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Schools and Stimulus.
No full textThis article analyzes the impact of the education funding component of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) on public school districts. We use cross-sectional differences in district-level Recovery Act funding to investigate the program\u27s impact on staffing, expenditures, and debt accumulation. To achieve identification, we use exogenous variation across districts in the allocations of Recovery Act funds for students with special needs. We estimate that 570,000, employment changed little to none, and debt increased by $370,000. Moreover, 70 percent of the increase in expenditures was in the form of capital outlays. Next, we build a dynamic, decision-theoretic model of a school district\u27s budgeting problem, which we calibrate to district-level expenditures and staffing data. The model can qualitatively match the employment and capital expenditure responses from our regressions. We also use the model to conduct policy experiments
A Dilemma for Buddhist Reductionsim
Get PDFThis article develops a dilemma for Buddhist Reductionism that centers on the nature of normative reasons. This dilemma suggests that Buddhist Reductionism lacks the resources to make sense of normative reasons and, furthermore, that this failure may cast doubt on the plausibility of Buddhist Reductionism as a whole...Can Buddhist philosophy make sense of reasons? In this article, I have examined whether one important Buddhist view—Buddhist Reductionism— has the resources to justify the existence of reasons. My diagnosis is pessimistic. I have argued that Buddhist Reductionism lacks the resources to make sense of reasons and, furthermore, that this failure casts doubt on the plausibility of Buddhist Reductionism as a whole. If my argument here is correct, then Buddhist Reductionists face a stark choice. They must either endorse skepticism about normative reasons or reject key Buddhist commit- ments. Neither option is appealing. If nothing else, this conclusion suggests that Buddhist philosophers have more work to do in clarifying how reasons fit into their ontologies
Chronic Disease Management: How IT and Analytics Create Healthcare Value Through the Temporal Displacement of Care
Get PDFThe treatment of chronic diseases consumes 86% of U.S. healthcare costs. While healthcare organizations have traditionally focused on treating the complications of chronic diseases, advances in information technology (IT) and analytics can help clinicians and patients manage and slow the progression of chronic diseases to result in higher quality of life for patients and lower healthcare costs.We build on prior research to introduce the notion of temporal displacement of care (TDC), in which IT and analytics create healthcare value by displacing the time at which providers and patients make interventions to improve healthcare outcomes and reduce costs. We propose that healthcare value is created by strategic actions taken at specific points-in-time during the treatment process. Our theoretical development identifies TDC mechanisms through which IT and analytics displace later high cost interventions in favor of earlier preventative procedures.We test our hypotheses using four years of data on 45,000 cardio-metabolic patients from the U.S. state of Vermont, which implemented a Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) program. Our study includes four cohorts with increasing levels of IT and analytics use: (1) non-PCMH practices, (2) PCMH practices with basic IT systems installed, (3) practices that completed data quality sprints (DQS) to increase use of IT systems, and (4) practices that use analytics through the Vermont Healthcare Information Exchange (VHIE).Our results provide insights into how TDC effects develop over time. In Year 1 after implementation, the DQS cohort demonstrates a marked increase in the use of preventative procedures such as eye exams and neuropathy screenings, the increase becomes more pronounced in Years 2 and 3, and the increase is even greater for the VHIE cohort. As the use of preventative procedures increases, emergency department utilization decreases, with a more pronounced decrease for the VHIE cohort than the DQS cohort. By Year 2, the DQS and VHIE cohorts experience a decrease in total healthcare costs, with a greater decrease for the VHIE cohort than the DQS cohort. By Year 3, the healthcare outcomes indicator of Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) level is statistically significantly lower, with a greater decrease for the VHIE cohort than the DQS cohort. The increased use of low-intervention healthcare treatments earlier in the process leads to a decrease in overall healthcare costs, which then leads to an improvement in healthcare indicators
Dead Wolf to Red Wolf: Virginia Reintroduction Habitat Suitability
Get PDFRed wolves (Canis Rufus) are the most endangered species of wolves. All red wolves currently in the wild are in the Albemarle Peninsula in North Carolina. Red wolf population in the Albemarle decreased from a peak of around 113-149 wolves in 2014 to 15-17 wolves in 2021. Most red wolf mortalities for this wild population occurred from anthropogenic causes such as accidental shooting, poaching, and vehicle strikes. The purpose of this study is to assess the suitability of the Delmarva Peninsula as a potential reintroduction site for another red wolf population. To do so I analyzed the land cover, deer harvesting records, and distance from roads of the Delmarva Peninsula and compared it to the Albemarle Peninsula as a baseline for suitability. Both Peninsulas proved to be very similar, with very close amounts of the focus land cover, cultivated crops; deer harvesting amounts between the peninsulas were also alike with the Albemarle Peninsula having higher amounts of deer harvesting by around 400 in 2021. Lastly, the average distance from roads was much higher for the Albemarle than the Delmarva Peninsula with a difference of 2,423 meters. Therefore, the results suggest that the Delmarva Peninsula would be a suitable location for red wolf reintroduction
