Price Governance Salon: Gregg Van Ryzin, PhD

Experiments in Public Management Research: Challenges and Contributions

Gregg Van Ryzin, PhD, professor at Rutgers University-Newark to speak at USC Price School Governance Salon.  Interest in experimental research in public management is on the rise, yet the field still lacks a broad understanding of its role in producing substantive findings and theoretical advances. 

This talk outlines the advantages of experiments in public management and showcases their rapidly developing contribution to research and practice.  It offers a comprehensive overview of the relationship between experiments and public management theory and the benefits for examining causal effects. The key topics addressed are the distinct logic of experimental methods in the laboratory, in the field, and in survey experiments; how leading researchers are using different kinds of experiments to build knowledge about theory and practice across many areas; and the research agendas for new experimental work in public management.

Gregg G. Van Ryzin, PhD, is professor and interim dean in the School of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers University-Newark, where he also co-directs the Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration. He has interests in both survey research and experimental methods and conducts empirical studies on a range of topics, including citizen satisfaction with urban services, coproduction, performance measurement, nonprofit organizations, housing policy, and comparative public opinion about government policy and institutions. Prof. Van Ryzin is widely published in scholarly journals in public administration, policy analysis, and urban affairs and is author (with Dahlia K. Remler) of Research Methods in Practice (2011/2014).