Michael Malbin will lead a project to assess the impact of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. The project will examine how public financing programs can be improved and develop recommendations for reforming the disclosure of campaign finance data.

Eric Helland will assess whether shareholder class action lawsuits are an effective means to uncover and deter cases of wrongdoing on the part of corporations. The project’s findings will appear in a series of articles.

Richard Colvin will organize a briefing on education policy issues for journalists covering the 2004 presidential election. The briefing will include presentations by members of Congress who were instrumental in the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act and key education policy experts.

Philip Howard will commission research and convene a conference that will examine whether the judicial system would be more effective if judges exercised more discretion over the cases that were allowed to proceed to trial. The project’s findings will be published as a series of papers and policy briefs.

Joshua Haimson and John Deke will examine how schools can maximize the educational and employment outcomes of their students through the development of their cognitive and non-cognitive competencies. The researchers will use data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study to assess how cognitive competencies, as measured by standardized tests, compare to non-cognitive competencies, such as leadership, social skills, and discipline, in predicting later success. The project’s findings will appear in a report and a policy brief.

Harris Cooper will organize an effort to oversee a series of systematic reviews of experimental evaluations of policies in the crime and justice, social welfare, and education areas.