Panel:
Evaluating Public Performance Management Systems in Diverse Contexts
(Public and Non-Profit Management and Finance)
Saturday, November 5, 2016: 10:15 AM-11:45 AM
Holmead East (Washington Hilton)
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
Panel Organizers: Obed Q Pasha, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Panel Chairs: Burt S. Barnow, George Washington University
Discussants: Lauren Edwards, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Performance management systems are increasingly being used by federal, state, and local governments to improve the performance of public agencies. Evaluation of these systems in the literature is largely focused in the context of U.S. local government service delivery using cross-sectional data. This panel fills this gap by including studies that employ longitudinal/panel data and apply sophisticated methods to evaluate the success of a diverse set of performance management regimes in improving organizational performance in different contexts. The first paper examines the impact of performance-based incentives for leading bureaucrats on reducing pollution levels in 31 Chinese provinces, the second paper evaluates the impact of North Carolina's Fiscal Analysis Tool on municipal and county governments, and the third paper evaluates whether a federal performance-based grant helped increase the performance levels of local transit agencies. Together these papers allow us to examine the outcomes of three variations of performance management systems in three very different contexts (federal, state, and international) using over 10 years of longitudinal data and robust econometric modelling.
