PLCY 210 exam 2

Primary Task of policy analysis

identifying policies that have best prospects and assessed based on specific goals and criteria

Policy Alternative

option, strategy,etc. to solve, mitigate, or improve a public problem

Methods for arriving at alternatives

Start comprehensive and end focused, Out of the box solutions, model the system = describe causes

Consider alternatives jointly”

alternatives are not mutually exclusive, can be adopted in groups or pairs

Basic vs Variant

basic = broad category of interventions/policies

Generic policy solutions table

market mechanisms, incentives, rules, nonmarket supply, insurance and cushions

Market mechanisms

Freeing markets(deregulate,legalize,privatize), facilitating markets(allocate through property rights, create new marketable goods)

Incentives

Supply-side taxes (tariffs), Supply-side subsidies (matching grants, business deductions and credits), Demand-side taxes(commodity taxes and user fees), Demand-side subsidies(In-kind subsidies, vouchers)

Establishing Rules

Frameworks (criminal and civil laws), Regulations(on price, quantity, info)

Supplying Goods through nonmarket mechanisms

Direct supply, Contracting out

Providing insurance and cushions

Insurance, Cushions (Transitional assistance, stockpiling)

Solution for public goods

nonmarket supply

Solution to externalities

rules and incentives

Solution to natural monopolies

rules and nonmarket supply

Solution to information asymmetry

rules

Solution to equity of opportunity

rules and insurance and cushions

Solution to equality of outcoes

rules, nonmarket supply, insurance (all secndary)

Solution to direct democracy

rules

Solution to representative government

market mechanisms

Solution to bureaucratic supply

market mechanism

Solution to decentralization

incentives

Sawicki “no-action” alt

provide benchmark against which alternatives can be compared, help clarify project’s objectives, sometimes accepting no action may be the best solution

“Do nothing” alternative

“let present trends continue undisturbed”, natural change may affect underlying problem, evaluate against other finalist alternatives, calculate incremental benefits/costs

Diff b/wsawicki and bardach

Bardach do nothing recognizes consequences and political reality, rather than just as a baseline

Why is including the alternative in analysis important?

baseline for comparison, inaction is a policy choice, do nothing could sometimes be better

Governmental failures

direct democracy, representative government, bureaucratic supply, decentralization

Kahneman and Tversky systems

how you can take decisions, fast-taking mental shortcuts “gut feeling” vs. slow measured analytic approaches “conscious thought”

Heuristic examples

status quo bias, loss aversion, framing, confirmation bias, optimism and overconfidence

Biases/deviations from rational choice

representativeness, anchoring, availability

Nudges

encourage people to act in ways that the government considers to be in their best interest, don’t coerce and give option to act otherwise (libertarian paternalism)

Choice architecture

how options are sequenced, labeled, and designed, “status quo bias”

EAST

East-decreasing/increasing frictions, Attractive-standout and attractive, Social- norms and networks, Timely- Early, capitalize on major moments, time inconsistency

Limits of nudges

less effective with large, structural issues; may enable manipulative or unethical practices by govt; heterogeneity across social and cultural contexts; generalizability constraints

Normative analysis

introduce one’s values or ideological beliefs and makes explicit conclusions about what should be done

Positive analysis

A statement of fact, finding, or theory that is devoid of judgement. A conclusion is made about what did or will happen without introducing an opinion as to whether this is a good or bad thing.

Diff b/w positive and normative

Positive analysis describes how the world is; normative analysis

describes how the world should be

Criteria

goals, values we want to achieve/realize, standards for evaluating the results of policy actions

Criteria help us assess

magnitude of outcome produced by each alternative, how likely each alternative is to produce outcome, How well each alternative produces outcome

Diff b/w alternatives and outcomes

alternatives are courses of action and criteria are mental standards for evaluating results of actions

Steps to take with criteria

identify criteria, develop metric that measures it, measure impact of each alternative on each criterion, discuss tradeoffs and finish

Principal objective

problems either maximize or minimise this, criteria should target this and elucidate tradeoffs among competing alternatives

Consider criterion based on

importance, meaningful and understandable to relevant stake holders, specific, ends, not means, measurable, comprehensive(completely exhaustive), independent(mutually exclusive)

Common broad criteria

effectiveness, efficiency, cost, equity, feasibility, ease of implementation, unintended/adverse consequences

Operationalization

process through which analysts measure concepts, identifying scales that correspond to variance in the concept

Criteria of measurement quality

reliability, validity, quality

Nominal

mutually exclusive, exhaustive

Ordinal

mutually exclusive, exhaustive, inherent ranking of categories

Interval and ratio

mutually exclusive, exhaustive, inherent ranking of categories, specific distance between categories