Laura Langbein

American University, Department of Public Administration and Policy, Faculty Member

Followers

255

Following

Co-authors

Public Views

Laura I. Langbein
PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Political Science

Professor Langbein teaches quantitative methods, program evaluation, policy analysis, and public choice. Her research fields include: theories of bureaucratic discretion, productivity, principal-agent models, social capital, and cooperation in the workplace; theories of influence of interest groups in Congress and the bureaucracy; empirical applications in various policy areas, including the environment, education, defense, housing, criminal justice (death penalty and police), and corruption. Her recent articles have appeared in Political Research Quarterly, Journal of Politics, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Social Science Quarterly, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Evaluation Review, Public Choice, Public Administration Review, and other scholarly journals. She has recent articles on the demand for music programs in the public schools; on the impact of cooperation among police on their productivity (coauthored with a PhD student); on the efficiency of residential community associations (coauthored with an MPP student); and (with AU President Kerwin) on the comparison of negotiated to conventional rule making at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She is studying the consequences of varying levels of discretion in federal agencies, and the measurement and equilibria of corruption in countries. She has an article in Economics of Education Review on the link between student teaching evaluations and grade inflation, and a forthcoming article in International Public Management Review on the impact of discretion on performance when employees are intrinsically or extrinsically motivated. Her recent textbook, Program Evaluation: A Statistical Guide, (with Claire Felbinger) was published by ME Sharpe in Sept. 2006. In January 2002, she was the Hooker Distinguished Visiting Professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. In Feb. 2006, she was the keynote speaker at the Southern Evaluation Association.

less

Interests

Uploads

Papers by Laura Langbein

Program Evaluation: State of the Art/State of the Practice

Public Administration Review, 1981

Controlling Federal Agencies: The Impact of External Controls on Worker Discretion and Productivity. Paper presented at the 2006 Meeting of the Association for Policy Analysis Management

Previous scholarship in political science and public choice has investigated why legislatures som... more Previous scholarship in political science and public choice has investigated why legislatures sometimes choose to delegate policy choice to executive agencies, and sometimes make their own detailed choices, but there is little research on the consequences of the choice to delegate or not. This paper provides empirical evidence regarding the actual consequences of legislative delegation and agency discretion on the work of U.S. government employees. The findings suggest that delegation directly affects both employee discretion and productivity. Legislative delegation is also associated with more executive political appointees, whose presence reduces both employee discretion and productivity. The findings also show that whether employees with more discretion are more productive than those with less depends on their commitment to the job: employees who are motivated by liking their work more than their pay use their discretion to enhance productivity, while employees who are motivated ...

Vive la Différence? The Impact of Diversity on the Turnover Intention of Public Employees and Performance of Public Agencies

by Edmund C Stazyk and Laura Langbein

International Public Management Journal, 2013

Viva La Differénce? The Impact of Diversity on the Job Satisfaction of Public Employees and Performance of Public Agencies

by Edmund C Stazyk and Laura Langbein

maxwell.syr.edu

This paper addresses previous shortcomings in diversity management scholarship by testing an expa... more This paper addresses previous shortcomings in diversity management scholarship by testing an expanded diversity model borrowed from the work of economist Scott Page. Page's model assumes diversity can be measured as both a mean and a variance, and that it consists of cognitive, identity, and preference characteristics. We link his conceptualization of diversity to both individual-level outcomes and organizational productivity. Results indicate that identity diversity reduces agency productivity and increases turnover intentions, while cognitive diversity has small and mixed effects. Findings also suggest that individual employee discretion as well as overall discretion in the agency shape outcomes in more important ways than diversity, and that the impact of agency size is contingent on overall discretion in the agency. We conclude with a discussion on the theoretical ramifications of our findings.

Download

Performance Management, High-Powered Incentives, and Environmental Policies in China

International Public Management Journal, 2015

ABSTRACT China has a highly centralized bureaucracy that is no longer strictly monitored by polit... more ABSTRACT China has a highly centralized bureaucracy that is no longer strictly monitored by political loyalty but by governance performance (e.g., economic growth), rewarded with promotion and monetary incentives. In the early 2000s, environmental criteria were added to this system. As part of this effort, a high-powered performance management system was introduced in 2006. It held high-level provincial officials, who are part of the nomenklatura, personally responsible for meeting specific emissions targets. Using data from China Statistics Yearbooks and several official news archives, the empirical results indicate that the implementation of the new performance management system reduced emissions only for air pollutants, which are the most publicly visible among the targeted pollutants. Water pollution, which is less visible but also a mandated target, was unaffected. Emissions of soot, an untargeted pollutant, were also unaffected. The findings imply that, even in centrally managed systems like China, compliance with a high-stakes reward for measured performance is not universal.

Still No Evidence of Negative Outcomes from Same-Sex Marriage

Econ Journal Watch, 2015

We are pleased that Professors Allen and Price (2015) have continued to investigate the empirical... more We are pleased that Professors Allen and Price (2015) have continued to investigate the empirical connection between state laws that permit (or do not ban) same-sex unions/marriages and the possibility of adverse consequences for families. Using updated information about state laws, and using their preferred coding of that information, Professors Allen and Price have largely replicated our findings (Langbein and Yost 2009). In both investigations, same-sex marriage laws appear to have no adverse effects on families in the state where the laws operate. Both studies suffer from low power. More data and better research designs were not available when we wrote our study; we look forward to these improvements in the future.

Download

Accountability and Private Governments

Real Estate eJournal, 2005

It is commonly believed that residential community associations (RCAs)-a.k.a. homeowners associat... more It is commonly believed that residential community associations (RCAs)-a.k.a. homeowners associations and condominium associations - enhance the value of residents' properties. If RCAs provide a level of services with benefits equal to or exceeded by residents' willingness to pay for them, then property values should remain constant or increase. But the organizations may not provide an efficient level of services because of inadequate oversight by community residents. Instead, RCAs may adopt policies that reflect the preferences of community activists who have higher demands for services than the mean or median resident. In the most likely type of inefficient RCA, an increment in expenses for services reduces property values because the marginal purchaser gets less benefit out of the services than their cost. In that case, the excessive fee will be negatively capitalized into property values.

format_quoteProperty values rise 0.5% with each percentage point increase in assessed value, showcasing the value dynamics in community associations.format_quote

Download

Viva La Differénce? The Impact of Diversity on the Job Satisfaction of Public Employees and Performance of Public Agencies

Download

Bureaucratic discretion in public agencies: principals, principles, and agents

The Political Economy of Environmental Governance : Assessing the Role of Performance Management and Anticorruption Efforts

Little is known about the dynamic effects of two prominent public sector reformsperformance manag... more Little is known about the dynamic effects of two prominent public sector reformsperformance management and anticorruption efforts-on the achievement of policy goals in the absence of the rule of law and in the presence of incentives to take advantage of corruption resulting from high rewards for performance. In the context of environmental governance, using panel data for China's 31 provinces in the 2000s, this study finds that the increase in treatment facility construction adds to emissions, but reduces their growth rate. High-powered incentives and anticorruption efforts do not have direct mitigation effects on pollution. To a small degree, performance regimes indirectly reduce the rate of growth of both mandated and non-mandated emissions, indicating a positive spillover effect of facility construction. Also, anticorruption efforts appear to make facility construction reduce the rate of increase of the visible, mandated pollutant, suggesting positive, but minor, effects on environmental policy management. Performance management and anticorruption efforts are two prominent reforms of public administration (Bouckaert and Halligan 2008; Moynihan et al. 2011; Neshkova and Rosenbaum 2015; Newcomer 2015; Zhang and Lavena 2015). Yet evidence regarding whether performance regimes improve the public sector's performance remains mixed, and the investigative lens of performance management is limited to a handful of policy areas (e.g., education, job training, crime/policing, public health, child support) (Gerrish 2016). Meanwhile, whether and how anticorruption activities in the public sector shape policy outcomes is still unclear, especially in the global context where corruption may be a common practice in some countries (Yang 2009). In addition, little research examines the relation between anticorruption efforts and performance management. Ironically, as we discuss later, especially in settings where the rule of law is not well established, pressure for performance can induce demands to take advantage of corruption to accomplish policy goals that are accompanied with high-powered rewards. This study explores the interactive effects of performance management and anticorruption efforts on the relationship between outputs (i.e., measureable activities controlled or directed by governments) and outcomes (i.e., the goals that the activities are intended to accomplish) in the context of environmental policy management in China. Examining these questions in this specific setting is both theoretically and practically significant. Increasingly, China's central government has recognized a wide array of adverse effects of air, water, and other forms of pollution on China's own public health, economic productivity, social stability,

format_quoteEach 1% increase in facility construction correlates with a 0.05% rise in SO2 and COD emissions, undermining pollution reduction efforts.format_quote

Download

Linking Women's Descriptive and Substantive Representation

Download

Independent Professional Bureaucracies and Corruption : Evidence from Latin America

This exploratory work aims to examine the relationship between merit-based civil services and cor... more This exploratory work aims to examine the relationship between merit-based civil services and corruption. Our research question is whether making bureaucracies more independent and merit-based reduces corruption in Latin America. We use differences in differences to measure simple correlations between changes in corruption and changes in civil service merit in terms of law (de jure) and practice (de facto) in a group of Latin American countries. Although previous scholarship, which is cross-sectional, has found a negative relationship between merit and corruption, our time-based results suggest that we need to take with caution that generalization. In some countries with longer traditions of merit in civil service, there can be such a high level of independence that the risk of corruption increases with additional bureau independence. In addition, while there have been regulatory advancements in countries with less developed civil services, it does not necessarily mean that those re...

format_quoteTemporal analysis reveals a positive correlation between civil service quality improvements and corruption reductions, contradicting previous cross-sectional data.format_quote

Download

Who Gets Bribed? Social Capital and Street-Level Corruption in Latin America

PUAD 604-001: Program Evaluation - course syllabus

Are State-Owned Enterprises Good Citizens in Environmental Governance? Evidence From the Control of Air Pollution in China

Administration & Society

As profit-seeking corporations, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have incentives to maximize profit... more As profit-seeking corporations, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have incentives to maximize profits from economic activities. However, subject to state ownership, SOEs are expected also to be more accountable for public welfare than their private counterparts. This study examines whether SOEs’ relative provincial dominance reinforces government’s demand to reduce air pollution in China, in the context of anticorruption and performance management. The results suggest that greater relative SOE dominance reduces sulfur dioxide emissions, but this effect is significant only in provinces with a low level of corruption case investigations. Performance management has no discernible moderating impact on the effect of SOE relative dominance.

The Anatomy of Retention in the Federal Government: Different Strokes for Some Folks?

Academy of Management Proceedings, 2015

Employee turnover imposes considerable costs on organizations. Turnover results from retirement, ... more

The Impact of Love and Money on Performance in the Federal Government: Implications for Pay for Performance

I summarize what we can learn from personnel economics about the likely empirical veracity of the... more I summarize what we can learn from personnel economics about the likely empirical veracity of the statements from OPM and ICMA asserting the efficacy of pay-forperformance for public employees. I then provide empirical evidence from the U. S. federal government showing that, controlling for indicators of human capital, agency location, and many other variables, that individual discretion on the job and intrinsic satisfaction with the job are more predictive of a (subjective) measure of individual performance than pay satisfaction and pay for performance (i.e., detailed lists of “objective” measures, or closed contracts). Higher salaries predict higher performance, but the relative impact of objective pay is less than the impact of intrinsic values and discretion. DRAFT 091209 Prepared for the Public Management Research Conference, Columbus, Ohio, Oct. 1-3, 2009.

format_quoteJob discretion and satisfaction are better predictors of performance than linking pay to assessment; actual pay affects performance minimally.format_quote

Download

The Anti-Social Effects of Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage: Fact or Fiction?

Sexuality Research and Social Policy

The Anatomy of Retention in the U.S. Federal Government: Exit, Voice, or Money?

International Public Management Journal

Money Matters: Sector Differences, Competition, and the Public Personnel System

The American Review of Public Administration

This study explores whether public personnel systems, particularly their compensation systems, ar... more This study explores whether public personnel systems, particularly their compensation systems, are flexible and responsive to market wages in a competitive labor market. Focusing on registered nurses, we explore whether and how the public, private nonprofit, and for-profit labor markets influence each other in determining wages. We also examine if sector plays a role in determining wages. We use American Community Survey data from 2016 and 2017 to test these expectations. Fixed effects regressions and seemingly unrelated regressions with Chow tests reveal that higher wages in the dominant for-profit sector appear to drive up wages in the other two sectors, and vice versa. The results imply that public personnel systems are not so rigid and inflexible as perceived. Rather, they are sensitive to supply and demand and offer wages responding to competition from other sectors. Moreover, public employees do not ignore competitive opportunities in alternative employment markets in the priv...

Laura Langbein

Uploads

Papers by Laura Langbein

Log In