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As a preliminary assessment of sunset laws, a subset of laws concerning agencies regulating occupational licensing is reviewed. Public data from 7 states indicate that in 1977, out of 102 cases involving such licensing, 21% resulted in termination of the licensing program. Refined analysis indicates that smaller, less affluent, less educated, & less politically powerful occupations are more prone to deregulation. The significance of sunset lies in its quality as a tool of political decisionmakers. 2 Tables. E. Riebeling.

The public policy literature suggests that effective program implementation is less likely if formulation and implementation reside at different levels of government than if they are at the same level. This article provides an empirical examination of this hypothesis using the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSHA) as the vehicle for the analysis. The Act allows states the option of implementing its provisions; 22 states operate their own programs while federal officials operate programs in the remaining 28. Comparison of enforcement activity across these two levels of implementation indicates that federal officials have displayed significantly more implementation activity than their state counterparts. Explanations of the differences in factors which affect implementation effort for the two groups of programs and the implications for future policy development are offered.

The public sector contracting literature has long argued that outsourced services need to be and, in fact, are subject to a more elevated level of scrutiny compared to internally delivered services. Recently, the performance measurement and management literature has suggested that the twin themes of accountability and results have altered the management landscape at all levels of government. By focusing on performance monitoring, the implication is that monitoring levels for internally provided services should more closely approximate those for contracted services. The analysis provided here yields empirical comparisons of how governments monitor the same service provided in‐house and contracted out. We find evidence that services provided internally by a government's own employees are indeed monitored intensively by the contracting government, with levels of monitoring nearly as high as those for services contracted out to for‐profit providers. In contrast, however, we find strong evidence that performance monitoring by the contracting government does not extend to nonprofit and other governmental service providers, each of which is monitored much less intensively than when comparable services are provided internally. For such service providers, it appears that monitoring is either outsourced along with services, or simply reduced.

The model of tax abatements includes taxing district and firm characteristics to explain a locality's abatement generosity. The community-level characteristics are for the school district in the enterprise zone that grants the tax abatement. Firm characteristics include the size, credit rating, number of newly created and/or retained jobs, and the quality of the jobs. Generosity of abatements is measured by the percentage of taxes abated. Firms that had credit ratings showing them to be more suitable risks fared better in negotiations; those that brought newly created jobs garnered more generous abatements; and those that promised retained jobs in the negotiation fared less well.