The commentaries in this volume provide reviews of selected papers from the three-volume Collected Papers of Jack Carl Kiefer. From the Preface of Volume III: "The theory of optimal design of experiments as we know it today is built on a solid foundation developed by Jack Kiefer, who formulated and resolved some of the major problems of data collection via experimentation. A principal ingredient in his formulation was statistical efficiency of a design. Kiefer's theoretical contributions to optimal designs can be broadly classified into several categories: He rigorously defined, developed, and interrelated statistical notions of optimality. He developed powerful tools for verifying and searching for optimal designs; this includes the "averaging technique"... for approximate or exact theory, and "patchwork"... for exact theory... Kiefer and Wolfowitz provided a theorem now known as the Equivalence Theorem. This result has become a classical theorem in the field. One important feature of this theorem is that it provides a measure of how far a given design is from the optimal design. He characterized and constructed families of optimal designs. Some of the celebrated ones are balanced block designs, generalized Youden designs, and weighing designs. He also developed combinatorial structures of these designs."

From the Preface: "Jack Kiefer's sudden and unexpected death in August, 1981, stunned his family, friends, and colleagues. Memorial services in Cincinnati, Ohio, Berkeley, California, and Ithaca, New York, shortly after his death, brought forth tributes from so many who shared in his life. But it was only with the passing of time that those who were close to him or to his work were able to begin assessing Jack's impact as a person and intellect. About one year after his death, an expression of what Jack meant to all of us took place at the 1982 annual meeting of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the American Statistical Association. Jack had been intimately involved in the affairs of the IMS as a Fellow since 1957, as a member of the Council, as President in 1970, as Wald lecturer in 1962, and as a frequent author in its journals. It was doubly fitting that the site of this meeting was Cincinnati, the place of his birth and residence of his mother, other family, and friends. Three lectures were presented there at a Memorial Session - by Jerry Sacks dealing with Jack's personal life, by Larry Brown dealing with Jack's contributions in statistics and probability, and by Henry Wynn dealing with Jack's contributions to the design of experiments. These three papers, together with Jack's bibliography, were published in the Annals of Statistics and are included as an introduction to these volumes."

The public health benefits of giving city dwellers increased opportunities to lead physically active lifestyles are well known to urban planners, public health scholars, and government officials. Moreover, increases in "active living," such as walking and cycling, help the environment, support local businesses, and reduce traffic congestion, among other advantages. But despite wide agreement that active living is both achievable and valuable, best practices are not easy to implement. In Political Exercise, Lawrence D. Brown presents five case studies of cities that have promoted active living with varying success through a range of approaches. He shows how and why the transformation of a call for public intervention into projects, programs, and policies is inescapably political. Brown argues that in order to implement policies that support active living, their proponents must give communities a sense of ownership of recommended changes in the built environment, filter the public health agenda through a range of public and private organizations, and secure committed political champions. At the intersection of public health and urban planning, Political Exercise offers a framework for scholars, policy makers, and reformers to more productively address both the rationales behind active living and the political strategies that spur change.

The public health benefits of giving city dwellers increased opportunities to lead physically active lifestyles are well known to urban planners, public health scholars, and government officials. Moreover, increases in "active living," such as walking and cycling, help the environment, support local businesses, and reduce traffic congestion, among other advantages. But despite wide agreement that active living is both achievable and valuable, best practices are not easy to implement. In Political Exercise, Lawrence D. Brown presents five case studies of cities that have promoted active living with varying success through a range of approaches. He shows how and why the transformation of a call for public intervention into projects, programs, and policies is inescapably political. Brown argues that in order to implement policies that support active living, their proponents must give communities a sense of ownership of recommended changes in the built environment, filter the public health agenda through a range of public and private organizations, and secure committed political champions. At the intersection of public health and urban planning, Political Exercise offers a framework for scholars, policy makers, and reformers to more productively address both the rationales behind active living and the political strategies that spur change.

Despite George W. Bush's professed opposition to big government, federal spending has increased under his watch more quickly than it did during the Clinton administration, and demands on government have continued to grow. Why? Lawrence D. Brown and Lawrence R. Jacobs show that conservative efforts to expand markets and shrink government often have the ironic effect of expanding government's reach by creating problems that force legislators to enact new rules and regulations. Dismantling the flawed reasoning behind these attempts to cast markets and public power in opposing roles, "The Private Abuse of the Public Interest" urges citizens and policy makers to recognize that properly functioning markets presuppose the government's ability to create, sustain, and repair them over time.The authors support their pragmatic approach with evidence drawn from in-depth analyses of education, transportation, and health care policies. In each policy area, initiatives such as school choice, deregulation of airlines and other carriers, and the promotion of managed care have introduced or enlarged the role of market forces with the aim of eliminating bureaucratic inefficiency. But in each case, the authors show, reality proved to be much more complex than market models predicted. This complexity has resulted in a political cycle - strikingly consistent across policy spheres - that culminates in public interventions to sustain markets while protecting citizens from their undesirable effects. Situating these case studies in the context of more than two hundred years of debate about the role of markets in society, Brown and Jacobs call for a renewed focus on public-private partnerships that recognize and respect both sectors' vital - and fundamentally complementary - roles.

The design and use of federal grants-in-aid to state and local governments have posed policy choices for every presidential administration since that of Lyndon B. Johnson. The papers in this volume describe the decisions these administrations have made, analyze why only some of these choices prevailed politically, and explain how large amounts of federal aid have affected local governments.These studies mark the final chapter in a major research effort carried out by the Brookings Governmental Studies program to evaluate the effects of general revenue sharing and other broad-based forms of aid that were introduced in the early 1970s. Kenneth T. Palmer traces the major steps in the evolution of grants-in-aid since the Johnson administration. Lawrence D. Brown's essay on the politics of devolution examines the successes and failures of innovative grant policies such as revenue sharing and block grants. James W. Fossett, writing on the politics of dependence, analyzes the effect of the massive expansion of federal grants to the large cities in the 1970s.

Despite George W. Bush's professed opposition to big government, federal spending has increased under his watch more quickly than it did during the Clinton administration, and demands on government have continued to grow. Why? Lawrence D. Brown and Lawrence R. Jacobs show that conservative efforts to expand markets and shrink government often have the ironic effect of expanding government's reach by creating problems that force legislators to enact new rules and regulations. Dismantling the flawed reasoning behind these attempts to cast markets and public power in opposing roles, "The Private Abuse of the Public Interest" urges citizens and policy makers to recognize that properly functioning markets presuppose the government's ability to create, sustain, and repair them over time.The authors support their pragmatic approach with evidence drawn from in-depth analyses of education, transportation, and health care policies. In each policy area, initiatives such as school choice, deregulation of airlines and other carriers, and the promotion of managed care have introduced or enlarged the role of market forces with the aim of eliminating bureaucratic inefficiency. But in each case, the authors show, reality proved to be much more complex than market models predicted. This complexity has resulted in a political cycle - strikingly consistent across policy spheres - that culminates in public interventions to sustain markets while protecting citizens from their undesirable effects. Situating these case studies in the context of more than two hundred years of debate about the role of markets in society, Brown and Jacobs call for a renewed focus on public-private partnerships that recognize and respect both sectors' vital - and fundamentally complementary - roles.