Benjamin Y. Clark

The effects of government, academic and industrial policy on cross-university collaboration

This article examines how collaborating with industry influences the academic scientists collaborations with scientists at other universities (cross-university collaboration). Government policies have actively encouraged academics in different universities to collaborate with one another, but contract requirements stemming from academic-industrial collaborations often influence the ways in which academics can collaborate. The major findings from this article show that collaborating with industry appears to be linked to increasing levels of cross-university collaboration. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Does Technologically Enabled Citizen Participation Lead to Budget Adjustments? An Investigation of Boston, MA, and San Francisco, CA

Citizen participation in government can provide a broad range of benefits to governments and citizens alike. Advances in information technologies have enabled new types of citizen participation with governments. However, we currently lack an understanding of how these new types of participation, particularly those that generate information on community needs, influence resource allocations. This article focuses on one of these new technologies, 311 systems, and how citizen requests might influence departmental budget allocations. We track budget allocation in the cities of Boston and San Francisco for 106 departments or subunits from FY2005 to FY2013. Our findings indicate that there is no significant resource benefit for departments using 311 versus those that do not. While departments using 311 do have larger budget allocations than those that do not, those departments had larger budget allocations prior to the implementation of 311. And while data generated in the 311-enabled citizen participation are increasingly used to measure departmental performance, the findings of this study show that this information has little to no effect on the allocated share of the budget for departments.

Evaluating the Validity and Reliability of the Financial Condition Index for Local Governments

Understanding the financial condition of local governments is important for public managers and elected officials as they work to align revenues with public demands for services, while maintaining financial solvency. This task becomes even more important when the economic and financial environment, over which local officials have little to no control, is collapsing around them. This article seeks to expand the literature of measuring financial condition of local governments by testing the validity and reliability of the Financial Condition Index (FCI). The FCI is a framework for evaluating financial condition that was initially developed by Groves, Godsey, and Shulman (1981) and later applied in US state-level studies by a number of scholars (Wang, Dennis, and Tu 2007; Arnett 2011). The results from this article cast serious doubt on the applicability of using the FCI, and the four associated solvency dimensions, as an appropriate methodology for evaluating local government financial condition.

Too Much of a Good Thing? Frequent Flyers and the Implications for the Coproduction of Public Service Delivery

The attention on coproduction and specifically technology-enabled coproduction has grown substantially. This attention had provided findings that highlight the benefits for citizens and governments. Previous research on technologically-enabled coproduction (Internet, smartphones, and centralized non-emergency municipal call centers), show that these technologies have brought coproduction within reach of citizens (Meijer 2011; Kim and Lee 2012; Norris and Reddick 2013; Clark, Brudney, and Jang 2013; Linders 2012; Clark et al. 2016; Clark and Shurik 2016) and have the potential to improve perceptions of government performance (Clark and Shurik 2016). The advent of technologically-enabled coproduction has also made it possible for some residents to participate at levels not previously possible. These high volume coproducers, now known as “frequent flyers,” have the potential to become pseudo-bureaucrats. This chapter seeks to understand if we need to be concerned about this development. Additionally, we seek to understand what individual & neighborhood characteristics affect the intensity of coproduction of public services and if there are diffusion effects of frequent flyers. To address these questions, we use surveys of San Francisco, California, residents conducted in 2011, 2013, and 2015. Our results suggest that the frequent flyers are largely representative of their communities. Our study finds some evidence that racial and ethnic minorities might be more likely to be a part of this group than the white majority. And perhaps most interestingly we find that neighbors appear to be learning from one another — the more frequent flyers that live in a neighborhood, the more likely it is that you are going to be a frequent flyer.

Multilateral regional and national determinants of policy adoption: the case of HIV/AIDS legislative action.

ObjectivesThis article examines the global legislative response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic with a particular focus on how policies were diffused internationally or regionally, or facilitated internally.MethodsThis article uses event history analysis combined with multinomial logit regression to model the legislative response of 133 countries.ResultsFirst, the results demonstrate that the WHO positively influenced the likelihood of a legislative response. Second, the article demonstrates that development bank aid helped to spur earlier legislative action. Third, the results demonstrate that developed countries acted earlier than developing countries. And finally, the onset and severity of the HIV/AIDS epidemic was a significant influence on the legislative response.ConclusionMultilateral organizations have a positive influence in global policy diffusion through informational advocacy, technical assistance, and financial aid. It is also clear that internal stressors play key roles in legislative action seen clearly through earlier action being taken in countries where the shock of the onset of HIV/AIDS occurred earlier and earlier responses taken where the epidemic was more severe.

Citizen Representation in City Government-Driven Crowdsourcing

This article examines the citizen representativeness of crowdsourcing achieved through 311 systems—the non-emergency and quality of life service request reporting systems used by local governments. Based on surveys of San Francisco residents conducted in 2011, 2013, and 2015, our findings suggest that no systematic biases exist in participation rates across a range of socio-economic indicators. In addition, the findings provide evidence that participation may be responding positively to the city’s responsiveness, thus creating a self-reinforcing process that benefits an increasingly diverse and representative body of users. This inquiry builds on earlier studies of Boston and San Francisco that show that 311 systems did not bias response to traditionally disadvantaged groups (lower socioeconomic status or racial/ethnic minorities) at the demand level nor from high-volume users.

Smarter City, Smarter Investment? A Study of the Relationship between 311 Systems and Credit Ratings in American Cities

This article investigates the relationship between credit ratings and a local governments’ decisions to utilize one type of smart city innovation—the 311 system (non-emergency versions of 911 that utilize phone, web, and mobile application interfaces). We pair longitudinal financial data with information on the implementation of 311 systems. The results of our analysis demonstrate that 311 systems, particularly web-based 311, do, in some instances, have a positive influence on the credit rating of a city. Additionally, we find that the duration since 311 was adopted is positively related with credit ratings. Again, the effect is especially pronounced with the web-based 311. These results suggest cities with 311 systems and those that have had 311 in place longer have higher credit ratings. These results could indicate that cities with 311 are better managed or that they are simply more transparent to investors, thus pose lower risks.

Does Local Government Coproduction Lead to Budget Adjustments? An Investigation of Boston, MA and San Francisco, CA

Coproduction provides a broad range of benefits to governments and citizens. However, we currently lack an understanding of how coproduction influences resource allocations. This article focuses on one application of coproduction, 311 systems, and how citizen requests might influence departmental budget allocations. We track budget allocation in the cities of Boston and San Francisco for 106 departments or sub-units from FY2005-FY2013.The findings indicate that there is no significant resource benefit for departments using 311 versus those that do not. While departments using 311 do have larger budget allocations than those that do not, those departments had larger budget allocations prior to the implementation of 311. It also provides evidence that data generated through the process of coproduction, similar to data generated for the measurement of performance, has little to no effect on the budget allocation process.

Assessing the Determinants of Information Accuracy in Coproduction

Coproduction is a way in which citizens are involved in delivery of public services. Earlier works in the coproduction literature focus on how citizen participation in government can help reduce costs and improve government services, but the study of how accurate the information gathered via coproduction has not yet been explored. This paper focuses on a coproduction mechanism with an explicit information gathering focus uses: 311 systems (call centers, websites, and smartphone apps). It utilizes the related crowdsourcing literature to better understand the potential errors of coproduction. This results show that task simplicity drives accurate, while task complexity drives inaccuracy. The results also demonstrate that the problems with coproduction are not always a problem of bad information, but poor program management (particularly response time to service requests).

Does Good Food Matter? A Food Balance Study of Cleveland

This article seeks to expand the understanding of the impact of physical environment on life and health outcomes. The article first examines the balance of food outlets (grocery stores, fast food, and convenience stores) throughout Cleveland and surrounding communities. It then assesses the socio-economic determinants of alternative suppliers of health foods or grocery store alternatives (GSAs), these would include farmers’ markets, urban farms, and CSAs. And finally it assesses the roles of food availability on life expectancy. The results from this paper demonstrate that one of the strongest predictors of the location of GSAs are grocery stores — leading one to believe that GSAs are not filling any gaps in the availability of health foods. Secondly, this article demonstrates that it is the socio-demographic characteristics that appear to be driving life expectancy, not the availability of fresh foods or a glut of unhealthy fast food.