Publications

At the turn of the 20th century, most cities in America featured a patronage-based system of governance, but over the next few decades, patronage was replaced by civil service. Civil service restructured the relationship between elected officials and government employees, with employees benefiting from a variety of new protections.  Yet in studying this change, scholars have largely ignored the role local employees themselves might have played in the transformation.  We argue that city employees stood to benefit from civil service, and in places where they had agency and clout, they were important drivers of its adoption.  We collected a dataset for more than 1,000 municipal governments, determining whether and when they adopted civil service and whether their employees were organized in an occupational organization.  Our analysis of these new data shows the influence of city employees was an important contributor to the spread of civil service in American local government.

State and local government decisions about how school funding is raised and allocated have profound impacts on American public education, and in recent years, experts have documented large increases in one type of spending in particular: public pensions. Because most data on school district pension expenditures are at the state level, it has so far been difficult to assess what changes local school districts have made in response. In this article, I analyze a new dataset of the annual pension expenditures of approximately 200 unified school districts across the United States from 2005 to 2016. Consistent with findings in the literature, I find that pension expenditures rose in real terms in most of them, but also that there has been significant variation in that growth. Moreover, in a descriptive analysis, I find that larger within-district pension expenditure growth is associated with 1) greater revenue growth in the subsequent year and 2) reductions in school district employment, mainly through reductions in the number of non-teaching staff. Finally, there is evidence that districts’ responses to rising pension expenditures may depend on state political institutions, in particular whether the states have mandatory collective bargaining for teachers.

Because of problems created by the incentive structure for carbon offsets as a mode of climate mitigation, companies should switch to a “contributions” framing to preserve a crucial flow of climate investment.

Cookstove carbon offset projects can progress multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including climate, energy, health, gender, poverty and deforestation. However, project emission reductions must be accurately or conservatively estimated to avoid undermining climate action and long-term SDG financing. Here we conduct a comprehensive, quantitative, quality assessment of offsets by comparing five cookstove methodologies with published literature and our own analysis. We find misalignment, in order of importance, with fraction of non-renewable biomass, firewood–charcoal conversion, stove adoption, stove usage, fuel consumption, stacking (using multiple stoves), rebound and emission factors. Additionality, leakage, permanence and overlapping claims require more research. We estimate that our project sample is over-credited 9.2 times. Gold Standard’s metered methodology, which directly monitors fuel use, is most aligned with our estimates (1.5 times over-credited) and has the largest potential for emission abatement and health benefit. We provide recommendations to align methodologies with current science and SDG progress.

You can find a summary of our findings, specific guidance for credit buyers and project developers, along with a list of quality cookstoves offset projects here: https://gspp.berkeley.edu/research-and-impact/centers/cepp/projects/berkeley-carbon-trading-project/cookstoves

This study provides causal evidence on the impact of life skills programming on the mental health of adolescent girls aged 10-19 in three distinct low- and middle-income countries: Tanzania, Bangladesh, and Ethiopia. Life skills interventions significantly improved a component of mental health in all three contexts, with reductions in depression in Tanzania, and improvements in socio-emotional development in Bangladesh and Ethiopia. However, findings suggest substantial heterogeneity in impact. Programs that target both adolescent boys and girls appear more effective than those that target girls alone, and existing supportive environments are a necessary condition for programs to improve mental health.

Since  establishing  itsfirst  campus  in  1868,the University  of  California (UC), California’s land-grant  university,developed into the nation’s first multi-campus systemin the United States,andistodaywidely recognized as the world’s premier network of public research universities. This short essay provides anhistorical brief on the role that shared  governance,  and  specifically  the  role  of  the  Academic  Senate, playedin  creating  an  academic  culture  of excellence and high achievementin pursuing itstripartite mission of teaching and learning, research and knowledge production, and public service. A key component in understanding the critical role of the Senate in UC’sevolution from  a  single  campus  in  Berkeley  to  now  a  ten-campus  system  is  the  university’sunusual  designation  as  a  public trust in the state constitution that, beginning in 1879,protected the university at critical times from external political pressuresand allowedthe university to develop aninternal academic cultureguided by the Academic Senate. By the 1920s, the emergence of California’s unique and innovative public system of higher education, with UC as the sole public provider  of  doctoral  degrees  and  state  funded  research,  also  helps  explain  the  ability  of  the  UC  system  to maintain itsmission  and formulate what  is  termed aOne  Universitymodel.  The  Academic  Senate  hascreatedcoherencyand shared valueswithin UC,and a culture and expectationfor faculty performance that is unique among universitiesaroundthe world. Thisessay also offersa brief reflection on the Academic Senate’spast influence, its current status,and prospective role. Theoverallintent is to provide context forthe current academic community and  higher  education  scholarsregarding  the past  and  future role  of  faculty  in  university  governance  and management, and what distinguishes UC in the pantheon of major research universities.