The Pennsylvania Adoption Exchange Improves Its Matching Process

Slaugh, Vincent W.; Akan, Mustafa; Kesten, Onur; Ünver, M. Utku

doi:10.1287/inte.2015.0828

Cited by 17 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 16 publications

(13 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The combination of simulation and optimization has been widely used to address the challenges associated with complex societal problems requiring local government coordination (i.e, planning emergency response infrastructure [ 2 ]). Simulation can often be used to test the effects of potential interventions in healthcare and human systems, for example, the work in [ 3 ] studies medical clinics and [ 4 ] models an adoption matching process. Additionally, the problems for constructing and allocating affordable housing has been studied under community based operations research [ 5 ].…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discrete-event simulation modeling for housing of homeless populations

2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The San Francisco Bay Area has experienced a rapid rise in homelessness over the past decade. There is a critical need for quantitative analysis to help determine how to increase the amount of housing to meet the needs of people experiencing homelessness. Noting that the shortage of housing available through the homelessness response system can be modeled as a queue, we propose a discrete-event simulation to model the long-term flow of people through the homelessness response system. The model takes as input the rate of additional housing and shelter available each year and delivers as output the predicted number of people housed, sheltered, or unsheltered in the system. We worked with a team of stakeholders to analyze the data and processes for Alameda County in California and use this information to build and calibrate two simulation models. One model looks at aggregate need for housing, while the other differentiates the housing needs of the population into eight different types. The model suggests that a large investment in permanent housing and an initial ramp up of shelter is needed to solve unsheltered homelessness and accommodate future inflow to the system.

show abstract

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discrete-event simulation modeling for housing of homeless populations

2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Several economists and sociologists, such as Barnett and Masse (2007) and Herbst (2017), have examined factors that can improve child-related short-term outcomes (e.g., performance on tests) and long-term outcomes (e.g., educational attainment and earning capacity). However, few studies have considered operational challenges faced by organizations that provide education and child care (Kretschmer et al 2014, Slaugh et al 2016. In particular, Kretschmer et al (2014) study food distribution across different regions through school feeding programs.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving Outcomes in Child Care Subsidy Voucher Programs under Regional Asymmetries

Arora

Wei

Solak

2021

Production and Operations Management

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Related to several efforts by governments to attain United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, subsidy vouchers are used to provide monetary support to income‐eligible (IE) families who cannot afford child care. However, IE families are often unable to accept an offered voucher due to an inadequate supply of voucher‐accepting child care providers that best suit their needs. Child Care Resource and Referral agencies (CCR&Rs), which administer these programs, can influence the family's propensity to accept a voucher by investing funds both in outreach to increase the number of voucher‐accepting providers in each region, and in provider services to improve the service delivery to families. This study analyzes how a CCR&R should allocate its limited funds between these two types of activities to ensure equitable access to child care across the different regions of its service area. We show that it might be optimal for the CCR&R to invest more funds in outreach in the region with a lower proportion of IE families. This is especially true when: the external considerations (e.g., public transportation and infrastructure) in that region have a greater impact on a family's acceptance propensity; the marginal return of investment in outreach in that region is higher and abundant funds are available; the socioeconomic distress experienced by families in that region is significantly higher; or a large amount of funds is earmarked for outreach in that region. We contextualize our study for a CCR&R in Massachusetts and conclude that the proposed investment decisions can improve equity outcomes by 7.0%.

show abstract

“…Our paper also fits with the literature that studies child welfare systems from an economic perspective. Slaugh et al (2016)…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Search and Matching for Adoption from Foster Care

Olberg¹,

Dierks²,

Seuken³

et al. 2021

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

More than 100,000 children in the US foster care system are currently waiting for an adoptive placement.Adoption agencies differ significantly in what systems they use to identify matches between families and children. We consider two prominent alternatives: (1) family-driven search, where families respond to announcements made by the caseworker responsible for a child, and (2) caseworker-driven search, where caseworkers utilize a software tool to perform a targeted search for families. In this work, we compare these two systems via a game-theoretic analysis. We introduce a dynamic search-and-matching model that captures the heterogeneous preferences of families and children. This allows us to study their incentives during the search process, and we can compare the resulting welfare of the two systems in equilibrium. We first show that, in general, no system dominates the other, neither in terms of family welfare nor in terms of child welfare. This result may be surprising, given that the caseworker-driven approach employs a less wasteful search process. However, we do identify various advantages of the caseworker-driven approach. Our main theoretical result establishes that the equilibrium outcomes in caseworker-driven search can Pareto-dominate the outcomes in family-driven search, but not the other way around. We illustrate our results numerically to demonstrate the effect different model parameters (e.g., search costs and discount factors) have on welfare.

show abstract

The Pennsylvania Adoption Exchange Improves Its Matching Process

Cited by 17 publications

References 16 publications

Discrete-event simulation modeling for housing of homeless populations

Discrete-event simulation modeling for housing of homeless populations

Improving Outcomes in Child Care Subsidy Voucher Programs under Regional Asymmetries

Search and Matching for Adoption from Foster Care

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About