Public Management, Services

A multidimensional research initiative spanning America's fragile infrastructure systems debuts today at the Urban Institute with transportation planning expert Sandra Rosenbloom as its director.

While much has been written about the decline of central cities, very little research has examined the problem in their suburbs. This report focuses on the suburbs of older industrial cities and how best to address the challenges they face. Using census data, literature review, and four in-depth case studies, the authors provide a detailed portrait of the underlying forces shaping distressed suburbs. It highlights a range of best practices used in case study cities for fostering growth and reducing poverty. These lessons can be instructive both to local leaders working to turn their cities around and to the federal policy makers supporting them.

One of the international community's overarching strategic objectives in Afghanistan is to promote a more capable public sector that serves the Afghan people. Afghanistan's Constitution and their Sub-National Governance Policy aim to establish a system of elected municipal governments and a framework that allows municipalities to effectively provide public services to their constituents. This will require a major transformation of municipalities from a weak public sector tier to a devoted local governance level. This paper reviews the current state of municipal governance in Afghanistan and discusses the re-orientation required in order for Afghanistan to achieve a more effective and responsive municipal sector.

Decentralization in Macedonia was conceived of in two different phases, allowing for an asymmetric allocation of fiscal powers. During the first phase, all local governments were assigned the responsibility to deliver only a few – mainly communal – local government functions. After fulfillment of specific conditions and approval by the central government, local governments in Macedonia would be allowed to take on their broader functional responsibilities. Using a detailed dataset of local government finances, this study analyzes the evolution of local government revenues and expenditures in Macedonia and highlights the main problems of the country's intergovernmental finance system.

This report examines federal agencies that are using data-driven performance reviews to improve agency effectiveness and efficiency. It draws from practices of agencies, including state and local governments. In their research, the authors identify three prerequisites to successful performance reviews: interested and engaged leadership; timely performance measures; staff that can analyze the measures before the performance review meetings.

Four questions were addressed in this study: 1) Does the Postal Service offer greater access to parcel and express transportation, money orders, and post office boxes than the private sector? 2) Do Postal Service prices establish a competitive baseline for other delivery services, money orders, and mailbox box rentals? 3) Does the Postal Service offer competitive advantages to small and home-based business? 4) Does the Postal Service provide commercial customers with an economical means of shipping packages? The analysis shows that the Postal Service improves access in very rural areas. The Postal Service is generally not a price leader is and does not act like a competitive player in the market.

This slide presentation summarizes work undertaken for the Postal Regulatory Commission to examine various aspects of the social value of postal services to the nation: 1) the economic benefits of post offices; 2) the transportation and price leadership role of the Postal Service for parcels, expedited services, money orders, and post office boxes; and 3) community safety and public safety benefits from the presence of letter carriers and post offices. The first two studies were completed; the third was not completed due to budgetary cutbacks. 

Does the closing of a post office have negative effects on the economic indicators of the surrounding community? This study uses a difference-in-differences approach to assess the economic impact of a post office closure on a community. We compared employment and number of business establishments in communities with a post office to similar communities where a post office has been closed between 2002 and 2005. While the results do not provide conclusive evidence of economic impact, they do suggest a small, sometimes significant, negative impact on employment in the ZIP codes with post office closures.