Hospital selective contracting without consumer choice: What can we learn from Medi‐Cal?

In the selective contracting era, consumer choice has generally been absent in most state Medicaid programs, including California's (called Medi-Cal). In a setting where beneficiary exit is not a threat, a large payer may have both the incentives and the ability to exercise undue market power, potentially exposing an already vulnerable population to further harm. The analyses presented here of Medi-Cal contracting data, however, do not yield compelling evidence in favor of the undue market power hypothesis. Instead, hospital competition appears to explain with greater consistency why certain hospitals choose to contract with Medi-Cal while others do not, the trends in inpatient prices paid by Medi-Cal over time, and the effect of price competition on service cutbacks, such as emergency room closures. Copyright 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

What a Difference a Grade Makes: Evidence from New York City's Restaurant Grading Policy

Can governments use grades to induce businesses to improve their compliance with regulations? Does public disclosure of compliance with food safety regulations matter for restaurants? Ultimately, this depends on whether grades matter for the bottom line. Based on 28 months of data on more than 15,000 restaurants in New York City, this article explores the impact of public restaurant grades on economic activity and public resources using rigorous panel data methods, including fixed‐effects models with controls for underlying food safety compliance. Results show that A grades reduce the probability of restaurant closure and increase revenues while increasing sales taxes remitted and decreasing fines relative to B grades. Conversely, C grades increase the probability of restaurant closure and decrease revenues while decreasing sales taxes remitted relative to B grades. These findings suggest that policy makers can incorporate public information into regulations to more strongly incentivize compliance.     

What citizens learn from elections: The normative consequences of voter eligibility

Advocates of innovations for ways to expand citizens’ political participation claim that institutions that require more in-depth participation than voting are required to attain a democratic system with profound civic engagement. They often base this claim on the assumption that elections fail to encourage citizens to be socially and politically involved. In this paper I challenge this assumption by exploring whether voter eligibility reinforces the notion that a good citizen participates in politics. Applying a regression discontinuity design that uses the voting-age restriction as the threshold, I find that voter eligibility boosts support for extensive (non-electoral) forms of political participation. Hence, I argue that the importance of elections should not be underestimated in the quest for societies with civic-minded citizens.     

What can we actually get from program evaluation?

This paper assesses the role program evaluation can play in assisting decisions on public programs. The author looks at evaluation from the standpoint of decisionmakers interested in finding out the right answers about their programs. The discussion focuses on the assistance that various types of evaluation can give to program managers and to policymakers concerned with legislative changes and budget levels. The paper includes recent examples of relevant evaluation work. The concluding section analyzes some of the problems decisionmakers face in trying to get reliable, useful evaluation.     

Geoengineering the climate and ethical challenges: what we can learn from moral emotions and art

ABSTRACT

Climate change is an urgent problem, requiring ways and approaches to address it. Possible solutions are mitigation, adaptation and deployment of geoengineering. In this article we argue that geoengineering gives rise to ethical challenges of its own. Reflecting on these ethical challenges requires approaches that go beyond conventional, quantitative methods of risk assessment. Quantitative methods leave out important ethical considerations such as justice, fairness, autonomy and legitimacy. We argue that emotions and art can play an important role in ethical deliberation about geoengineering. Emotions can point out what morally matters. We also examine the role that works of art can play. Recently, artists have become involved with risky technologies. We argue that such artworks can contribute to emotional-moral reflection and public deliberation on geoengineering, by making abstract problems more concrete, letting us broaden narrow personal perspectives, exploring new scenarios, and challenging our imagination.     

French Lesson: What the United Kingdom can Learn from the French Experiment with Gender Parity

France and the UK both have parliaments with one MP per constituency. This electoral system is known not to be conducive to women's representation, and both countries have struggled with low proportions of women in parliament. France's response was to introduce a gender parity law in 2000. Since then, the number of women in the French parliament has almost doubled, but still remains low by European standards and is far from parity. This article considers what the UK can learn from the French experience. In particular, it considers how gender quotas emerged onto the agenda in France, why they were set at 50% and how effective this was, how they were implemented, and why they have not been more successful. The article does not recommend following in France's footsteps, but the UK can take inspiration from France's successes and seek to avoid repeating her mistakes.     

The Political Consequences of Policing: Evidence from New York City

Political Behavior - This paper explores the effect that municipal policing can exert on politics, and specifically investigates the effect that Stop, Question, and Frisk (SQF) policing has had on...     

Fiscal effects of budget referendums: evidence from New York school districts

This paper provides empirical evidence on how budget referendums affect school inputs by taking advantage of an exogenous enactment of budget referendums for small city school districts (SCSDs) in New York State in 1998. The paper shows that SCSDs reduce instructional spending and increase student-teacher ratios while preserving administrative spending in response to budget referendums. These empirical findings are obtained by difference-in-differences estimations on data processed with propensity score matching, and the results are robust to sensitivity analysis.     

Fiscal Reaction to State Aid Uncertainties: Evidence from New York State

Late budgets have become increasingly present across the states and especially persistent in states such as New York and California. The combination of delayed states budgets and institutional constraints may trigger specific budgetary strategies. Uncertainty over state aid may lead school districts to over‐ or underestimate school budgets, which ultimately may have an effect on real property taxes and the amount of education consumed. Evidence from New York State school districts suggests that school districts react to uncertainty in the state budget through a combination of revenue, expenditure, and fund balance changes. The findings suggest that districts engage in “gaming” the institutional constraints, and tend to build up large fund balances as a response to perceived uncertainty.