Agency Participants Research Articles

Report of the Committee on Economic Statistics

The current members of the Committee on Economic Statistics are Katharine Abraham, University of Maryland (chair); Robert Feenstra, University of California, Davis; Dennis Fixler, Bureau of Economic Analysis; Barbara Fraumeni, University of Southern Maine; David Johnson, Census Bureau; Dale Jorgenson, Harvard University; Charles Schultze, Brookings Institution; Matthew Shapiro, University of Michigan; and Jack Triplett, Brookings Institution. The Committee met by phone four times during 2007, in January, March, May, and October. In January 2007, the Executive Committee gave the Committee on Economic Statistics standing authority to organize up to three sessions each year for inclusion in the program of the annual meeting of the Association. The Committee has organized three sessions for the January 2008 meeting, one titled “Innovation, Intangibles, and R&D,” a second titled “Reconciliation of Seemingly Inconsistent Data Series,” and the third titled “The Output of Banking and Finance.” Each includes a mix of academic and statistical agency participants. Topics being considered for sessions at the January 2009 meeting are health accounting, matching survey data to administrative records in the production of statistical information, and the development of consistent industry production accounts. The committee wishes to cast its net widely to identify papers suitable for inclusion in the sessions it organizes and, for January 2010 and beyond, plans to develop a process for soliciting proposals for papers in topic areas of potential interest. The Committee also has undertaken the task of commissioning reviews of needs for data in particular subject matter areas. One such report on needs for data in public economics has been completed by a group chaired by Joel Slemrod. Report of the Committee on Economic Statistics

Streamlining the National Environmental Policy Act Process Through Cooperative Local-State-Federal Transportation and Land Use Planning

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, FHWA, and California Department of Transportation have initiated a demonstration in California called Partnership for Integrated Planning. The purpose of this program is to obtain early involvement from local, state, and federal agency staff to help in planning for transportation infrastructure, urban growth, and resource protection together, rather than just to negotiate over permits for major infrastructure at the project stage. A report on this demonstration project is provided. The project applies a simple urban growth model based on a geographic information system to evaluate a transportation plan and projects in Merced County (population 211,000 in 2000). Interviews with agency participants show that, in general, resource agency personnel have limited involvement with transportation planning and transportation planners have limited knowledge of environmental planning; they therefore need to develop methods for identifying their concerns for 20-year planning purposes. Planning for resource protection for a whole county is quite different from arguing for maximum protection of resources at the project scale. The early steps in building the model and acquiring data sets are reviewed.

Community membership and social networks in mental health self-help agencies.

This article explores community membership among self-help agency (SHA) participants. It is suggested that SHAs foster the enhancement of peer-oriented social networks, leading to the experience of shared community. Social network analysis was used to examine the structure of support mechanisms, and to assess levels of community membership through peer inclusion. Results indicate that both individual and organizational characteristics play roles in predicting peer presence in social networks. Organizational empowerment is a key factor, with the SHA emerging as a promising locus for peer support development through enhanced social networks. Implications for the organization of consumer-based services are discussed.

SENSITIVE AREAS PLANNING FOR INLAND SOUTH FLORIDA: WEB AND GIS TOOLS

ABSTRACT A sensitive areas plan has been developed for inland South Florida, a region with considerable natural resources at risk and significant oil production, storage, and transport. The plan consists of several Web-based tools and a sensitive-areas geographic information system (GIS). Each component of the plan is briefly described below, and several examples are provided. The Web and GIS tools currently are under review by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Region IV and other project participants. Future plans include distributing the plan on compact disk (CD) and over the Internet. The digital format of the sensitive areas plan, and its future availability on CD and the Internet, should enhance the distribution and use of the information by spill planners and responders, making it easier to transport, access, and update. The sensitive areas plan for inland South Florida should serve as a useful model for developing inland plans in EPA Region IV and elsewhere, and should assist spill planning and response efforts in sensitive inland environments in South Florida and elsewhere.

Ad hoc conferences of hospital and community professionals in cases of hospitalized physically abused children

Objective: Although community interagency child protection teams are common and well described in the literature, they may not meet the needs of investigating agencies when children are hospitalized in tertiary medical facilities some distance from their homes. Sometimes, the communities in which they live do not have effective teams, or the information to be conveyed is highly technical. This report describes and assesses ad hoc multi-agency conferences with varying hospital and community agency participants, each conference devoted to a single hospitalized child suspected of having been abused. Method: A questionnaire devised by the authors was administered by telephone to 22 former conference participants from state social agencies, law enforcement units, and prosecuting attorney's offices. Results: Most of the surveyed participants reported the case-specific conferences to have been helpful, meeting their goals and affecting the outcomes of their cases. Conclusion: The conferences appear to have been worthwhile. Although they were associated with some disadvantages for the involved professionals and the sponsoring hospital, the disadvantages appeared to have been offset by the potential benefits for the children, families, participants, and hospital.

Agency Participants in Multicountry Advertising: A Preliminary Examination of Affiliate Characteristics and Environments

While much attention in the international advertising field has been given to message standardization-adaptation, the scope of multicountry campaigns has been a neglected area. In this 15-agency/344-affiliate survey of transnational advertising activities, smaller, regional campaigns were found to be the most popular form of transnational advertising. Agencies executing these types of campaigns had smaller client bases and implemented fewer multi-country campaigns than those covering more extensive major market or global campaigns. Agency affiliates participating in globally comprehensive campaigns were more likely to be wholly owned than those involved in regional or major market advertising efforts. Parent agencies exercised little influence over affiliate participations in multimarket campaigns.

Elain: Innovative transfer of a federal-industry network

ELAIN is an automation project for the processing of export-license applications by the Bureau of Export Administration of the Department of Commerce (DOC). The project is unusual in that it was implemented by administrators without going through normal approval channels. The relationships between the change agent and the agency participants can best be described by Havelock's diffusion-adoption model, which depicts the execution as a one-way relationship from sender to receiver. The more complex models that were examined do not apply because this project was inauguated and furthered by bureaucrats, as opposed to the more usual participation of political appointees. The ELAIN system uses commercial valueadded telecommunications vendors to trasfer the information between the exporters and DOC. Industry used its own funds to develop the necessary special features, with repayment possible only if exporters used their sevices, paying fees for this convenience. No precedent for this type of arrangement was found, hence it is considered to be a social invention as well as an innovation.

The siting impasse and a rational choice model of regulatory behavior: An agency for power plant siting

Reasons for the current siting impasse, including participatory activism, regulatory failure, the multiplication of considered interests, and the “investigative caveat,” are reviewed, and the existing logic of regulator behavior, viewed as a rational choice model, is summarized. Three sets of goals for agency participants are identified: personal goals of agency decision-makers, organizational goals of the agency as a whole, and goals of agency clients; and the incentive system of a new administrative agency structured so as to make satisfaction of these goals contribute toward informed and impartial decision-making. Major structural components of the agency would be a Director, a Corps of Examiners, counsel(s) for special interest(s) of special merit, a Public Counsel, and a Research and Information Office. The model is applied to the case of a regional or state-level agency to handle power plant siting.

Concepts of Social Conflict: Use in Social Work Curriculum

tion, affecting, as it does, some of its most central institutions, and not least of all the universities, underscores the significance of processes for the development of social practice and social policies. Few as pects of social work practice unfold with out evidence of conflict, competition, or rivalry between individuals, groups, organi zations, and/or institutions. Such is pervasive in community life. Its very uni versality suggests that is a property of social organization.1 Quincy Wright, a careful student of the subject, suggests that conflict in some form ... is probably an essential and desirable element of human society. A society cannot exist without competition and conflict.2 While little empirical evidence is re corded on the subject, one has the impres sion that social workers frequently find themselves involved in interpersonal and intraorganizational disputes, that social agencies are frequently in competition and with one another, and that social agency participants and adherents are fre quently pitted against other institutions in the community, competing for scarce re sources and attempting, through a variety of patterns of organization and action, to affect changes in their modes of operation and service delivery. One might have ex pected that this general circumstance would have led the profession to a careful study of the processes of social and, con sequently, to the development of insight and skill in dealing with them. In fact, 1 Raymond W. Mack, Components of Social Con flict, Social Problems Vol. 12, No. 4 (Spring, 1965). Wherever human beings are found (1) social organization exists, (2) social ensues, and (3) social is, at least to some extent, deprecated (p. 388). See also Ralf Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1959), p. 208; and E. E. Schattschneider, The Semi Sovereign People (New York: Rinehart and Winston, 1960), p. 71, All politics, all leadership and all organiza tion involves the management of conflict. 2 Quincy Wright, Nature of Conflict, The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. IV (June, 1951), pp. 197-198, 200.