Archaeologists, anthropologists, and evolutionary biologists study the origins of our relationship with dogs and how it has evolved over time. Sociologists and legal scholars study the roles of dogs in the modern family. Veterinarian researchers address the relationship in the context of professional practice, yet economists have produced scant scholarship on the relationship between humans and dogs. Dog Economics applies economic concepts to relationships between people and dogs to inform our understanding of their domestication. It interprets their contemporary role as both property and family members and explores factors that affect the demand for dogs as well as market failures of the American puppy market. Offering economic perspectives on our varied relationships with dogs, this book assesses mortality risks and addresses end-of-life issues that commonly arise. It develops a framework for classifying canine occupations, considers the impact of pet insurance on euthanasia, and assesses the social value of guide dogs.

This chapter deals outliers in public administration and policy studies. They argue that a commonly defined as observations inconsistent with general patterns in a data set, researchers often consider outliers to be undesirable because they do not fit well with hypothesized generalizations or because they exert disproportionate influence in commonly-used statistical estimation techniques. Less commonly, outliers are viewed as providing valuable information rather than being just unlucky realizations of random error. For public policy and public administration researchers, who look for ways to promote change that improves public well-being, identifiable differences between outliers and the more general pattern may contribute to innovative and desirable policy designs and formulations. This chapter introduces a three-phase method we call outlierism: 1) identifying relevant outliers; 2) identifying possible underlying mechanisms that give rise to the outliers; and 3) assessing accumulated knowledge about outliers for use in policy design. Moving from outliers to policy poses methodological challenges, including establishing a credible relationship between identifiable difference and the outcome of interest, determining if the difference is sui generis or something that could be replicated, and translating the differences into working policies. Outlierism seeks to address these challenges in a structured, systematic way that allows a better integration and exploitation of scientific knowledge to improve policy and administration.

How should policy analysts assess 'benefit validity' when behavioral anomalies appear relevant? David L. Weimer provides thoughtful answers through practical guidelines. Behavioral economists have identified a number of situations in which people appear not to behave according to the neoclassical assumptions underpinning welfare economics and its application to the assessment of the efficiency of proposed public policies through cost-benefit analysis. This book introduces the concept of benefit validity as a criterion for estimating benefits from observed or stated preference studies, and provides practical guidelines to help analysts accommodate behavioral findings. It considers benefit validity in four areas: violations of expected utility theory, unexpectedly large differences between willingness to pay and willingness to accept, non-exponential discounting, and harmful addiction. In addition to its immediate value to practicing policy analysts, it helps behavioral economists identify issues where their research programs can make practical contributions to better policy analysis.

Using telephone and Internet (web-based) survey samples for a national advisory referendum, this study investigates whether the underlying preferences across two survey modes are equivalent. Results from a structural test support the conclusion of common preferences.

All governments produce policy analysis. It has always been predictive and value-laden. Consider the story in Genesis of Joseph, perhaps the first professional policy analyst celebrated by name. He predicted seven years of plenty followed by seven years of scarcity in interpreting the Pharaoh's dreams. The Pharaoh readily appreciated the value, both for himself and his people, of the policy of stockpiling during the years of plenty to avoid famine during the years of scarcity, and he delegated all his author ity (save the throne itself) to Joseph so he could implement it. Since the Enlightenment, the basis for prediction has become more rational and the con sideration of social values has become 1 more explicit. The emergence of repre sentative government has reduced the likelihood that any policy analyst will ever enjoy Joseph's immense influence and power. It has also resulted in a pro liferation of roles for policy analysis. The project of designing institutions to promote the good society ought not ignore these roles. Yet the task of assessing the social desirability of the possi ble roles for policy analysis is complicated because it cannot be isolated from the context of particular political regimes. In order to assess appropriate roles for policy analysis in the good soci ety, one must assume at least the general form of the political institutions of the good society. Would these forms be radically different from those we observe in mature representative democ racies today? Several considerations make me think that they would not. On the one hand, the Western democracies have done quite well overall during the last century. Although there have been some setbacks, they have generally expanded the politically enfranchised proportions of their populations, defended them selves from aggressive totalitarian states, protected human rights, facilitated greater health, wealth, and longevity, and improved the quality of the physical environment. I thus agree with Karol Soltan that, as Madisonian constitutionalism and capitalism have been successes, there is no need for a Third Way (Soltan, 1996: 78-79). On the other hand, there are certainly limitations to the performance of representative government. At the deepest the oretical level, the problems of social choice implied by Arrow's Ge eral Possibility Theorem argue that no democratic system can be relied upon to reveal consistently the "will of the people" (Riker, 1982). With respect to representative government, the problems of collective action (Olson, 1973, 1982) and the costs of monitoring representatives suggest it is unlikely that institu tion can be discovered that guarantee equal voice to the vari ous interests in society. The successes of representative democracies, coupled with the inherent theoretical limits to their perfection, lead me to assume that the good soci ety would have a political regime not too dissimilar from those found in Western Europe and the United States. To facilitate a more concrete discussion, I take the contemporary political insti tutions of the United States as the gen eral context for considering the role of policy analysis in the good society.2 Within this context, I make the fol lowing arguments. First, policy analy sis can improve public discourse by contributing policy alternatives to the political process, by pro viding better predictions of the consequences of proposed poli cies, and by making explicit arguments for the consideration of the full range of social values, especially those that tend to be underrepresented in representative democracy. Second, institu ions to promote these contributions can be imagined. Indeed, some already exist. Third, although greater participation in pol icy analysis is desirable, the most socially beneficial institutional changes will be those that expand participation beyond the most pr minent stakeholders. Finally, a professionalization of policy analysis that promotes the virtues of analytical integrity, humil ity, patience, and fortitude would enable policy analysts to play more effective roles in promoting the good society.

Objective. To answer two related questions: (1) Do managed care organizations (MCOs) in New York State (NYS) consider quality when they choose cardiac surgeons ? (2) Do they use information about risk-adjusted mortality rates (RAMR) provided in the New York State Cardiac Surgery Reports?Data Sources. (1) Telephone interviews with and contracting data from the majority of MCOs licensed in NYS; (2) RAMR, quality outlier designation, and procedure volume for all cardiac surgeons, as reported in the Cardiac Surgery Reports.Study Design. Interview data were analyzed in conjunction with patterns revealed by contracting data. Null hypotheses that MCOs' contracting choices were random with respect to the information published in the Cardiac Surgery Reports were tested.Principal Findings. Sixty percent of MCOs ranked the quality of surgeons as most important in their contracting considerations. Although 64 percent of MCOs indicated some knowledge of the NYS Cardiac Surgery Reports, only 20 percent indicated that the reports were a major factor in their contracting decision. Analyses of actual contracting patterns show that in aggregate, the hypothesis of random choice could be rejected with respect to high-quality outlier status and high procedure volume but not for RAMR or poor-quality outlier status. The panel composition of the majority of MCOs (80.2 percent) was within two standard deviations of the expected mean under the null hypothesis.Conclusions. Despite a professed preference for high-quality surgeons, the use of publicly available quality reports by MCOs is currently low, and contracting practices for the majority of MCOs do not indicate a systematic selection either for or against surgeons based on their reported mortality scores. This study suggests that policy initiatives to increase the effective use of report cards should be encouraged.

From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 18901967, by David T. Beito, 2000, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Civil society encompasses the variety of human interactions that fill the social, economic, and political space between the institutions of the state and the private life of self and family. In recent years, a number of public intellectuals have raised concerns about the decline of capital, the network of connections among individuals, within civil society. They selectively point to particular sorts of organizational activity in apparent decline and seek to link the implied loss of social capital to declines in everything from health to democracy. Fraternal societies, characterized by the strong reciprocal relations and trust so valued by social capital theorists, experienced substantial growth and then decline in importance and membership over the last century. The author provides an interesting, extremely well researched, and insightful history of American fraternal societies during this period. His analysis calls for reconsideration of the too easily dismissed hypothesis that the growing welfare state helped displace organizational participation, and it suggests the importance of interpreting the economic environment in assessing the character of civil society. As a primary function of the fraternal organizations was the provision of insurance to their members, readers of the Journal of Risk and Insurance with a historical bent are likely to find this account interesting. From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State shows the author's skill as a professional historian. He draws on a variety of primary documents, statistical sources, and interviews to tell a very rich story. He begins with overviews of the mutual aid societies, such as the Loyal Order of the Moose, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and the Ladies of the Maccabees, that were so prominent in the life of Americans, blacks and whites, men and women, during the early part of the last century-in 1920 membership was as high as one out of three adult men, and societies provided more than $9 billion in life insurance coverage (p. 2). The fraternal organizations shared a belief in the desirability of reciprocal aid over charity and dependence, and promoted personal habits of thrift and responsibility Almost all of the societies provided some form of insurance-life, burial, sickness, medical, and even tontines. Subsequent chapters provide detailed accounts of several sorts of in-kind provision of assistance: Homes for children of deceased members (Mooseheart and the Children's Home of the Security Benefit Association), medical services through capitation contracts with doctors (so-called lodge practice), the creation of hospitals and sanitariums (the hospital established in Kansas for members by the Security Benefit Association, the hospital established in Mississippi for black members by the International Order of the Twelve Knights and the Daughters of Tabor, and the tuberculosis sanitarium established in Colorado for members by the Modern Woodman of America). The final chapters consider the response of the fraternal organizations to the stress of the Great Depression and postwar trends in membership. The development of the fraternal organizations cannot be understood without considering their role in providing insurance to their members. The oldest fraternal societies provided funeral benefits so that members could avoid the disgrace of paupers' graves. With industrialization, sickness benefits, which provided dollar payments during periods when illness or injury prevented members from working, became common. Interestingly, moral hazard was reduced by not guaranteeing benefits and by tying them to responsible behavior; adverse selection was controlled through conditions of membership that stressed personal responsibility. Many societies provided life insurance. Rather than maintain reserves, societies originally relied on occasional assessments of members to cover losses. …