Environmental policy and equity: The case of superfund

This article analyzes the equity implications of the EPA's Superfund program by examining the geographic distribution of sites, who pays for cleanup, and cleanup pace. Although the “polluter pays” principle is used to justify Superfund policy, it is a goal that is not—and indeed usually cannot—be attained for past contamination. Further, the geographic distribution of Superfund sites suggests that the likely beneficiaries of program expenditures live in counties that are on average both wealthier and more highly educated than the rest, and also have lower rates of poverty. The pace of the EPA's cleanups, however, depends mostly on the sites' potential hazard, and is not apparently motivated by the localities' socioeconomic characteristics or political representation. The program is found in several respects to be both inefficient and inequitable, yet Superfund enjoys considerable support for reasons beyond these traditional public policy goals, including its political and symbolic appeal.     

Terrorism as theater: Analysis and policy implications

In some regards the production of terrorism resembles the production of culture, especially television and theater. Terrorism is a spectacle produced for viewers, many of whom live apart from the violent staged events. Spectacular theater and the telling of memorable stories are inputs for fundraising and motivating subsequent terrorists. This understanding of terrorist motivation has concrete policy implications.     

Regional stabilization: a model for policy decision

A policy simulative model with the main purpose of simulating the effects of alternative policy moves and obtaining an accurate read-out of resulting urban-suburban conditions is the focus of this paper. The model deals with the movement of various population groups and the resulting effects on some very broad indicators of city-suburban life, rather than with particular topics like transportation, land use and the like. The level of abstraction is thus intermediate and is directed at providing practical policy suggestions for a particular city—Newark—for which the model is calibrated. The model, however, is general enough in nature so that it can be applied to other urban-suburban complexes and therefore the policy suggestions made on a fairly broad basis. The outputs of the model are graphically represented to show the results of alternative policies which then may be compared. As a side benefit the inputs to the model can also serve as a “social report” on the present status of an area. Policy questions to be answered by the model include: Should a city budget be directed somewhat differently? Should a city ask the state or federal government for funding and for how much? What may be expected from imposing a city sales tax, weighing the revenue benefit against costs of lost sales or citizens? And last, would the federal government not be better off by simply giving money to the poor directly instead of to cities?     

Assumptions,behavioral findings,and policy analysis

Recent empirical studies indicate that many standard economic assumptions used in policy analyses do not reflect people's preferences and choices as well as modifications based on behavioral findings. Differences in the areas of time preferences and the large disparity between valuations of gains and losses illustrate the issues and the distortions that present analyses likely impose.     

National Investment Planning and equity policy in developing countries: The challenge of decentralized administration

The impact of national economic planning in developing countries over the past three decades has been severely limited. Little evidence supports the contention that it has either directly improved investment decisions for stimulating economic growth or significantly affected development policymaking. Constraints on implementing national planning in Asia include weaknesses of political and administrative support for national plans, deficiencies in their content, difficulties of relating plan priorities to investment decisionmaking, ineffectiveness or inappropriateness of comprehensive planning methods and techniques, and inadequate administrative capacity to implement and evaluate multisectoral investment strategies. Changes in Asian development policy toward growth with equity imply the need for more decentralized methods and arrangements for planning, creation of a stronger relationship between policy planning and program implementation, and diffusion of administrative capacity among a wide variety of public and private institutions to generate, formulate and implement investment policies and projects.     

Political ideology and vaccination willingness: implications for policy design

Policy Sciences - The COVID-19 pandemic has forced governments to impose major restrictions on individual freedom in order to stop the spread of the virus. With the successful development of a...     

Flexible specialization versus post-Fordism: theory,evidence and policy implications

There is widespread agreement that something dramatic has been happening to the international economy over the past two decades: rapid and radical changes in production technology and industrial organization, a major restructuring of world markets, and consequent large-scale changes in the policies of economic management at the internahonal, national and regional levels. At the same time there is a great deal of confusion about how to characterize these changes, the mechanisms at work, and the policy implications for different groups of economic and political actors. One way of accomplishing these tasks is to postulate a change of basic manufacturing organization from a ‘Fordist’ pattern that prevailed in the years of the long post-1945 boom to a ‘post-Fordist’ successor in the later 1970s and 1980s. Many people habitually conflate three approaches to industrial change under this heading: flexible specialization, regulation theory, and a more diverse body of explicitly ‘post-Fordiit’ analyses. The resulting problem is that significant differences of approach are concealed bv a suerficial similaritv between the proponents of flezble specialization and a sit of adparently similar bbt underlyingly divergent ideas. The purpose of this paper is to examine systematically the differences between flexible specialization, regulation theory, and other variants of ‘post-Fordism’ with respect to their fundamental assumptions and theoretical architecture, their methodological approach and use of evidence, and their policy implications.     

Economic policy, intergenerational equity, and the Social Security Trust Fund buildup

For the next 75 years, the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) system is projected to be close to in balance, on average. For approximately the next 40 years, under current projections, the combined OASDI Trust Fund is expected to continually have excesses of income over outgo, creating a buildup that will peak in 2030 at about +12 1/2 trillion (roughly 23 percent of the gross national product). Thereafter, the system is projected to be in annual deficit continually until the trust fund is exhausted in 2051. This article focuses on two fundamental issues that must be understood if the potential economic consequences of this buildup are to be evaluated properly. The first issue deals with the fact that the nature of Federal economic policy during the buildup period will determine the ultimate economic impact of the buildup. The second issue concerns the effect of the buildup, and its disposition, on the Social Security program's treatment of one generation of workers compared with another. If a fund is actually accumulated as projected, part of the retirement benefits of the "baby-boom" generation will, in effect, be self-financed. If, however, that fund is used for other purposes--directly or indirectly--future cohorts of workers will be required to fully finance benefits promised to the baby-boom retirees.     

Countercyclical U.S. fertility and its implications

The following article is the verbatim text of a report based on research funded by the Social Security Administration and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the Rand Corporation. The report looks at changing fertility rates in the United States and their implications for future population size and age distributions. An economic model of fertility rate is used to explain observed differences in fertility rates amond couples and to predict future rates. The focus is on trends since 1947 because post-World War II data are the most complete. Several explanations for changing fertility rates are examined, and their usefulness in predicting the future is evaluated.     

Federal housing policy and preservation: Historical evolution,patterns, and implications

Abstract

This paper considers the evolution and patterns of federal low‐income¹ housing policies and programs over roughly the past half‐century. It begins with an overview of the multifaceted involvement of the federal government in housing — only one aspect of which is its intervention in the low‐income sector. This is followed by an overview of federal low‐income housing policy from the New Deal to today. The underlying assumptions and approaches of these policies are then considered with respect to such considerations as the government's presence and role, its targeting of assistance, and the selection of subsidy levels and vehicles. The paper concludes with a brief review of the implications of the historical record for future policy.     

Governance modes,policy regimes and operational plans: A multi-level nested model of policy instrument choice and policy design

Policy goals and means exist at different levels of abstraction and application and policies can be seen to be comprised of a number of components or elements, not all of which are as amenable to (re)design as others. Defining and thinking about polices and policy-making in this way is very useful because it highlights how policy design is all about the effort to match goals and instruments both within and across categories. That is, successful policy design requires (1) that policy aims, objectives, and targets be coherent; (2) that implementation preferences, policy tools and tool calibrations should also be consistent; and (3) that policy aims and implementation preferences; policy objectives, and policy tools; and policy targets and tool calibrations, should also be congruent and convergent. Policy instrument choices can thus be seen to result from a nested or embedded relationship within a larger framework of established governance modes and policy regime logics. In this contextual model, the range of choices left at the level of concrete targeted policy instrument calibrations—the typical subject of policy tool analysis—is restricted by the kinds of decisions made about policy objectives and the appropriate tools to attain them, and both of these, in turn, by the kind of choices made at the highest level setting out general policy aims and implementation preferences.

Civic implications of restorative justice theory: Citizen participation and criminal justice policy

Restorative justice, a normative theory and reform movement emphasizing dialogue and reconciliation between victim, offender, and community, is a widespread, if experimental, part of the practice of criminal justice in the United States. This essay argues that restorative justice draws connections between civic engagement and punishment practices that distinguish it as a normative theory of criminal justice. Advocates of restorative justice expect the growth of non-punitive attitudes and the weakening of support for incarceration to emerge from a public and lay-oriented context of adjudication. The role of lay participation in achieving social change, although prominent in restorative justice critiques of mainstream criminal justice norms and practices, has not been clearly articulated in practical terms. Significant ambiguities remain regarding the degree of lay participation, scope of authority, and the focus of restorative justice forums. The essay argues that an adequate assessment of restorative justice experiments should include an analysis of their impact on public attitudes towards crime and crime control policy and not simply on their impact on the specific victims and offenders involved. The link between less incarceration and restorative justice forums is public willingness to grant them the authority to hear and sanction offenses that would ordinarily receive incarceration. Whether and how they can influence broader public attitudes, then, is a critical test of restorative justice effectiveness.     

Interpretive policy inquiry: A response to its limitations

With positivist and technocratic notions still prevalent, Paul Healy's (1986) insightful effort to advance “interpretive policy inquiry” both underscores the limitations of conventional analysis and helps us to grasp the policy process in human terms. Yet the article falls short of a systematic presentation of the interpretive position and, in doing so, reveals the limitations of that approach: the need for an explicitly critical posture becomes clear. This point is made with particular attention to a pre-positivist figure, Machiavelli. An erratum to this article is available at .