Public Policy & Institutions
Government, public money, institutional design, and the mechanisms through which collective choices acquire consequences.
A Few Places to Begin
Representative entry points from across the site.
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Socioeconomic Effects of the National Flood Insurance Program
This policy study estimates the social value of the National Flood Insurance Program from 1996 through 2010. It considers consumer surplus, flood-mitigation benefits, distributional weighting, public revenue, and sensitivity analysis together, because a program with this many moving parts does not become clearer by pretending it has only one.
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Social Security Policysplainer
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Howard County, Maryland
Chaired formal adjudicatory proceedings, evaluated complex regulatory records, managed high-conflict public hearings, and issued structured decisions. Served on the 2019–2021 Charter Review Commission examining county-government design.
Scholarship
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Blockchain Compliance with Federal Cryptographic Information Processing Standards
This paper asks the unglamorous but necessary question behind a technical proposal: whether a blockchain design can satisfy the standards and governance requirements of the system it is supposed to serve.
Books
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Socioeconomic Effects of the National Flood Insurance Program
This policy study estimates the social value of the National Flood Insurance Program from 1996 through 2010. It considers consumer surplus, flood-mitigation benefits, distributional weighting, public revenue, and sensitivity analysis together, because a program with this many moving parts does not become clearer by pretending it has only one.
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Handbook of Military and Defense Operations Research
Natalie Scala and I edited this handbook around the fact that operations research in security is not confined to a recognizable class of textbook problems. The second edition gathers work on military and defense applications across analysis, data, cyber, decision-making, and the operational contexts that make those tools matter.
Software
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waterfall
A compact R package for waterfall charts in base and lattice graphics, built to make the strange accounting of public organizations easier to reason about. The work is complete rather than actively expanding.
Teaching
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PSC 516 — Environmental Politics and Policy
This course explores the nexus between the environment and policymaking. We are going to look at the applications of politics to environmental questions, how the environment plays into larger political questions, and explore how to communicate environmental concerns in the policy context.
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PUAD 701 — Public Administration and Public Finance
This course will consider the economic impacts of governmental policies, especially at the state and local level.
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PUAD 702 — Public Financial Management
A discussion of public financial management, including debt management, accounting policies, performance management, and accountability. This discussion should extend beyond the introductory graduate-level course on budgeting.
Service
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Howard County, Maryland
Chaired formal adjudicatory proceedings, evaluated complex regulatory records, managed high-conflict public hearings, and issued structured decisions. Served on the 2019–2021 Charter Review Commission examining county-government design.
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Columbia Association
Reviewed budgets, long-term debt policy, allocation formulas, financial projections, and the financial consequences of redeveloping downtown Columbia; chaired the Budget Committee from 2005 to 2009.