August 2025 · Ivy Liu, Chan Wang · DesignSafe-CI

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This study examines how social media activity during and after Hurricane Beryl in July 2024 may have influenced the distribution of relief centers and volunteer assistance. With widespread power outages limiting traditional communication channels, platforms like Twitter became critical for sharing real-time updates and requests for help. Given this context, we aim to answer: Do areas with more disaster-related Twitter activity (e.g., posts, reposts, likes, comments) have better access to resources? 

We scraped geotagged tweets from July 7 to July 19, 2024 using hashtags such as #HurricaneBeryl, #Beryl, and #Hurricane. Each tweet was then hand-coded to identify referenced locations through text, media, or embedded links. When direct clues were absent from tweets, we examined users' other posts, profiles, or public information from platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram to collect their location during and after the stuck of Hurricane Beryl.

Resource allocation data came from the City of Houston’s Department of Emergency Management, Volunteer Houston, and the American Red Cross. Using Principal Component Analysis (PCA), we created two composite indices to capture the overall resource accessibility and concentration during the Hurricane. We then applied Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression, controlling for demographic and socioeconomic factors, to assess the association between social media activity and disaster resource distribution across Houston zip codes.

To our knowledge, this is the first study to empirically examine the association between social media activity and resource allocation from a geographical standpoint. The findings can inform causal analyses and guide researchers, local governments, and communities in improving disaster relief and public health outcomes.

January 2025 · Jim Landers, Ivy Liu · Economic Development Quarterly

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This study examines the impact of reductions in Indiana's corporate income tax rate beginning in July 2012. It employs the synthetic control method to construct a counterfactual, or “synthetic Indiana,” using quarterly manufacturing employment data from 23 states that did not change their tax rates during the 2003–2018 study period. The analysis suggests that a weighted combination of Iowa (11.9%), Tennessee (69.5%), Utah (8%), and Wisconsin (10.5%) best predicts the trajectory of manufacturing employment in Indiana from 2003 to 2011 before the rate cuts. Placebo tests and exact p-value estimates are used to test the significance of the employment effects of the corporate income tax rate cuts, and a placebo-date falsification test is used as a robustness test. The test results suggest that the rate cuts did not impact manufacturing employment. Placebo-date falsification tests suggest that changes to the corporate apportionment formula from 2007 to 2011 instead positively affected manufacturing employment. 

Febuary 2024 · Ivy Liu, Hongtao Yi · Public Administration

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Organizational learning has long been recognized as a key determinant of success, yet research often overlooks how individual mechanisms initiate and drive collective learning over time. Utilizing policy tourism as an indicator of intercity learning, we construct an interlocal learning network among US cities from 2009 to 2016. Employing a temporal exponential random graph model, our findings suggest that the member duality of local managers can initiate and facilitate self-organizing learning interactions among US cities through preferential attachment. Consequently, a core group of influential cities with member duality of local managers can control entry into the learning network and strategically promote the transmission of innovative management practices in particular cities. This study (1) underscores the significance of member duality in local managers for facilitating interorganizational learning, (2) incorporates the aspect of temporality in understanding interorganizational learning, and (3) highlights broader practical implications for collaborative governance in diverse network settings. 

January 2024 · Chan Wang, Ivy Liu · Policy Studies

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This study investigates the intentional termination decision of a public health tool (i.e. face-mask policy) in the absence of knowledge regarding the duration of the pandemic. We acknowledge that policy termination is a complicated decision-making process that necessitates multiple considerations. Gleaning perspectives from the literature on the politics-science divide and policy termination theory, two distinct sets of factors emerge as influential: political considerations (i.e. governor’s ideology and public opinion) and scientific considerations (i.e. vaccination rate and healthcare resources). We conduct a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to examine how explanatory factors interplay in diverse ways in shaping mask termination decisions. The results show three equally important pathways in elucidating mask termination decisions: two pathways explained how Republican and Democratic Governors draw upon diverse considerations to end the mask use, respectively. The third path underscores that a level high vaccination rate would explain most states’ mask termination decisions. The results highlight the complexity inherent policy-making during a public health crisis. This study offers a glimpse into the varied approaches adopted by states to navigate the exit from the pandemic. In the broader context of public administration, this study sheds light on how states bridge the gap between politics and science. 

June 2022 · Hongtao Yi, Ivy Liu (corresponding author) · Public Administration Review

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Policy tourism is an important but rarely studied phenomenon describing a widespread practice, through which local public and business leaders form delegations, choose target cities, and implement intercity policy diffusion, business exchange, and economic collaboration. Our research examines how executive leadership characteristics, city-level contextual factors, and interdependence mechanisms relate to cities' decisions to visit. Using two-stage probit selection models with instrumental variables on a dyadic balanced panel dataset recording all policy tourism events between major U.S. cities from 2007 to 2016, we answer this question accounting for potential endogeneity problems. Our findings suggest that cities with experienced yet newly appointed, minority leaders tend to visit cities with experienced white or female leaders. Additionally, policy tourism happens among cities embedded in highly complex, munificent, and turbulent environments. Finally, cities tend to learn from peers with higher economic prosperity or interact with their competitors. 

September 2019 · Ivy Liu, Tom Christansen · Public Administration Review

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As a reaction to structural fragmentation under New Public Management, many countries embarked on post-NPM reforms, such as merging public organizations. In China one such reform is the Super-Department Reform (SDR), launched in 2008. There are different ways to integrate public organizations following structural changes. In this study of two mergers of environmental agencies in the Chinese province of Guangdong, the focus is on the structural, cultural and symbolic features that affected the integration process. Our qualitative analyses reveal that Shunde Bureau of Environmental Transport and City Administration (SBETCA) is considered to have been more successful in integrating agencies and functions than Shenzhen Habitat Environment Committee (SHEC). Contingency factors, such as formal functional integration, leaders’ attention and participation, and leaders’ ability to influence cultural congruency, greatly influenced the success of the integration process. Symbols and media coverage also played a role.