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The size and variability of jury damage awards in tort cases has been a contentious issue for over a decade. Nevertheless, there has been little empirical work addressing the relationship between the size of jury awards to products liability victims and their compensable losses. This paper examines this relationship using a sample of California cases. A compensatory model of damages based on plaintiff, injury, and case characteristics explains a large proportion of the variance in damage awards suggesting that juries rely heavily on monetary and non‐monetary loss estimates in determining damages. The evidence argues against charges of unpredictability, and indicates undercompensation on average.

Manufacturers actively lobbied in the 1980s for legislative intervention in the tort system that would ease the burden on defendants in products liability cases. In response, all states enacted some type of general tort reform. California eliminated joint and several liability for noneconomic damages with the approval by voters in 1986 of Proposition 51. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of the California reform on manufacturer outcomes in products liability cases. The results suggest that manufacturers are paying a lower proportion of plaintiff awards than they would have in the absence of Proposition 51.

A model is developed to articulate the role of public interest & organized interest groups in legislative regulation of occupations. While information asymmetry & externalities are cited as the reasons occupational regulation is demanded, it is argued that only insignificant information asymmetry should require occupational regulation. The demand for regulation is affected by size & cohesion of interest groups & political market volatility; the supply of regulation is affected by legislative structural constraints & political philosophy of the legislators; & information asymmetry & the type of regulation affect both demand & supply. To test the model, data are drawn from the US Census Bureau, Council of State Governments, & the professional organizations of five occupations that experienced significant growth in states that regulated them, 1968-1980 -- geologist, landscape architect, librarian, physician's assistant, & psychologist. Evidence of the effectiveness of organized interest groups & the importance of the legislative environment are revealed; however, the role of public interest groups may have been underestimated. Suggestions are made for future research. 5 Tables, 33 References. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractPublic agencies increasingly contract with nonprofit organizations to lead community‐based networks for social service delivery. We explore the role that partnership characteristics play in the effectiveness of these networks. Using data on children and family services in Los Angeles County, we consider the impact of both the motivations for forming partnerships and the nature of the resulting partnerships on perceived outcomes for clients, interorganizational relationships, and organizational learning. We find that client outcomes and interorganizational relationships are enhanced when partnerships are formed to meet certain programmatic and organizational goals. Organizational learning, however, is affected only when partnerships are formed to enhance organizational legitimacy. Partners selected because they share common vision increase effectiveness, while those selected because there are few alternative partners decrease effectiveness. Finally, when partnerships use an interorganizational coordination mechanism, client outcomes are improved. The managerial implications of these impacts for the nonprofit sector are developed. The results lend considerable support to the role of partnership motivation and partner selection in the effectiveness of nonprofit lead‐organization networks, and specificity about the nature of that role.

The recent worldwide growth of community foundations presents new opportunities for community-based social change. Realizing that promise requires that community foundations sustain the charitable support of their communities with increasing competition for these resources, and thus an understanding of the connection between community characteristics and charitable giving is necessary. The authors focus here on the potential role of community social capital. This study develops and empirically explores a model that connects social capital and gifts to community foundations, while controlling for community demographics and the community's exposure to charitable organizations. The authors find that per capita gifts to community foundations increase with the level of social trust in the community. In addition, gifts are affected by the number of years that community foundations have existed in the region, population density, homeownership, and the poverty rate. Implications are developed for community foundations and for our understanding of the different dimensions of social capital.

This paper develops a two‐stage decision‐making model of the public policy termination process, which integrates political and economic influences on local decision makers. We empirically explore the model using data on the provision of local public hospitals in California over 1981–95. The results provide support for the model as we find that triggering events as well as characteristics of the local decision‐making context affect the termination decision. For the case of public hospitals, we find that lower state and local revenue growth rates increase the likelihood of termination, while decision makers in communities with a larger local health budget, more unionized public employees, and a larger private hospital sector are less likely to terminate local public hospitals. The implications for public policy and for our understanding of the termination process are discussed.