Discounting procedures for environmental (and other) projects: A comment on Kolb and Scheraga

We compare two alternative methods to discount the costs and benefits of environmental projects. These are (1) the shadow price of capital, which can be practically expressed by using the cost of capital and thus the discount rate on government bonds, and (2) the two-stage discounting procedure advocated by Kolb and Scheraga. We suggest that the two-stage approach is in many cases inconsistent with the shadow price of capital approach and will therefore lead to misallocations of resources. We further argue that the use of the cost of capital as the discount rate will be easier than the two-stage procedure, will yield results that are consistent with the shadow price of capital approach, and will be justified by the potential Pareto criterion. Finally, use of the shadow price of capital approach has a potential for achieving considerable consensus in practice as well as in theory, a result that could considerably enhance project evaluation.     

Are Green Vehicles Worth the Extra Cost? The Case of Diesel‐Electric Hybrid Technology for Urban Delivery Vehicles

A central question for environmental policy is whether the long‐term benefits of energy‐saving technologies are sufficient to justify their short‐term costs, and if so, whether financial incentives are needed to stimulate adoption. The fiscal effects of incentivizing new technologies, and the revenue effects of using the technology, are also policy relevant, given current fiscal constraints. This study evaluates the economic and fiscal effects of promoting diesel‐electric hybrid technology in urban delivery vehicles, an application supported by U.S. policymakers. An economic model is used to simulate the conditional probability density functions of the net present values (NPVs) of diesel electric hybrids annually from 2012 to 2030. The NPV time paths, which reflect fuel price, environmental, and technology trends, show the expected dates that hybrids become economically viable, and allow an evaluation of the net benefits of hybrid technology as an investment over the entire simulation horizon. The NPV distributions are computed for five stakeholder classes, including transportation firms, parties benefiting from reduced externality damages, state and local governments, and the larger society. The analysis shows that hybrid technology investment does not appear to be justified from a societal perspective at a 7 percent discount rate, but the probability for positive net returns increases substantially at a 3 percent rate.     

The Impact of Incentives to Recruit and Retain Teachers in “Hard‐to‐Staff” Subjects

We investigate the effects of a statewide program designed to increase the supply of teachers in designated “hard‐to‐staff” areas, such as special education, math, and science. Employing a difference‐in‐difference estimator we find that the loan forgiveness component of the program was effective, reducing mean attrition rates for middle and high school math and science teachers by 10.4 percent and 8.9 percent, respectively. We also find that the impact of loan forgiveness varied with the generosity of payments; when fully funded, the program reduced attrition of special education teachers by 12.3 percent, but did not have a statistically significant impact when funding was substantially reduced. A triple‐difference estimate indicates that a one‐time bonus program also had large effects, reducing the likelihood of teachers’ exit by as much as 32 percent in the short run. A back‐of‐the‐envelope cost‐benefit analysis suggests that both the loan forgiveness and the bonus program were cost effective.     

“Carve‐outs” from the workers' compensation system

Decentralized regulation has become increasingly important in many areas; examples range from school vouchers to workplace safety committees to alternative dispute resolution procedures replacing courts. Consistent with this trend, in 1993 California permitted construction unions and employers to “carve out” their own workers' compensation system. This study examines California's early experience with carve‐outs by analyzing two case studies, a survey of all carve‐outs in existence during the study period, and preliminary data on costs and dispute frequency at one carve‐out. Overall, carve‐outs do not appear to harm employees, and sometimes they help. At the same time, data analysis of one carve‐out showed it had no effect on costs and dispute rates. Moreover, the low involvement of union officials and the many issues that overlap other parts of workplace regulation raise concerns about decentralizing workers' compensation. Lessons can be learned for other spheres of regulation. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Evaluating the Effects of Universal Place‐Based Scholarships on Student Outcomes: The Buffalo “Say Yes to Education” Program

A growing number of cities and states have been providing large tuition subsidies for residents through initiatives often called “place‐based” or “Promise” scholarship programs. We examine the effects of a prominent last‐dollar, place‐based scholarship program, Say Yes to Education in Buffalo, NY, on college matriculation and persistence. Employing a difference‐in‐differences strategy comparing changes across cohorts of students eligible and ineligible for large college scholarships, we find that scholarship eligibility is associated with an increase of 20 percent in the likelihood of matriculating into college within one year of graduation, and an increase in the likelihood of persistence into a second year of college of nearly 16 percent. Increases in matriculation are largely at four‐year institutions, where most of the additional funding from Say Yes is concentrated, exclusively at in‐state institutions, both public and private, and are largest at colleges with more selective admission rates. Finally, we see the largest increases in matriculation and persistence among students who attend high schools in the middle third of the poverty distribution. These results suggest that the additional aid provided by Say Yes plays an important role in increasing college matriculation and encouraging students to attend more selective schools.     

“Embedded regulation:” The migration of objects,scripts, and governance

This paper asks why an officially unregulated market in pharmaceuticals in a least developed country, Djibouti, behaves as if it were strictly regulated, with limited access to a small number of high‐cost drugs. We use Actor‐Network Theory (ANT) to show that the explanation is more complex than critics of the international pharmaceutical industry have supposed. Regulation and property rights generated in developed countries have become embedded in the drugs and “black boxed” to the point of invisibility. This has allowed them to travel to Djibouti with the drugs, while maintaining their effects in action. This case study develops our understanding of the way in which materials that are not designated as regulatory agents may still have regulatory impacts through their ability to enrol complex networks of actors, rules, values, and practices. Finally, it argues against the notion of law as a fixed and distinctive space for action, as opposed to the ANT vision of a fluid and contingent order, where law is part of a socio‐technico‐legal alliance that happens to achieve certain effects.     

Housing vouchers versus housing production: Assessing long‐term costs

Abstract

Possibly the single largest debate in the field of affordable rental housing concerns the use of tenant‐based assistance versus project‐based assistance. The accepted wisdom is that project‐based assistance costs anywhere from 50 to 100 percent more than tenant‐based assistance. This premium for project‐based housing is based on a comparison of subsidy costs at the start of a project's life rather than on a comparison of the discounted present value of the costs over the long term.

The subsidy costs of samples of Section 8 new construction projects have been compared to those of Section 8 certificates over a long period of time. The results indicate that the cost premium associated with project‐based assistance may be lower than conventionally believed, around 40 percent, and may get even lower if the cost comparison could extend to longer time periods and could control for the quality of the housing units.     

WHAT IS A “GOOD” SOCIAL NETWORK FOR POLICY IMPLEMENTATION? THE FLOW OF KNOW‐HOW FOR ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

This study concerns how intraorganizational networks affect the implementation of policies and practices in organizations. In particular, we attend to the role of the informal subgroup or clique in cultivating and distributing locally adapted and integrated knowledge, or know‐how. We develop two hypotheses based on the importance of intraorganizational coordination for an organization's capacity for change. The first emphasizes the importance of distributing know‐how evenly to potential recipient subgroups. The second emphasizes the importance of restricting know‐how to flow from high know‐how subgroups. We test our hypotheses with longitudinal network data in 21 schools, finding stronger support for the second hypothesis than the first. Our findings can help managers cultivate know‐how flows to contribute to organizational change.     

“The Information Gap?”

While the “achievement gap” generally and appropriately focuses upon gaps in test scores and other outcome measures, there may also be an “information gap” between higher and lower income parents that creates a disadvantage for lower income families in choosing good schools. In this article, we examine the extent to which there is such a gap, with a focus on data from a new survey of low‐ and moderate‐income parents who have made school choices. We find that, at least in relatively mature school choice environments like Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Washington, DC, most low‐ and moderate‐income parents report being quite well informed and they engage in a variety of different activities to become informed. Thus, the information gap between lower and higher income parents may not be as large as scholars and policymakers had assumed. We do find that parents at the very lowest end of the income spectrum, especially those earning less than $10,000 per year, do feel less well‐informed and gather less information, but even here the differences are not enormous, relative to higher income parents.     

“A Beckon to the Makings,Workings and Doings of Human Beings”: The Critical Pragmatism of John Forester

John Forester's important research project of developing a critical pragmatist approach to planning and policy analysis now spans two decades. Common themes that give direction and coherence to his project are, first, a new view of public planning as the restructuring of communication between stakeholders with divergent and conflicting interests and large inequalities in power and influence; second, a redefinition of the role of the planner away from a handmaiden of power to a hands‐on professional who fosters inclusive, participatory forms of collective action; and, finally, a deliberate concern with the micropolitics of planning that enables participants to broaden their full potential for democratic transformation within the context of strong, enduring inequalities in agenda‐setting and decision‐making power. This review traces the roots of Forester's project in pragmatist thought and in particular themes from Emersonian moral philosophy, adding a notion of “critical” to Forester's radical pluralist stance. Forester subscribes to John Dewey's argument for democracy, which inherently requires diversity to arrive at warranted truth. For Forester, the core task of a planner is to safeguard the participation of those normally excluded from decision making by institutionalized inequalities.     

Presidential address: From the Great Society to continuous improvement government: Shifting from “does it work?” to “what would make it better?”

In the 1960s, various social programs were started (like Head Start) or dramatically expanded (like AFDC). Loosely, this period of expansion is called the Great Society. Too many Great Society social programs, unfortunately, have been disappointments—at least when compared to the high hopes of the '60s. Even if they “work,” most of us wish that they worked much better. Some people take such statements to mean that the Great Society's social programs should be defunded. Most Great Society programs, however, are surely here to stay, for they serve important social functions. How many of us really think there could be an America without a social safety net? It is now time to do the difficult and unglamorous work of systematic program improvement. Instead of testing program efficacy over and over again, we should engage in ongoing and evidence‐based efforts to increase program effectiveness (in both large and small ways). © 2009 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Where the homeless come from: A study of the prior address distribution of families admitted to public shelters in New York City and Philadelphia

Abstract

This study investigates hypotheses regarding the association of census tract variables with the risk for homelessness. We used prior address information reported by families entering emergency shelters in two large U.S. cities to characterize the nature ofthat distribution.

Three dense clusters of homeless origins were found in Philadelphia and three in New York City, accounting for 67 percent and 61 percent of shelter admissions and revealing that homeless families’ prior addresses are more highly concentrated than the poverty distribution in both cities. The rate of shelter admission is strongly and positively related to the concentration of poor, African‐American, and female‐headed households with young children in a neighborhood. It is also correlated with fewer youth, elderly, and immigrants. Such areas have higher rates of unemployment and labor force nonpartici‐pation, more housing crowding, more abandonment, higher rates of vacancy, and higher rent‐to‐income ratios than other areas.     

Political Embeddedness of Public Pension Governance: An Event History Analysis of Discount Rate Changes

State governments are frequently said to manipulate the discount rate assumption to make pension funding look better, reduce employers' and employees' pension contributions, or relieve fiscal stress. Building a model from the political embeddedness perspective and applying an event history analysis to the 81 largest state‐administered pension plans in the United States, the authors found that more politically embedded pension boards were actually more likely to reduce their plan's discount rate. Public union coverage and government political ideology, however, had no significant impact on discount rate changes. These findings reveal the effect of political embeddedness on pension planning decisions and provide useful insights into the intricate process of setting pension discount rates in a new era of more muted investment return expectations. This article points to both political and financial pressures facing pension boards and state governments for many years to come.     

Five‐year effects of an anti‐poverty program on marriage among never‐married mothers

Using data from an experimental evaluation of the New Hope project, an anti‐poverty program that increased employment and income, this study examined the effects of New Hope on entry into marriage among never‐married mothers. Among never‐married mothers, New Hope significantly increased rates of marriage. Five years after random assignment, 21 percent of women assigned to the New Hope condition were married, compared to 12 percent of those assigned to the control group. The New Hope impact on marriage was robust to variations in model specification. The program also increased income, wage growth, and goal efficacy among never‐married mothers, and decreased depression. In non‐experimental analyses, income and earnings were associated with higher probability of marriage and material hardship was associated with lower probability of marriage. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Transdisciplinary public leadership theory: Between the extremes of “traditional public administration” and “new public management”

The 21st century public organization is faced with complex problems, informed stakeholders, and information flows, which necessitate a corresponding open system view of leadership. The traditional notions of public administration and new public management had been structured by strict bureaucratic rules and managerial flexibility, respectively. This paper begins by theorizing two hypothetical constructs (helicopter and deadbeat leadership), which engage in extreme micromanagement/surveillance and negligence/indifference, respectively. Those form basis for designing an optimal (transdisciplinary) leadership, which forges synergistic link between leaders, subordinates, and external actors in codesigning objectives and strategies to address societal problems. Strategies to promote transdisciplinary leadership are discussed.     

THE CURRENTS BENEATH THE “RISING TIDE” OF SCHOOL CHOICE: AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENT ENROLLMENT FLOWS IN THE CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Existing research highlights that families face geographic, social, and psychological constraints that may limit the extent to which competition can take hold in school choice programs. In this paper, we address the implications of such findings by creating a network of student flows from 11 cohorts of eighth‐grade students in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). We applied a custom algorithm to group together schools with similar sending and receiving patterns, and calculated the difference in mean achievement between a student's attended and assigned high schools. For all identified school groupings, we found that the students were on average moving to higher achieving schools. We also found that the movement toward higher achieving schools of the top achievement quartile of students was over twice as large as that of the bottom quartile, but that the flows of both the highest and lowest achieving student quartiles were toward higher achieving destinations. Our results suggest that student movements in CPS between the years of 2001 to 2005 were consistent with creating market pressure for improvement as well as increasing segregation by achievement. However, further research into how schools responded to those movements is required to make inferences about the level or consequences of competition generated by choice‐related reforms during that time.     

“Capacity‐building” in global Internet governance: The long‐term outcomes of “multistakeholderism”

“Capacity building” is a catch phrase from the UN development discourse. In recent years, it has entered the global Internet governance (IG) arena. At World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS 2003), “capacity building” was identified as a key public policy issue. It is proposed in this study that ‘capacity building’ be defined in a different manner – as the principal outcome of the experimental multistakeholder (MSH) process in global IG. The open and inclusive process of stakeholder deliberation leads to accumulation of intellectual capital, development of relational infrastructure for the domain (epistemic community), and emergence of common global consciousness. When cast as a capacity‐building process, MSH collaboration at global Internet governance arenas exhibits long‐term and large‐scale intangible outcomes. This study contributes to the understanding of the capacity‐building potential of MSH collaboration in IG. By employing concepts from International Relations and Organizational Learning, the author develops a model of tangible and intangible outcomes of MSH collaboration. This unique model can be used for studying the effects in other stakeholder venues of governing global resources and processes.     

The Theory and Practice of “Nudging”: Changing Health Behaviors

Many of the most significant challenges in health care—such as smoking, overeating, and poor adherence to evidence‐based guidelines—will only be resolved if we can influence behavior. The traditional policy tools used when thinking about influencing behavior include legislation, regulation, and information provision. Recently, policy analysts have shown interest in policies that “nudge” people in particular directions, drawing on advances in understanding that behavior is strongly influenced in largely automatic ways by the context within which it is placed. This article considers the theoretical basis for why nudges might work and reviews the evidence in health behavior change. The evidence is structured according to the Mindspace framework for behavior change. The conclusion is that insights from behavioral economics offer powerful policy tools for influencing behavior in health care. This article provides public administration practitioners with an accessible summary of this literature, putting these insights into practical use.     

Relationship between R&D grants,R&D investment,and innovation performance: The moderating effect of absorptive capacity

The main sources of regional innovation investment in China are government direct investment and indirect grant. The positive relationship between innovation investment and regional innovation performance has been recognized by scholars, but the relationship between direct investment, indirect grant, and innovation performance and the mechanism of their impact on innovation performance need to be clarified. This study uses 5‐year data from China regional innovation, using multiple regression analysis, found that government grant and actor's investment can facilitate performance, but the government grant for innovation investment has a crowding‐out effect, absorptive capacity positively moderated the relationship between Research and Development (R&D) and innovation performance but play a negative moderate role between government grant and innovation performance. On the basis of the empirical result, China's regional governments need to focus on institutional and environmental development in the future, pay more attention to the structural problems of innovation input, promote flow of talents orderly, and rationally build regional knowledge chain, so as to enhance efficiency of innovation more effectively.     

How to think about the U.S. budget challenge

The long‐term budget prospects of the United States are grim. Projected spending greatly exceeds projected revenue over the next few decades. Projected growth of health care spending accounts for more than all of the anticipated gap. Without action to narrow the gap, accumulating deficits will drive up the ratio of debt to GDP. Interest payments will rise correspondingly. At some point, domestic and foreign holders of U.S. debt will come to doubt the capacity of the government to service this debt. At that point, they will demand sharply higher interest rates. The combination of increasing debt and rising interest rates will cause debt service costs to explode. What follows would be some combination of collapsing investment, declining production, debt default, and inflation—in brief, a calamitous mess. That such a mess will occur is certain if budget deficits as large as those currently anticipated are realized. Precisely when is impossible to forecast accurately.