed in order to increase access, quality, patient satisfaction, and decrease the overall cost of care.● Lemons into Lemonade. After facing some discrimination as a woman in the workplace and being seen as an assistant despite her qualifications, Ashley sees these experiences as opportunities to carve her own path and make a difference.● Being True. Mentors and influencers that have made a difference in her career gave Ashley opportunities and taught her valuable lessons about being authentic and genuine, as well as the importance of flexibility.This episode is hosted by Nancy Howell Agee. She is a member of the Advisory Council for Her Story and President and Chief Executive Officer of Carilion Clinic.Relevant Links: Read Ashley's Q&AVisit the AHA's website

Ending Family Homelesssness Marybeth (Beth) Shinn is a Cornelius Vanderbilt professor at Vanderbilt University who studies how to prevent and end homelessness. She was co-principal investigator of the 12-site Family Options experiment examining approaches to ending family homelessness, the evaluator for the initial study of the Pathways Housing First program in New York City, and the developer of a model used by that city to target its homelessness prevention services. Her 2020 book with Jill Khadduri, In the midst of plenty: Homelessness and what to do about it (Wiley], surveys research to show that we know how to end homelessness, if we devote the necessary resources to doing so. Beth has received research or publication awards from the Society for Community Research and Action, the Society for Research on Adolescence, and the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. She serves on her local Homeless Planning Council and on the Research Council for the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

The latest episode of Mathematica's On the Evidence podcast features Abigail Aiken, the 22nd recipient of the David N. Kershaw Award and Prize. In Part 1, as part of her acceptance speech at the Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management's fall research conference, Aiken shares details about her personal and professional journey as a researcher in the area of evidence-based reproductive health policy. A full transcript of the episode is available here: mathematica.org/blogs/abigail-aiken-on-using-research-to-inform-abortion-reproductive-health-policy In Part 2, Aiken talks with On the Evidence host J.B. Wogan about how she ensures that her research informs the policy debate, even on a polarizing topic like abortion. Listen to Part 2 here: https://soundcloud.com/ontheevidence/informing-reproductive-health-policies-with-timely-evidence-episode-83-part-2 Read the New Yorker profile of Aiken: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-does-an-at-home-abortion-look-like Learn more about the David N. Kershaw Award and Prize: https://www.appam.org/about-appam/awards/david-n-kershaw-award/ Listen to an interview with Sanya Carley, winner of the 21st David N. Kershaw Award and Prize: mathematica.org/blogs/understanding-the-equity-and-justice-dimensions-of-energy-policy-decisions Listen to an interview with Kirabo Jackson, winner of the 20th David N. Kershaw Award and Prize: mathematica.org/blogs/investing-in-education-for-success-in-the-long-run

The latest episode of Mathematica's On the Evidence podcast features Abigail Aiken, the 22nd recipient of the David N. Kershaw Award and Prize. In Part 1, as part of her acceptance speech at the Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management's fall research conference, Aiken shares details about her personal and professional journey as a researcher in the area of evidence-based reproductive health policy. Listen to Part 1 here: https://soundcloud.com/ontheevidence/informing-reproductive-health-policies-with-timely-evidence-episode-83-part-1 A full transcript of the episode is available here: mathematica.org/blogs/abigail-aiken-on-using-research-to-inform-abortion-reproductive-health-policy In Part 2, Aiken talks with On the Evidence host J.B. Wogan about how she ensures that her research informs the policy debate, even on a polarizing topic like abortion. Read the New Yorker profile of Aiken: www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/w…ortion-look-like Learn more about the David N. Kershaw Award and Prize: www.appam.org/about-appam/awards…d-n-kershaw-award/ Listen to an interview with Sanya Carley, winner of the 21st David N. Kershaw Award and Prize: mathematica.org/blogs/understandi…-policy-decisions Listen to an interview with Kirabo Jackson, winner of the 20th David N. Kershaw Award and Prize: mathematica.org/blogs/investing-i…s-in-the-long-run

On this episode of the IoT: The Internet of Threats podcast, Jeff Tricoli, Former Section Chief at the FBI's Cyber Division joins podcast host Eric Greenwald to discuss what to know about working with the FBI on cybercrime, the evolution and ethical implications of the ransomware industry, and the differences between cyberattacks from Russia and China.   Interview with Jeffrey Tricoli:    For nearly 20 years, Jeffrey Tricoli served in a variety of roles at the FBI's Cyber Division and most recently as its Sector Chief in charge of overseeing national cyber investigations. Jeff graduated from the University of Syracuse's Maxwell School with an M.P.A. in Public Policy Analysis and holds a Bachelor of Arts from Canisius College. Jeff is now a senior executive at a financial services company responsible for technology and security risk.   The FBI's Cyber division investigates and responds to malicious cyber activities that threaten the safety of the US public and the country's national and economic security.   In this interview, Eric and Jeff discuss: The different motives that drive Russian and Chinese cyberattacks How events like the war in Ukraine or trade wars with China amplify the threats of destructive cyberattacks and intellectual property theft How companies should approach their relationship with law enforcement before, during, and after a cyberattack What it's like to collaborate with the FBI when your organization faces a threat or breach The challenging ethics that businesses face when they're presented with a ransom demand to recover their data   Find Jeff on LinkedIn Jeffrey Tricoli: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffrey-tricoli-b5791aaa   Learn more about the FBI's efforts to combat cyber threats: https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber   Thank you for listening to this episode of the IoT: The Internet of Threats podcast, powered by Finite State — the leading supply chain cyber-security solution provider for connected devices and embedded systems.   If you enjoyed this episode, click subscribe to stay connected and leave a review to get the word out about the podcast.   To learn more about building a robust product security program, protecting your connected devices, and complying with emerging regulations and technical standards, visit https://finitestate.io/.

Ritu is Policy & Insights Manager at Economist Impact. She has over seven years of experience working on a wide range of public policy topics like food security, technology and sustainability. She was the project lead for the Digital Cities Index by Economist Impact. She has a masters degree in Public Policy Analysis. She is currently based in Singapore. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ritub12/ We talk about Digital Cities Index by Economist Impact. Top performing cities close their connectivity gaps and use technologies to achieve clear policy goals like inclusion and sustainability. The question she has for you all: How do you think that technology help in achieving sustainability goal? Do you want to be a guest on our podcast? I will be waiting for your email at vikram@73bit.com http://www.73bit.com/

Topic: Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings (Nonresident Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution) shares advice to help accomplished, and aspiring, leaders navigate failure, communicate more effectively with those around them, and manage their energy so that they can consistently perform at their best. Today's guest: Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings is a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings Metro and the Founder, President and CEO of Global Policy Solutions. Dr. Rockeymoore Cummings is the author of the forthcoming book RAGEISM: Racism, Ageism, and the Quest for Liberation Policy (Routledge). A wealth, health, and education equity expert, Dr. Rockeymoore Cummings has conducted extensive research and policy analysis on aging, Social Security, the social determinants of health, and the racial wealth and achievement gaps. She also conceived and co-authored the first-ever study examining the labor market impact of level 5 autonomous vehicle technology. A frequent guest on prominent television and radio news shows, Dr. Rockeymoore Cummings has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ABC News, CBS, BET, BBC, Al Jazeera, BNC, NPR, and Sirius XM among many other national and international outlets. She has also testified before the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, and the Democratic National Committee platform committee on Social Security policy. Her articles, letters to the editor, and quotes have appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, Baltimore Sun, Houston Chronicle, CNN.com, USA Today, Boston Globe, The Root and HuffingtonPost.com among many other news outlets.    Dr. Rockeymoore Cummings has worked as Vice President for Programs and Research at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, professional staff on the Social Security Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee, Chief of Staff for former Congressman Charles Rangel, Senior Resident Scholar for Health and Income Security at the National Urban League's think tank, and Assistant to the Director of the Marion County (IN) Health Department. She earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in political science, with an emphasis in public policy, from Purdue University and her B.A. in political science and mass communication from Prairie View A&M University. She has taught at American University's Women & Politics Institute and served as an Eastern regional panelist for the White House Fellowship program during the second term of the Obama Administration and the first year of the Trump Administration.   Dr. Rockeymoore Cummings has chaired the boards of the National Association of Counties Financial Services Corporation and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. She has served on the boards of the National Academy of Social Insurance, National Council on Aging, Economic Policy Institute, Public Health Policy and Law, and the Baltimore Museum of Art among other organizations. She has co-chaired the Commission to Modernize Social Security and the National Academy of Social Insurance Study Panel on Medicare and Disparities. Dr. Rockeymoore Cummings has been a member of the National Association of Black Political Scientists, American Public Health Association, Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, National Association of Corporate Directors, Asset Funders Network Tax Policy Advisory Group, National Network of Consultants to Grantmakers, Women's Information Network, American Political Science Association, and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People among other organizations. She was a founding member of the Council of Urban Professionals and the Experts of Color Network.   The recipient of many honors and awards, Dr. Rockeymoore Cummings has been selected as an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow, a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Fellow, and a Woodrow Wilson Public Policy and International Affairs...

The first step to heal from trauma is to acknowledge its impact; therefore, if we want to understand the effects of structural racism on Black women today, we need to look at the wounds produced by the intergenerational racism replicated since the enslavement time. For our first episode, I have the pleasure of receiving Dr. Angela Reynolds, CEO of the YWCA Greater Pittsburgh. She is an experienced Senior Director with vast experience working in the non-profit industry. Angela is a strong and caring professional with a Ph.D. in Public Policy Analysis and an M.S. in Statistics from Carnegie Mellon University - Heinz College. She also holds a B.A. in Mathematics (Sociology minor) from Bryn Mawr College. Our conversation revolves around the impacts of living at the intersection of racism and sexism, Dr. Angela's experiences with racism as a young girl and adult, and how those experiences changed her. We talk about her childhood, her perception of racism as a kid, and how she dealt with it. We also discuss the effects of adultification of Black girls, YWCA's mission of eliminating racism, the need for policies granting gender and race equality, and much more. Hop on and join me on this first episode of Black Girl Talk Back, to learn a bit more of what this podcast is about, and give yourself the chance to know this extraordinary Black leader, role model, and woman. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Smoke free policies are aimed at protecting the non-smoker. What are the effects of secondhand marijuana smoke? Learn fro High Truths expert, Dr. Paula Gordon. Paula D. Gordon, Ph.D. Paula D. Gordon, Ph.D. is an educator, writer, analyst, researcher, speaker, consultant, and independent contractor. She has taught at many institutions including the California State University System, the George Washington University, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Richmond. Her current teaching includes the Auburn University Center for Governmental Services and Eastern Kentucky University. Visit her websites at GordonHomeland.com, GordonPublicAdministration.com, GordonDrugAbusePrevention.comand GordonCancerTheory.com. Her newest website, GordonHumankind.com, includes a two-part copy of her dissertation, “Public Administration in the Public Interest” and a newly updated piece entitled “Wishes for the Family of Humankind”. The latter is also posted on the newly launched Global Futures Intelligence Systems website of The Millennium Project in the Global Ethics section at https://themp.org/challengegroup/15/resources/. Dr. Gordon has taught a wide variety of courses at many different institutions of higher learning throughout the nation. Topics have included Homeland Security Policy; Leadership in Challenging and Catastrophic Situations; Planning and Preparedness for Homeland Security and Emergency Management Post 9/11 and Post Katrina; Some Key Challenges Facing Homeland Security and Emergency Management Post 9–11 and Post Katrina; Critical Infrastructure; Management and Organizational Behavior; Leading Organizational Change; Women and Leadership; Organization Development Theory; Policy and Complex Global Challenges; Marketing and Business Ethics; Public Administration; Public Policy Analysis; Management Decisions: Tools and Judgment; Organization, Management, and Leadership; Managerial Communication; Strategic Planning; Project Management; Group Dynamics; Unleashing Creativity; Problem Solving; and Organizational Health; and Service-Oriented Marketing and Business Practices. Full Bio: http://lifeboat.com/ex/bios.paula.d.gordon pgordon@starpower.net https://www.linkedin.com/in/gordonpaula/ http://GordonPublicAdministration.com http://GordonHomeland.com http://GordonDrugAbusePrevention.com http://GordonHumankind.com (including “Wishes for the Family of Humankind”) Doctoral Dissertation: Public Administration in the Public Interest http://GordonPublicAdministration.com

Dr. Angela Reynolds is a leader who involves everyone in her success and whose community involvement has impacted countless lives. She fosters space for those around her to flourish and builds systemic change to provide opportunities for women, especially women of color. Since becoming CEO of YWCA Greater Pittsburgh, Dr. Reynolds has cultivated a safe and supportive workplace culture within a predominantly female environment by allowing and encouraging employees to learn, problem-solve, take risks, build confidence and grow. It was through Dr. Reynolds’ leadership that the YWCA was able to quickly adapt to COVID-19 and transition all programming to a virtual setting—ensuring operational business continuity and access to critical services for women and families in the Pittsburgh community. Her leadership at the YWCA of Greater Pittsburgh during the pandemic ensured that vulnerable families had access to basic needs such as food, housing and utilities. Additionally, with YWCA’s mission of eliminating racism and empowering women, she is active in advancing racial justice statewide through a coalition of YWCAs and led the formation of YW Wednesday Action Conversations—panel discussions that feature women of color with diverse professional backgrounds who provide education, resources and specific action steps that community members can take to impact change. Throughout most of her career, Dr. Reynolds has been the only African American woman in leadership at her workplace. To rise to this challenge, Dr. Reynolds has intentionally coalesced advocates and allies who partner with her to strengthen internal diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and service to the community. Prior to her work at YWCA, she served as Senior Director of United for Families and 2-1-1 at United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania. Dr. Reynolds was instrumental in shaping the United for Women initiative—an initiative to help women get back on their feet that served over 10,000 women during her seven-year tenure. Throughout her adult life Dr. Reynolds has seized opportunities to mentor, encourage and support women and girls in their leadership development. A long-time volunteer of the 3 Cups of Coffee program at PA Women Work, Dr. Reynolds has mentored women job seekers. She has helped them build confidence and ambition to grow their careers as well as tangible interview and networking skills. Continuing in this mentoring vein, Dr. Reynolds’ legacy as a professor is carried through the 1,000+ students she taught during her tenure at the University of Pittsburgh. She also serves as the Associate Pastor at First Baptist Church in West Mifflin. In this role, she supervises many of the programmatic elements of the congregation, including the Praise & Worship Ministry and the Christian Education staff. Like her other leadership roles, Dr. Reynolds uses this position to encourage and mentor the church staff and volunteers, creating opportunities for them to step into their own leadership. Dr. Reynolds is a proud mother of four and caregiver for her mother. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics from Bryn Mawr College, a Master’s Degree in Statistics from Carnegie Mellon University, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy Analysis from the Heinz School at Carnegie Mellon University.

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Jacob Faber, an Associate Professor of Sociology and Public Service at NYU, whose field of study is all about race and real estate. I saw him testify at the New York Senate hearings about Long Island Divided, and thought his research and his opinions would be enormously influential. I believe he has been instrumental in the actions that the NY legislature has and will take, and I thought to bring his views directly to you all. Bio:Jacob William Faber is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Public Service in New York University's Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service and holds a joint appointment in NYU's Sociology Department. His research and teaching focuses on spatial inequality. He leverages observational and experimental methods to study the mechanisms responsible for sorting individuals across space and how the distributions of people by race and class interact with political, social, and ecological systems to create and sustain economic disparities. While there is a rich literature exploring the geography of opportunity, there remain many unsettled questions about the causes of segregation and its effects on the residents of urban ghettos, wealthy suburbs, and the diverse set of places in between.His scholarship highlights the rapidly-changing roles of numerous institutional actors (e.g. mortgage lenders, real estate agents, check cashing outlets, and police officers) in facilitating the reproduction of racial and spatial inequality. Through investigation of several aspects of American life, he demonstrates that a pattern of “institutional marginalization” emerges as a powerful mechanism connecting segregation to socioeconomic disadvantage. His work has been published in American Sociological Review, Annual Review of Sociology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Demography, Social Forces, Housing Policy Debate, and other prominent journals.Professor Faber's scholarship has received recognition from several organizations, including the ASA Latino/Latina Sociology Section, Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management (APPAM), Association of Black Sociologists (ABS), Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), and Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE). In 2020, Professor Faber won NYU's Making a Difference Award for his research and teaching on the hidden and unsettled causes of segregation by race. In 2018, he was named NYU Wagner's Professor of the Year and won the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Research Prize.Dr. Faber earned his PhD in Sociology from New York University and worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Sociology at Princeton University. He also graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Master’s degrees in Telecommunications Policy and Urban Studies and Planning and a Bachelor’s degree in Management Science. Between stints at graduate school, Dr. Faber worked as a Senior Researcher for the Center for Social Inclusion, a racial justice policy advocacy organization.

Highly-lauded UT professor, author, and political scientist Sean Theriault joins Stephanie and Katie to talk about the lessons of 2020, teaching the politics of Covid in a global classroom setting, and how the pandemic actually made his class BETTER! Thanks for joining us on the Other Side of Campus! ABOUT THE GUEST https://minio.la.utexas.edu/colaweb-prod/person_files/0/303/sean_200x300.jpg Professor Theriault, who is fascinated by congressional decision-making, is currently researching the effect of interpersonal relationships within the U.S. Congress. He has published five books: Congress: The First Branch (with Mickey Edwards; Oxford University Press, 2020), The Great Broadening (with Bryan Jones and Michelle Whyman; University of Chicago Press, 2019), The Gingrich Senators (Oxford University Press, 2013), Party Polarization in Congress (Cambridge University Press, 2008), and The Power of the People (Ohio State University Press, 2005). He has also published numerous articles in a variety of journals on subjects ranging from presidential rhetoric to congressional careers and the Louisiana Purchase to the Pendleton Act of 1883. Professor Theriault, whose classes include the U.S. Congress, Congressional Elections, Party Polarization in the United States, and the Politics of the Catholic Church, is passionate about teaching. He has received numerous teaching awards, including the Friar Society Teaching Fellowship (the biggest undergraduate teaching award at UT) in 2009, UT Professor the Year in 2011, and the Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award in 2014. In 2012, he was inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Teachers. He has experienced no greater honor than “officiating” at two weddings for former students. Professor Theriault, who grew up in Michigan, has been to all 50 states (though only 49 state capitols) and six continents. His research and teaching have taken him to among other places Seoul, Rome, and Berlin. He is a competitive tennis player and an avid runner, having competed twice in the Boston Marathon. Before obtaining his Ph.D. from Stanford University (in 2001; M.A. in Political Science in 2000), he attended the University of Richmond (B.A., 1993), and the University of Rochester (M.S. in Public Policy Analysis, 1996). PRODUCER'S NOTE: This episode was recorded on December 14th, 2020 via Zoom. CREDITS Assistant Producers/Hosts: Stephanie Seidel Holmsten, Katie Dawson (Intro theme features additional PTF fellows Patrick Davis, Keith Brown, David Vanden Bout Edited by Liberal Arts Development Studio audio crew (special thanks to Jacob Weiss and Morgan Honaker) Main Theme and original background music by Charlie Harper (www.charlieharpermusic.com) (Some additional background music used on this episode by Revolution Void and Blue Dot Sessions) Produced by Michelle S Daniel Creator & Executive Producer: Mary C. Neuburger Connect with us! Facebook: /texasptf Twitter: @TexasPTF Website: https://texasptf.org DISCLAIMER: The Other Side of Campus is a member of the Texas Podcast Network, brought to you by The University of Texas at Austin. Podcasts are produced by faculty members and staffers at UT Austin who work with University Communications to craft content that adheres to journalistic best practices. The University of Texas at Austin offers these podcasts at no charge. Podcasts appearing on the network and this webpage represent the views of the hosts, not of The University of Texas at Austin. https://files.fireside.fm/file/fireside-uploads/images/1/1ed1b736-a1fa-4ae4-b346-90d58dfbc8a4/4GSxOOOU.png Podcast notes plus timecodes (prepared by Morgan Honaker) 00:00:00:00 - Introductions 00:01:29:29 - What attracted Sean to studying Congress? 00:03:18:14 - Sean as a political optimist. 00:04:09:20 - What are some of Sean's teaching methods for navigating the current divide in American politics? 00:05:27:13 - How did Sean develop using performative methods of teaching in his class? 00:08:14:04 - Does Sean always present himself as a blank slate for students to address or does he ever let his own political opinions enter the conversation? 00:11:20:17 - Sean discusses how the classroom is a “sacred space” for bipartisan debates because it lets his students hone their critical minds. 00:12:46:07 - Sean talks about his experience teaching online, and how he was able to achieve success in doing so. 00:14:50:26 - Sean discusses his experience partnering with a French university during the Fall 2020 semester. 00:18:49:07 - Sean describes giving students a safe space to learn during the pandemic and how the pandemic touched his classroom. 00:21:33:29 - How did Sean's class help the students become friends, despite them being in different countries? 00:23:35:12 - Sean discusses how the pandemic helped his students learn about Federalism in the U.S., and how French students were baffled by the independence of U.S. states. 00:25:11:21 - The group discusses how remote learning, due to COVID, has allowed students to compare their cultural and political experiences across different countries. 00:27:16:10 - Sean discusses what he would have done differently in his class with American and French students. 00:28:36:14 - Sean mentions how Covid actually made his class better. 00:29:02:19 - Sean and Stephanie discuss the importance of using class time for collaboration and work so that there isn't too much of a time burden outside of class, which can alienate those who have family duties, jobs, etc. 00:30:35:25 - How did Sean handle the different university methods and requirements in his class? 00:34:25:21 - What's a big learning moment or takeaway that Sean had about his class? 00:37:57:00 - Sean and Stephanie discuss how talking to other faculty members helps them with their new teaching methods with online classes. 00:39:53:23 - What is bringing Sean joy right now, in his teaching? 00:42:07:17 - Stephanie's and Katie's reflections. Special Guest: Sean Theriault.

In his research, Kirabo Jackson, an economist at Northwestern University, has explored the causal relationship between school spending and student outcomes. His work has also shed light on the role that teachers and schools play in helping students acquire skills and succeed in the long run. Jackson is the 20th winner of the David N. Kershaw Award and Prize, established to recognize young professionals under the age of 40 who have made distinguished contributions to the field of public policy. David Kershaw, for whom the award is named, was a founder and the first president of Mathematica. In the spring of 1979, he helped guide the establishment of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and Mathematica’s principal role within it, before his death from cancer later that year at the age of 37. The award in his memory was created in 1983 and has since been jointly administered by Mathematica and APPAM. The award is presented every other year at the APPAM Fall Research Conference in November. In this episode of On the Evidence, Jackson discusses his research on education spending and on measuring the effects of teachers and schools on students’ long-term success.

In this series we will be joined by Adriana Gonzalez and Tyrone Scafe in discussing the role that policing plays in education, specifically focusing on the presence of school resource officers and the effects of the school to prison pipeline on black and brown students. The goal of this podcast series is to promote and extend this discussion within our communities, empowering our listeners to share their knowledge and resources on the topic. The first episode released this Thursday will center the conversation in our hometown of Waukegan, Illinois, highlighting the effects of policing within the very schools we attended. Adriana Gonzalez graduated from Pomona College with a B.A. in Public Policy Analysis and Latin American Studies in 2018. As an undergraduate, she was involved as a member of various organizations primarily focused on social change, immigrant advocacy, and equitable access to education. After graduation, she worked as a small business advisor for local entrepreneurs in her hometown, bussing, and waitressing part-time in the evenings and on weekends to build an emergency fund. Her experiences as an advisor led her to the position she currently holds within the Community Development department of a bank based in Chicago. Since 2019, she has served as a Board member of the Waukegan Schools Foundation, most recently helping create and distribute $7,500 in scholarships for Waukegan High School graduates. Tyrone Scafe grew up in Waukegan and attended Waukegan High School where he graduated back in 2013. As an undergrad at Williams College, he was an Allison Davis Research Fellow, where he researched and wrote about the role of security and surveillance in K-12 public education and how that impacts how we think about and engage in Democracy. He’s currently based out of Oakland, California, where he’s a software developer consultant at ThoughtWorks. He’s also on the alumni board for YCore, a San Francisco based non-profit organization that helps partner social impact-driven professionals with community-based non-profits, with the goal of fostering just, inclusive communities.

To fully engage Chicago’s medically underserved Chinese and other Asian communities and to help them address their own health issues, Dr. Hong Liu’s Midwest Asian Health Association reaches out in Mandarin, Cantonese and other languages—and does so in culturally appropriate ways.The result is better access to healthcare for many low-income, often new-immigrant minorities who experience certain health problems in higher prevalence than the general population including hepatitis, liver cancer, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and mental illness. She and her team engage people to participate in education, screening and diagnostic services, and counseling. They also partner with hospitals, medical professionals, medical schools and drug companies to connect community members with care. Too often, she says, many don’t know what’s available, and for cultural reasons they don’t access the systems that are available to them. In many cases, the emergency department is their first stop for healthcare, and their diseases are too advanced by the time they seek it. She talked about how her community has faced increased discrimination and harassment due to misinformation about COVID. She gives a more accurate look into the community’s nature as she describes how Chicago’s Asian-American community raised money, then used it to provide personal protective equipment to hospitals and clinics all over the Chicagoland area. Members of the community felt strongly that they wanted to demonstrate their pride and gratitude to be a part of the United States. The management of many of the hospitals sent letters of thanks, letting them know their gesture was most welcome and appreciated. Dr Liu’s work has earned the respect of healthcare providers, the Asian-American community, and local, state and federal health agencies. In 2016 she was invited to the White House by President Barack Obama in recognition of her work. Dr. Liu has a PhD in Public Policy Analysis from the University of Illinois in Chicago.

Today’s episode is about sharing and explaining policy research. After putting in the hours to collect the data, analyze the findings, and report on your results, how do you ensure that people outside of academia learn what you’ve found and understand why it matters? My guests for this episode are economists Jennifer Doleac and Kosali Simon, who recently participated on a panel about interpreting and translating the relevance of policy research at a research conference hosted by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. Jennifer is an associate professor of economics at Texas A&M University, the director of the Justice Tech Lab, and the host of the Probable Causation podcast (https://www.probablecausation.com/). She is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/jenniferdoleac. Kosali is a professor at the Paul H. O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Bloomington as well as the associate vice provost for health sciences at Indiana University Bloomington. She is also on Twitter at https://twitter.com/KosaliSimon. Find an abridged and edited Q&A blog based on a transcript of this conversation at: https://mathematica-mpr.com/commentary/tips-for-boosting-the-reach-and-impact-of-policy-research

The federal government funds a variety of national nutrition programs to combat hunger among children and families, and yet roughly 37 million Americans were food insecure in 2018, and 6 million of them were children, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). In some parts of the country, food insecurity is made worse by a lack of accessible and affordable options. That is, if you live in a rural area with limited public transportation and no major supermarkets nearby, you may rely on smaller retailers with limited produce, higher prices, and lower quality food compared with a larger store that is farther away. On this episode of On the Evidence, we talk about a demonstration supported by a federal grant that used home-delivered boxes packed with fruit, vegetables, and other shelf-stable foods selected by registered dieticians to address food insecurity among children in Chickasaw Nation territory in rural Oklahoma. Our guest is Phil Gleason, a senior fellow at Mathematica, who helped evaluate the demonstration for the Food and Nutrition Service at the USDA. Phil and I spoke in Denver shortly before he presented findings from the evaluation at a 2019 fall research conference hosted by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, better known by the acronym, APPAM. The full report that Phil and his Mathematica colleagues submitted to the USDA is available here: https://www.mathematica.org/our-publications-and-findings/publications/evaluation-of-demonstration-projects-to-end-childhood-hunger-edech-the-chickasaw-nation Read an abridged and edited Q&A blog based on our conversation here: mathematica-mpr.com/commentary/home-delivered-food-boxes-reduced-food-insecurity-among-adults-but-not-children

The latest episode of Policy Outsider features Dr. Leigh Wedenoja, senior policy analyst at the Rockefeller Institute. Wedenoja shares research presented at the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) 2019 Fall Research Conference on the effects of teacher looping on student outcomes. Wedenoja explains the practice of teacher looping, or pairing a student with the same teacher for more than one year, and its effects on students at different grade levels and backgrounds. The research examines all students in grades three through 11 in the state of Tennessee and found significant improvements to test scores when students were paired with a repeat teacher. They also found that, across all grade levels, having a repeat teacher reduces absences and suspensions. Wedenoja also discusses how teacher looping often occurs by accident in schools but could actually be used as an intentional classroom assignment strategy by school administrators.

One of the ways that the United States is an outlier among high-income industrialized nations is that it does not have a national paid family leave program. Some U.S. states and cities, however, have enacted paid family leave, and more are on track to do so in the next few years. For this episode of On the Evidence, we speak with Jeff Hayes, the program director of job quality and income security at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and a scholar in residence at American University. Jeff recently presented findings about what would happen if the U.S. implemented a paid family leave law based on some recent policy proposals. This episode is part of a series we recorded in Denver during the fall research conference hosted by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, better known by the acronym, APPAM. Find more information on the paper Jeff presented at the conference, as well as other papers discussed in the same panel session, here: https://appam.confex.com/appam/2019/webprogram/Session13031.html

Since 2015, a handful of U.S. cities have begun taxing soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages. With funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, economists from Mathematica, the University of Iowa, and Cornell University studied the impacts of those taxes on purchases, consumption, prices, and product availability. The project was the first to publish results on changes in children's consumption in U.S. cities with a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. It was also the first to publish results on impacts from Oakland's beverage tax. For this episode of On the Evidence, we spoke with Dave Jones, an associate director in the health unit at Mathematica, and Dave Frisvold, an associate professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Iowa, about the project's findings on sweetened beverage taxes in Philadelphia, Oakland, Seattle, and San Francisco. More information about their study is available here: https://www.mathematica.org/news/effects-of-sweetened-beverage-taxes-in-philadelphia-and-oakland-fewer-beverage-purchases This interview was one of a series conducted in support of the 2019 fall research conference hosted by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM). (Jones and Frisvold presented papers related to the beverage tax project at the conference.) Find other interviews related to APPAM's fall research conference here: https://www.mathematica.org/commentary/icymi-on-the-evidence-takes-on-appam

On this episode of On the Evidence, we talk about using behavioral nudges and low-cost experiments in local government. Our guests are Brendan Babb, the chief innovation officer and innovation team director for the municipality of Anchorage, Alaska, and Emily Cardon, head of research for the Behavioral Insights Team (BIT) in North America. To learn more about the case studies referenced in this episode, check out BIT's publications page (https://www.bi.team/our-work/publications/) and blog (https://www.bi.team/our-work/blog/). Cardon also mentions a forthcoming paper on reducing burnout among 911 dispatchers, which has since published. Find it here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336830004_Belonging_Affirmation_Reduces_Employee_Burnout_and_Resignations_in_Front_Line_Workers This episode is part of a series produced by Mathematica in support of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and its fall research conference. More episodes affiliated with APPAM's fall research conference can be found here: https://www.mathematica.org/commentary/icymi-on-the-evidence-takes-on-appam

On this episode of On the Evidence, we talk about policy research by, about, and for indigenous communities. Our guests are Cheryl Ellenwood, a PhD candidate in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona, and Laura Evans, an associate professor at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Policy and Governance. We discuss efforts to build a community of policy researchers focused on issues important to indigenous communities, the need for more and better data on indigenous populations (collected in respectful ways), and the application of decolonization methodologies in policy research. This episode is part of a series produced by Mathematica in support of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and its fall research conference. Summaries of the indigenous policy scholarship discussed at the conference are available here: https://appam.confex.com/appam/2019/webprogram/Session13239.html

A growing body of research have found that small-scale behavioral nudge campaigns can get students to complete complex tasks, such as refiling for federal financial aid to attend college. But researchers don't yet know enough about why certain nudges have worked in the past or whether they would still work on a larger scale. On this episode of On the Evidence, we talk with Jenna Kramer, an associate policy researcher at RAND Corporation, and Kelly Ochs Rosinger, an assistant professor in the Department of Education Policy Studies at The Pennsylvania State University, about efforts to use large-scale nudges to increase college and financial aid applications, increase college enrollment, and bolster college students' persistence in completing college. This episode is part of a series produced by Mathematica in support of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and its fall research conference. Kramer and Rosinger participated in an APPAM panel about scaling nudge interventions in post-secondary education. A summary of the panel as well as links to papers discussed in the session is available here: https://appam.confex.com/appam/2019/webprogram/Session12922.html To keep up with Kramer and Rosinger's work, follow them on Twitter. Kramer is @j_w_kramer and Rosinger is @kelly_rosinger.

State and local governments often lack the capacity to clean, manage, and analyze administrative data that could be useful for achieving political and policy objectives. Some places have established policy labs to leverage researchers' skills to identify trends in the data, evaluate programs, and provide insights for improving public policies. On this episode of On the Evidence, we talk about the policy lab model with Kristin Klopfenstein, director of the Colorado Evaluation and Action Lab, and Melissa Wavelet, a senior fellow at MDRC and the former director of the Office of Performance and Strategic Outcomes at the Colorado Department of Human Services. This episode is part of a series produced by Mathematica in support of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and its fall research conference. Klopfenstein and Wavelett participated in an APPAM panel about policy labs. More information about the lab is available at: https://coloradolab.org/ More information about Wavelett and her current work at MDRC is available at: https://www.mdrc.org/about/melissa-wavelet

Since 2007, the Social Security Administration has collected data on medication use among applicants for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). The administration can then use the medication data to identify opioid use among SSDI applicants. But the data set is so large and the data themselves are unstructured, with the majority of applicants reporting drug names in open-ended text fields, so the agency couldn't use the information to inform policy and programs. On this episode of On the Evidence, we talk with April Yanyuan Wu, a researcher at Mathematica, who used supervised machine learning to uncover new insights based on those data, including an estimate on the prevalence of opioid use among SSDI applicants. This episode is part of a series produced by Mathematica in support of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and its fall research conference. More information about April's research on opioids and SSDI applicants is available here: https://www.mathematica.org/our-publications-and-findings/publications/trends-in-opioid-use-among-social-security-disability-insurance-applicants

Paid leave can help mothers return to work in the year that a child is born, but what about the next few years? On this episode of On the Evidence, we talk about the effects of paid leave on maternal labor force detachment up to four years after a child is born with Kelly Jones, an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at American University and a senior research economist at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. This episode is part of a series produced by Mathematica in support of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and its fall research conference. Find more about Jones' research, as well as other paid leave research presented at the 2019 APPAM conference, here: https://appam.confex.com/appam/2019/webprogram/Session13294.html In the interview, Jones also mentions a second paper she was presenting at the conference on how abortion access affects educational outcomes. A summary of that paper is available here: https://appam.confex.com/appam/2019/webprogram/Paper31293.html

For this episode of On the Evidence, my guests are Maria Cancian, the president-elect of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and the dean of the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, and Matt Stagner, the current president of APPAM and a vice president at Mathematica. We talk about the theme of APPAM's fall research conference in Denver, which is “Rising to the Challenge: Engaging Diverse Perspectives on Issues and Evidence.”

As social scientists set out to investigate public policy questions, it is vital that they take into account the history of issues and the way people’s emotions will shape interpretations and responses to research findings. That’s the message that Mathematica’s Matt Stagner hopes to convey in his presidential address at a fall research conference hosted by the Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management (APPAM) in Denver. On the Evidence interviewed Stagner about his upcoming address, his work on child welfare, and his reflections on the field of public policy research. This interview is part of a series of episodes produced by Mathematica in support of the APPAM conference in November. A Q&A blog featuring highlights from the conversation is also available on the Mathematica website: https://.mathematica-mpr.com/commentary/embracing-the-emotional-aspects-of-public-policy-research

John Goodwin is the Vice President of Communications for the Weather Channel. He discusses the importance of networking, and offers insights he's picked up from a career working in Congress and in various government affairs roles.  John was raised in Cranston, Rhode Island. He graduated with a BA in Political Science from Marymount University, and earned a graduate degree in Public Policy Analysis from George Mason University. His first job in government relations was interning for a trade association. He served as a Public Affairs Manager for the National Marine Manufacturers Association. John Served as a Press Secretary, a Communications Director and later as a Chief of Staff in the U.S. House of Representatives. He gained campaign experience working for Connecticut Congressman Rob Simmons in 2006. He served as Vice President for The Herald Group from 2013-2017. In a job driven by the weather, every day is different. Part of John's job includes coordinating with governors, members of congress and other elected officials to get the Weather Channels's message out to their constituents during hazardous weather conditions.  The Weather Channel offers summer internships in communications in both New York and Atlanta, and John encourages you to apply! Help us grow! Leave us a rating and review - it's the best way to bring new listeners to the show.  Have a suggestion, or want to chat with Jim? Email him at: Jim@theLobbyingShow.com Follow The Lobbying Show on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for weekly updates about the show, our guests, and more.

From Cato University: College of EconomicsCato University’s College of Economics is based on the conviction that economics is a way of thinking, a tool for decision-making, and a basis for action. It’s the necessary foundation for understanding government, business, and society. Discussions from top economics scholars are designed to solidify your expertise on basic economic principles, and then help you apply those tools to today’s most pressing issues. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On this episode, Katie is joined by Dr. Stuart Buck. As the Vice President of Research at the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Stuart works to ensure that research funded by the Foundation is as rigorous as possible, and that the Foundation's major investments are evaluated by independent experts. An attorney and research expert with a background in education policy, Stuart has written and co-written numerous scholarly articles that have appeared in journals such as Science, Harvard Law Review, Education Economics, Education Next, Phi Delta Kappan, and Review of Public Personnel Administration. Stuart has testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and has been a panelist at major academic conferences, including the Association for Education Finance and Policy, the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, and the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance. He is the author of a Yale University Press book on education in the African-American community, Acting White. Stuart holds a Ph.D. in education policy from the University of Arkansas, where he studied econometrics, statistics, and program evaluation; a J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review; and bachelor's and master's degrees in music performance from the University of Georgia.   Segment 1: Working at a Foundation [00:00-10:12] In this first segment, Stuart describes about his research work at the Arnold Foundation. Segment 2: Promoting Research Integrity [10:13-23:48] In segment two, Stuart shares about how he works to promote research integrity at the Arnold Foundation. Segment 3: Increasing the Use of Data in the Criminal Justice System [23:49-36:59] In segment three, Stuart describes some of the recent work of the Arnold Foundation to impact the criminal justice system. Bonus Clip #1 [00:00-04:01]: Pathways to Working with Foundations To share feedback about this podcast episode, ask questions that could be featured in a future episode, or to share research-related resources, contact the “Research in Action” podcast: Twitter: @RIA_podcast or #RIA_podcast Email: riapodcast@oregonstate.edu Voicemail: 541-737-1111 If you listen to the podcast via iTunes, please consider leaving us a review. The views expressed by guests on the Research in Action podcast do not necessarily represent the views of Ecampus or Oregon State University.

Public choice has emerged to explain behavior in both markets and politics. To what extent do voters and consumers behave rationally, and how can a science largely germinated in the study of market exchange help to explain politics?From Cato University 2017: Summer Seminar on Political Economy See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This multi-disciplinary symposium brings together leading scholars who will share their research and engage in conversation about the role of religion in addressing rising income inequality—an issue that impacts millions of people. During the 1960s and 1970s, 9-10% of total income went to the top one-percent of Americans. By 2007, this share had risen to 23.5%. Even before 2008 and the so-called Great Recession, the wages of the average worker in the U.S., adjusted for inflation, had been stagnant for three decades. How are the religions contributing to the complex mix of factors responsible for this state of affairs? Part I includes the Introduction and a presentation by Evelyn Z. Brodkin, Associate Professor and Director of the Poverty and Inequality Program, University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration Evelyn Z. Brodkin's research interests include welfare state politics and policies at the level of the state and the level of the street, with a focus on political-organizational responses to poverty, inequality, and marginalization. She is one of the leading scholars of street-level organizations, the agencies at the frontlines of public policy delivery. She has published widely in books and journals, including her recent book Work and the Welfare State: Street-Level Organizations and Workfare Politics (2013, co-edited with G. Marston). Her work has been recognized by the American Political Science Association (Herbert Kaufman Award), the American Public Administration Association (Burchfield Award), and the Open Society Institute, where she was named a Fellow. Brodkin has served on the Policy Council of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management and the board of directors of the Chicago Jobs Council. On leave this year, Brodkin is Moses Distinguished Visiting Professor at Hunter College. Sponsored by the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion.

My guest today is Chris Zook, a business writer and partner at Bain & Company, leading its Global Strategy Practice. He is listed by The Times (London) as one of the world's top 50 business thinkers. Zook received a B.A. in mathematics and economics from Williams College, a M.Phil. in economics from Exeter College, Oxford University, and a MPP and Ph.D in Public Policy Analysis from the Harvard Kennedy School. Zook is an author of books and articles on business strategy, growth, and the importance of leadership economics, including the Profit from the Core trilogy. The topic is his book The Founder's Mentality: How to Overcome the Predictable Crises of Growth. In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss: The founder's 100 What keeps millennials in their jobs Frontline obsession Sense of insurgency Owners mindset Founders disease Meritocracies Jump in! --- I'm MICHAEL COVEL, the host of TREND FOLLOWING RADIO, and I'm proud to have delivered 10+ million podcast listens since 2012. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trend following are all passionately explored and debated on my show. To start? I'd like to give you a great piece of advice you can use in your life and trading journey… cut your losses! You will find much more about that philosophy here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/ You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/ Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

In this episode of the Caribbean Mentors podcast I speak with Indera Sagewan-Alli.  She is the Executive Director of the Caribbean Centre for Competitiveness at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. She has become a well-known development economist through-out the region. Her fields of expertise are in areas like; Global value chain and Innovation, Public Policy Analysis and Privatization and Private Sector Development…just to name a few.

In this address to the 2016 Class of the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, Dean Henry E. Brady explains the value of public policy analysis in creating a fair and just society. Series: "Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley" [Public Affairs] [Education] [Show ID: 31120]

In this address to the 2016 Class of the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, Dean Henry E. Brady explains the value of public policy analysis in creating a fair and just society. Series: "Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley" [Public Affairs] [Education] [Show ID: 31120]

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Each year half a million people are murdered worldwide; and in almost every society on earth, violence is disproportionately concentrated among young people. In the United States, African American males lose nearly as many years of potential life before age 65 to homicide as to the nation’s overall leading cause of death, heart disease. Jens Ludwig , director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab and codirector of the University’s Urban Education Lab, will examine the key causes and potential remedies of youth violence, drawing on examples from the Crime Lab’s ongoing projects. Ludwig is the McCormick Foundation Professor of Social Service Administration, Law, and Public Policy at the University of Chicago. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and has been awarded the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management’s David N. Kershaw Award for contributions to public policy by age 40. In 2014 the Crime Lab received a $1 million award from the MacArthur Foundation, recognizing creative and effective institutions.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Each year half a million people are murdered worldwide; and in almost every society on earth, violence is disproportionately concentrated among young people. In the United States, African American males lose nearly as many years of potential life before age 65 to homicide as to the nation’s overall leading cause of death, heart disease. Jens Ludwig , director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab and codirector of the University’s Urban Education Lab, will examine the key causes and potential remedies of youth violence, drawing on examples from the Crime Lab’s ongoing projects. Ludwig is the McCormick Foundation Professor of Social Service Administration, Law, and Public Policy at the University of Chicago. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and has been awarded the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management’s David N. Kershaw Award for contributions to public policy by age 40. In 2014 the Crime Lab received a $1 million award from the MacArthur Foundation, recognizing creative and effective institutions.

Join our live chat and listen A ground-breaking, unique internet radio station.  Anything and Everything against the New World order FreedomizerRadio.com Call in and join us - 347.324.3704   Eccentric Perspective It's a red pill, blue pill, going down the rabbit hole kind of show featuring: outside the box politics, philosophy, and Gonzo journalism. Covering the current events with Blake "the Eccentric." Gadsen Rising Libby Gadsen & Mary Lou Van Houten talk to Phred Barnet, who is the founder & owner of the Laissez Faire Capitalism Facebook page & the Right to Secede Facebook page.  He is also the Vice Chairman of the Atlanta chapter of America's Future Foundation (AFF).  He has a BA in Political Science from the University of Georgia, & a Masters in Public Administration & Policy with a specialization in Public Policy Analysis, also from UGA.