Anne Lisbeth Olsen
Biographic Data
| ID | 1032895 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anne Lisbeth Olsen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anne Lisbeth |
| FAMILY NAME | Olsen |
| SIGNATURE | OLSEN A L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Copenhagen |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7365-6161 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 641 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Public Administration Beyond Public Administration Journals
Public administration (PA) research published in economics journals (PA in Econ) can be summarized by five stylized facts using bibliometric analysis and expert survey data. First, PA in Econ represents a large volume of research, comparable to all quantitatively oriented PA research published in PA journals. Second, PA in Econ exists in a parallel universe, with almost no citations to the field of PA. Third, PA in Econ features a much more diver…
Correcting misperceptions about ethno‐racial discrimination
The disadvantages experienced by minorities and lack of societal remedies are partly attributable to native‐majority citizens’ limited awareness of minority hardships. We investigate whether informing citizens about field‐experimental audits on ethno‐racial discrimination increases their recognition of the issue and support for equal‐treatment policies. Extending a largely US‐centric research frontier, we focus on beliefs about discrimination fac…
Is a disease leader attractive? Six tests of whether the Covid-19 pandemic affected follower preferences for attractiveness, health and other traits in political and non-political leaders
When blame avoidance backfires
Public officials use blame avoidance strategies when communicating performance information. While such strategies typically involve shifting blame to political opponents or other governments, we examine how they might direct blame to ethnic groups. We focus on the COVID‐19 pandemic, where the Trump administration sought to shift blame by scapegoating (using the term “Chinese virus”) and mitigate blame by positively framing performance information…
The Unequal Distribution of Opportunity
Administrators can use their discretion to discriminate in the provision of public services via two mechanisms. They make decisions to allocate public services, allowing them to discriminate via allocative exclusion. They can also discriminate by targeting administrative burdens toward outgroups to make bureaucratic processes more onerous. While prior audit studies only examine the use of administrative burdens, we offer evidence of both mechanis…
Moral dilemmas and trust in leaders during a global health crisis
Trust in leaders is central to citizen compliance with public policies. One potential determinant of trust is how leaders resolve conflicts between utilitarian and non-utilitarian ethical principles in moral dilemmas. Past research suggests that utilitarian responses to dilemmas can both erode and enhance trust in leaders: sacrificing some people to save many others ('instrumental harm') reduces trust, while maximizing the welfare of everyone equ…
Behavioral Public Performance
A revolution in the measurement and reporting of government performance through the use of published metrics, rankings and reports has swept the globe at all levels of government. Performance metrics now inform important decisions by politicians, public managers and citizens. However, this performance movement has neglected a second revolution in behavioral science that has revealed cognitive limitations and biases in people's identification, per…
Reducing Bias in Citizens’ Perception of Crime Rates
Citizens are, on average, too pessimistic when assessing the trajectory of current crime trends. In this study, we examine whether we can correct this perceptual bias with respect to burglaries. Using a field experiment coupled with a large panel survey (n p 4; 895), we explore whether a public information campaign can reduce misperceptions about the prevalence of burglaries. Embedding the correct information about burglary rates in a direct mail…
Microbrook, Mesobrook, Macrobrook
This article assesses the field of public administration from a conceptual and methodological perspective. We urge public administration scholars to resolve the ambiguities that mire our scholarship due to the inadequate treatment of levels of analysis in our research. Overall, we encourage methodological accountability through a more explicit characterization of one’s research by the level of analysis to which it relates. We argue that this part…
Behavioral Dishonesty in the Public Sector
We investigate the usefulness of the dice game paradigm to public administration as a standardized way of measuring (dis)honesty among individuals, groups, and societies. Measures of dishonesty are key for the field’s progress in understanding individual, organizational, and societal differences in unethical behavior and corruption. We first describe the dice game paradigm and its advantages and then discuss a range of considerations for how to i…
Precise performance
Recent research suggests that precise numbers signal confidence and are more potent anchors. This idea runs counter to the emphasis on simplicity in the presentation of performance numbers found in performance management and measurement research. Regardless, political-administrative systems are dominated by numerical information when it comes to evaluating performance or setting future performance goals. This article presents a set of experiments…
Behavioral Public Administration
Well-known public administration scholars have stressed the importance of psychological research for the study of public administration. Neighboring disciplines such as economics and political science have witnessed the emergence of the psychology-informed subfields of behavioral economics and political psychology. Along the same lines, an emerging behavioral public administration is an approach characterized by the interdisciplinary analysis of …
Compared to What? How Social and Historical Reference Points Affect Citizens’ Performance Evaluations
The question of what is "good" or "poor" performance is difficult to answer without applying a reference point—a standard for comparison. Citizens' evaluation of performance information will, therefore, tend to be guided by reference points. We test how reference points alter citizens' evaluation of organizational performance. In this article, drawing on Herbert Simon, we test how citizens use historical (internal) and social (external) reference…
Human Interest or Hard Numbers? Experiments on Citizens’ Selection, Exposure, and Recall of Performance Information
The abundance of quantitative performance information has motivated multiple studies about how citizens make sense of “hard” performance data. However, research in psychology emphasizes that episodic information (e.g., case stories) often leaves a greater mark on citizens. This contradiction is tested using multiple experiments embedded in a large, nationally representative sample of Danish citizens. The results stress three differences between s…
Behavioral Public Administration
Behavioral public administration is the analysis of public administration from the micro‐level perspective of individual behavior and attitudes by drawing on insights from psychology on the behavior of individuals and groups. The authors discuss how scholars in public administration currently draw on theories and methods from psychology and related fields and point to research in public administration that could benefit from further integration. …
Spending and cutting are two different worlds
This article investigates politicians’ preferences for cutting and spending. The research questions are where do politicians prefer to cut, where do they prefer to spend and how is this influenced by political ideology? These questions are investigated in a large-scale survey experiment fielded to Danish local councillors, who are randomly assigned to a decision-making situation, where the block grant provided to their municipality is either incr…
Simon Said,” We Didn't Jump
Citizen (Dis)satisfaction
This article introduces the importance of equivalence framing for understanding how satisfaction measures affect citizens’ evaluation of public services. Does a 90 percent satisfaction rate have a different effect than a logically equivalent 10 percent dissatisfaction rate? Two experiments were conducted on citizens’ evaluations of hospital services in a large, nationally representative sample of Danish citizens. Both experiments found that expos…
Cross-National Yardstick Comparisons
Order in chaos
Ballot order effects are well documented in established democracies, but less so in newly democratizing countries. In this research note we analyze ballot order effects in the 2010 parliamentary election in Afghanistan. The election provides a first look at ballot order effects in a high stakes, post-conflict election. In this setting, we argue that limited cognitive skills and information are more likely explanations of potential ballot order ef…
The politics of digits
Political hypocrisy
Administrative Professionals and the Diffusion of Innovations
This article examines how administrative professionals affect the diffusion of one‐stop shops in the form of integrated citizen service centres (CSC) in a Danish local government setting. CSCs are an example of a new organizational form: functionally integrated small units (FISUs). The diffusion of the CSCs among municipalities is used to analyse how administrative professionals act as drivers in the process of organizational level innovation. Fu…
Should I Stay or Should I Go Now? Voluntary Retirement from Danish Local Government
Why do politicians choose to retire voluntarily from a position they have been working hard to get? It is argued in this article that the institutional setting of the elected assemblies influences the direct, as well as the alternative costs and benefits of having a political career and hence the patterns of voluntary retirement. Drawing on previous research from the United States Congress, this is explored in a new empirical setting: local gover…
Municipal Amalgamations and the Democratic Functioning of Local Councils
This article discusses the effects of the structural reform in Denmark in 2007 – where a large number of municipalities were amalgamated – on local councillors' influence on decisions taken in the local political realm. The analysis uses data from two large surveys, a pre-reform survey (2003) and a post-reform survey (2009). The analysis shows that the amalgamations have led to an increase in the perceived influence of leading councillors vis-à-v…
Behavioral Public Administration
Behavioral public administration is the analysis of public administration from the micro‐level perspective of individual behavior and attitudes by drawing on insights from psychology on the behavior of individuals and groups. The authors discuss how scholars in public administration currently draw on theories and methods from psychology and related fields and point to research in public administration that could benefit from further integration. …
Compared to What? How Social and Historical Reference Points Affect Citizens’ Performance Evaluations
The question of what is "good" or "poor" performance is difficult to answer without applying a reference point—a standard for comparison. Citizens' evaluation of performance information will, therefore, tend to be guided by reference points. We test how reference points alter citizens' evaluation of organizational performance. In this article, drawing on Herbert Simon, we test how citizens use historical (internal) and social (external) reference…
Citizen (Dis)satisfaction
This article introduces the importance of equivalence framing for understanding how satisfaction measures affect citizens’ evaluation of public services. Does a 90 percent satisfaction rate have a different effect than a logically equivalent 10 percent dissatisfaction rate? Two experiments were conducted on citizens’ evaluations of hospital services in a large, nationally representative sample of Danish citizens. Both experiments found that expos…
The Unequal Distribution of Opportunity
Administrators can use their discretion to discriminate in the provision of public services via two mechanisms. They make decisions to allocate public services, allowing them to discriminate via allocative exclusion. They can also discriminate by targeting administrative burdens toward outgroups to make bureaucratic processes more onerous. While prior audit studies only examine the use of administrative burdens, we offer evidence of both mechanis…
Political hypocrisy
Cross-National Yardstick Comparisons
The Effects of Administrative Professionals on Contracting Out
An often‐debated subject in the public administration literature concerns why some units contract out more than others. The present article decomposes the influence of public employees on municipal contracting as different types of employees have different skills and incentives and must be treated accordingly. First, the analysis shows that the apparent negative relationship between public employees in general and municipal contracting is partly …
Human Interest or Hard Numbers? Experiments on Citizens’ Selection, Exposure, and Recall of Performance Information
The abundance of quantitative performance information has motivated multiple studies about how citizens make sense of “hard” performance data. However, research in psychology emphasizes that episodic information (e.g., case stories) often leaves a greater mark on citizens. This contradiction is tested using multiple experiments embedded in a large, nationally representative sample of Danish citizens. The results stress three differences between s…
Municipal Amalgamations and the Democratic Functioning of Local Councils
This article discusses the effects of the structural reform in Denmark in 2007 – where a large number of municipalities were amalgamated – on local councillors' influence on decisions taken in the local political realm. The analysis uses data from two large surveys, a pre-reform survey (2003) and a post-reform survey (2009). The analysis shows that the amalgamations have led to an increase in the perceived influence of leading councillors vis-à-v…
Behavioral Dishonesty in the Public Sector
We investigate the usefulness of the dice game paradigm to public administration as a standardized way of measuring (dis)honesty among individuals, groups, and societies. Measures of dishonesty are key for the field’s progress in understanding individual, organizational, and societal differences in unethical behavior and corruption. We first describe the dice game paradigm and its advantages and then discuss a range of considerations for how to i…
Administrative Professionals and the Diffusion of Innovations
This article examines how administrative professionals affect the diffusion of one‐stop shops in the form of integrated citizen service centres (CSC) in a Danish local government setting. CSCs are an example of a new organizational form: functionally integrated small units (FISUs). The diffusion of the CSCs among municipalities is used to analyse how administrative professionals act as drivers in the process of organizational level innovation. Fu…
When blame avoidance backfires
Public officials use blame avoidance strategies when communicating performance information. While such strategies typically involve shifting blame to political opponents or other governments, we examine how they might direct blame to ethnic groups. We focus on the COVID‐19 pandemic, where the Trump administration sought to shift blame by scapegoating (using the term “Chinese virus”) and mitigate blame by positively framing performance information…
Reducing Bias in Citizens’ Perception of Crime Rates
Citizens are, on average, too pessimistic when assessing the trajectory of current crime trends. In this study, we examine whether we can correct this perceptual bias with respect to burglaries. Using a field experiment coupled with a large panel survey (n p 4; 895), we explore whether a public information campaign can reduce misperceptions about the prevalence of burglaries. Embedding the correct information about burglary rates in a direct mail…
Should I Stay or Should I Go Now? Voluntary Retirement from Danish Local Government
Why do politicians choose to retire voluntarily from a position they have been working hard to get? It is argued in this article that the institutional setting of the elected assemblies influences the direct, as well as the alternative costs and benefits of having a political career and hence the patterns of voluntary retirement. Drawing on previous research from the United States Congress, this is explored in a new empirical setting: local gover…
Simon Said,” We Didn't Jump
The politics of digits
Moral dilemmas and trust in leaders during a global health crisis
Trust in leaders is central to citizen compliance with public policies. One potential determinant of trust is how leaders resolve conflicts between utilitarian and non-utilitarian ethical principles in moral dilemmas. Past research suggests that utilitarian responses to dilemmas can both erode and enhance trust in leaders: sacrificing some people to save many others ('instrumental harm') reduces trust, while maximizing the welfare of everyone equ…
Spending and cutting are two different worlds
This article investigates politicians’ preferences for cutting and spending. The research questions are where do politicians prefer to cut, where do they prefer to spend and how is this influenced by political ideology? These questions are investigated in a large-scale survey experiment fielded to Danish local councillors, who are randomly assigned to a decision-making situation, where the block grant provided to their municipality is either incr…
Correcting misperceptions about ethno‐racial discrimination
The disadvantages experienced by minorities and lack of societal remedies are partly attributable to native‐majority citizens’ limited awareness of minority hardships. We investigate whether informing citizens about field‐experimental audits on ethno‐racial discrimination increases their recognition of the issue and support for equal‐treatment policies. Extending a largely US‐centric research frontier, we focus on beliefs about discrimination fac…
A New Life
Journal Article A New Life: Danish Emigration to North America as Described by the Emigrants Themselves in Letters, 1842–1946 Get access A New Life: Danish Emigration to North America as Described by the Emigrants Themselves in Letters, 1842–1946. By Stilling Niels Peter Olsen Anne Lisbeth, translated by Karen Veien. (Elk Horn, IA: Danish Immigrant Museum, 1994. 215 pp. Illustrations, maps, table, appendix, notes, bibliography. $15.00.) Jens Lund…
The Effects of Administrative Professionals on Contracting Out
An often‐debated subject in the public administration literature concerns why some units contract out more than others. The present article decomposes the influence of public employees on municipal contracting as different types of employees have different skills and incentives and must be treated accordingly. First, the analysis shows that the apparent negative relationship between public employees in general and municipal contracting is partly …
Administrative Professionals and the Diffusion of Innovations
This article examines how administrative professionals affect the diffusion of one‐stop shops in the form of integrated citizen service centres (CSC) in a Danish local government setting. CSCs are an example of a new organizational form: functionally integrated small units (FISUs). The diffusion of the CSCs among municipalities is used to analyse how administrative professionals act as drivers in the process of organizational level innovation. Fu…
Should I Stay or Should I Go Now? Voluntary Retirement from Danish Local Government
Why do politicians choose to retire voluntarily from a position they have been working hard to get? It is argued in this article that the institutional setting of the elected assemblies influences the direct, as well as the alternative costs and benefits of having a political career and hence the patterns of voluntary retirement. Drawing on previous research from the United States Congress, this is explored in a new empirical setting: local gover…
Municipal Amalgamations and the Democratic Functioning of Local Councils
This article discusses the effects of the structural reform in Denmark in 2007 – where a large number of municipalities were amalgamated – on local councillors' influence on decisions taken in the local political realm. The analysis uses data from two large surveys, a pre-reform survey (2003) and a post-reform survey (2009). The analysis shows that the amalgamations have led to an increase in the perceived influence of leading councillors vis-à-v…
The politics of digits
Political hypocrisy
Order in chaos
Ballot order effects are well documented in established democracies, but less so in newly democratizing countries. In this research note we analyze ballot order effects in the 2010 parliamentary election in Afghanistan. The election provides a first look at ballot order effects in a high stakes, post-conflict election. In this setting, we argue that limited cognitive skills and information are more likely explanations of potential ballot order ef…
Simon Said,” We Didn't Jump
Citizen (Dis)satisfaction
This article introduces the importance of equivalence framing for understanding how satisfaction measures affect citizens’ evaluation of public services. Does a 90 percent satisfaction rate have a different effect than a logically equivalent 10 percent dissatisfaction rate? Two experiments were conducted on citizens’ evaluations of hospital services in a large, nationally representative sample of Danish citizens. Both experiments found that expos…
Cross-National Yardstick Comparisons
Human Interest or Hard Numbers? Experiments on Citizens’ Selection, Exposure, and Recall of Performance Information
The abundance of quantitative performance information has motivated multiple studies about how citizens make sense of “hard” performance data. However, research in psychology emphasizes that episodic information (e.g., case stories) often leaves a greater mark on citizens. This contradiction is tested using multiple experiments embedded in a large, nationally representative sample of Danish citizens. The results stress three differences between s…
Behavioral Public Administration
Behavioral public administration is the analysis of public administration from the micro‐level perspective of individual behavior and attitudes by drawing on insights from psychology on the behavior of individuals and groups. The authors discuss how scholars in public administration currently draw on theories and methods from psychology and related fields and point to research in public administration that could benefit from further integration. …
Spending and cutting are two different worlds
This article investigates politicians’ preferences for cutting and spending. The research questions are where do politicians prefer to cut, where do they prefer to spend and how is this influenced by political ideology? These questions are investigated in a large-scale survey experiment fielded to Danish local councillors, who are randomly assigned to a decision-making situation, where the block grant provided to their municipality is either incr…
Compared to What? How Social and Historical Reference Points Affect Citizens’ Performance Evaluations
The question of what is "good" or "poor" performance is difficult to answer without applying a reference point—a standard for comparison. Citizens' evaluation of performance information will, therefore, tend to be guided by reference points. We test how reference points alter citizens' evaluation of organizational performance. In this article, drawing on Herbert Simon, we test how citizens use historical (internal) and social (external) reference…
Precise performance
Recent research suggests that precise numbers signal confidence and are more potent anchors. This idea runs counter to the emphasis on simplicity in the presentation of performance numbers found in performance management and measurement research. Regardless, political-administrative systems are dominated by numerical information when it comes to evaluating performance or setting future performance goals. This article presents a set of experiments…
Behavioral Public Administration
Well-known public administration scholars have stressed the importance of psychological research for the study of public administration. Neighboring disciplines such as economics and political science have witnessed the emergence of the psychology-informed subfields of behavioral economics and political psychology. Along the same lines, an emerging behavioral public administration is an approach characterized by the interdisciplinary analysis of …
Microbrook, Mesobrook, Macrobrook
This article assesses the field of public administration from a conceptual and methodological perspective. We urge public administration scholars to resolve the ambiguities that mire our scholarship due to the inadequate treatment of levels of analysis in our research. Overall, we encourage methodological accountability through a more explicit characterization of one’s research by the level of analysis to which it relates. We argue that this part…
Behavioral Dishonesty in the Public Sector
We investigate the usefulness of the dice game paradigm to public administration as a standardized way of measuring (dis)honesty among individuals, groups, and societies. Measures of dishonesty are key for the field’s progress in understanding individual, organizational, and societal differences in unethical behavior and corruption. We first describe the dice game paradigm and its advantages and then discuss a range of considerations for how to i…
Behavioral Public Performance
A revolution in the measurement and reporting of government performance through the use of published metrics, rankings and reports has swept the globe at all levels of government. Performance metrics now inform important decisions by politicians, public managers and citizens. However, this performance movement has neglected a second revolution in behavioral science that has revealed cognitive limitations and biases in people's identification, per…
Reducing Bias in Citizens’ Perception of Crime Rates
Citizens are, on average, too pessimistic when assessing the trajectory of current crime trends. In this study, we examine whether we can correct this perceptual bias with respect to burglaries. Using a field experiment coupled with a large panel survey (n p 4; 895), we explore whether a public information campaign can reduce misperceptions about the prevalence of burglaries. Embedding the correct information about burglary rates in a direct mail…
Moral dilemmas and trust in leaders during a global health crisis
Trust in leaders is central to citizen compliance with public policies. One potential determinant of trust is how leaders resolve conflicts between utilitarian and non-utilitarian ethical principles in moral dilemmas. Past research suggests that utilitarian responses to dilemmas can both erode and enhance trust in leaders: sacrificing some people to save many others ('instrumental harm') reduces trust, while maximizing the welfare of everyone equ…
Is a disease leader attractive? Six tests of whether the Covid-19 pandemic affected follower preferences for attractiveness, health and other traits in political and non-political leaders
When blame avoidance backfires
Public officials use blame avoidance strategies when communicating performance information. While such strategies typically involve shifting blame to political opponents or other governments, we examine how they might direct blame to ethnic groups. We focus on the COVID‐19 pandemic, where the Trump administration sought to shift blame by scapegoating (using the term “Chinese virus”) and mitigate blame by positively framing performance information…
The Unequal Distribution of Opportunity
Administrators can use their discretion to discriminate in the provision of public services via two mechanisms. They make decisions to allocate public services, allowing them to discriminate via allocative exclusion. They can also discriminate by targeting administrative burdens toward outgroups to make bureaucratic processes more onerous. While prior audit studies only examine the use of administrative burdens, we offer evidence of both mechanis…
Political science (21 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Politics (12 works) · Economics (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Public Policy and Administration Research (8 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Mathematics (7 works)