We apply Transaction Cost Economics to social impact bonds to explore how public service commissioners might improve outcomes-based contracts. We supply a framework for assessing the quality of outcomes specifications and clarify the trade-off between a robust value case for government and the transaction costs associated with specifying such a deal. Illustrated by two examples, we suggest commissioners aim for a 'requisite' contract: one that minimises opportunism whilst balancing the costs of developing a more robust outcomes specification.

BackgroundEmbedding Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) in postgraduate research has been recognized as an important component of post-graduate training, providing research scholars with an awareness and a skillset in an area which prepares them for future roles as healthcare researchers. Improving Pathways for Acute STroke And Rehabilitation (iPASTAR) is a structured PhD training program [Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA)] which aims to design a person-centered stroke pathway throughout the trajectory of stroke care, to optimize post-stroke health and wellbeing. PPI is embedded at all stages.PurposeThe iPASTAR research programme was strongly informed by a round-table PPI consultation process with individuals who experienced stroke and who provided broad representation across ages, gender, geographical locations (urban and rural) and the PhD themed areas of acute care, early supported discharge and lifestyle-based interventions after stroke. Four PhD scholars taking part in the CDA-iPASTAR now work collaboratively with four stroke champions, supported by a wider PPI advisory panel.MethodsThis study will evaluate the process and impact of embedding PPI during a PhD program. We will conduct a longitudinal mixed-methods evaluation, conducting focus groups at 24, 36, and 48 months to explore the experiences of the key stakeholders involved. The participants will include PhD scholars, PPI partners (PPI Advisory Group and PPI Champions), PhD supervisors and a PPI manager. An independent researcher will conduct the evaluation. We will include focus groups, individual interviews and participant reflections. Qualitative data will be analyzed using thematic and content analysis, quantitative data will be analyzed using descriptive statistics.DiscussionPPI and patient voice initiatives bring together researchers, family, and people with health care issues into meaningful dialogue and allow the development of a patient-voice learning network. Embedding PPI training within a PhD program can build meaningful capacity in PPI partnerships in stroke research.

The roles of bridging actors in emergency response networks can be important to disaster response outcomes. This paper is based on an evaluation of wildfire preparedness and response networks in 21 large-scale wildfire events in the wildland-urban interface near national forests in the American Northwest. The study investigated how key individuals in responder networks anticipated seeking out specific people in perceived bridging roles prior to the occurrence of wildfires, and then captured who in fact assumed these roles during actual large-scale events. It examines two plausible, but contradictory, bodies of theory-similarity and dissimilarity-that suggest who people might seek out as bridgers and who they would really go to during a disaster. Roughly one-half of all pre-fire nominations were consistent with similarity. Yet, while similarity is a reliable indicator of how people expect to organise, it does not hold up for how they organise during the real incident.

This special issue of the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis brings together four crossdisciplinary articles representing the first concerted attempt to combine comparative approaches to extend theoretical and empirical understandings of Social Impact Bonds (SIBs). SIBs are investment-backed payment-by-results projects and have been subject to vigorous academic debate on their appropriateness and efficacy since the first SIB launched in 2010. In this introduction to the special issue, we outline the state of the academic literature on SIBs, identifying gaps and suggesting five big questions that do not yet have satisfactory answers: 1) What are the administrative or political problems to which SIBs respond?; 2) Where and why do SIBs emerge in particular contexts?; 3) What is the role of SIBs in the evidence-based policy movement?; 4) Is delivering an intervention through a SIB Tackling the big questions in Social Impact Bond research through comparative approaches 2 more effective than other means and are associated costs justifiable?; and 5) Do SIBs catalyse wider organizational, system, or institutional changes? We then summarize the articles included in this special issue, discuss how they respond to these big questions, and suggest that further comparative research might best address remaining gaps in the literature.

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