Cover: Public Policy in an Uncertain World: Analysis and Decisions, from Harvard University Press Cover: Public Policy in an Uncertain World in HARDCOVER

Public Policy in an Uncertain World

Analysis and Decisions

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Book Details

HARDCOVER

$39.95 • £29.95 • €36.00

ISBN 9780674066892

Publication: February 2013

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224 pages

6-1/8 x 9-1/4 inches

1 graph, 3 tables

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    • Preface
    • Introduction
      • Rumsfeld and the Limits to Knowledge
      • Using Policy Analysis to Inform Decisions
      • Organization of the Book
    • I. Policy Analysis
      • 1. Policy Analysis with Incredible Certitude
        • 1.1 The Logic and Credibility of Policy Analysis
        • 1.2 Incentives for Certitude
          • Support for Certitude in Philosophy of Science
        • 1.3 Conventional Certitudes
          • CBO Scoring of Pending Legislation
            • Scoring the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010
            • Credible Interval Scoring
            • Can Congress Cope with Uncertainty?
          • British Norms
        • 1.4 Dueling Certitudes
          • The RAND and IDA Reports on Illegal Drug Policy
            • The National Research Council Assessment
        • 1.5 Conflating Science and Advocacy
          • Friedman and Educational Vouchers
        • 1.6 Wishful Extrapolation
          • Selective Incapacitation
          • Extrapolation from Randomized Experiments: The FDA Drug Approval Process
            • The Study Population and the Population of Interest
            • The Experimental Treatments and the Treatments of Interest
            • The Outcomes Measured in Experiments and the Outcomes of Interest
            • The FDA and Conventional Certitude
          • Campbell and the Primacy of Internal Validity
        • 1.7 Illogical Certitude
          • Heritability
            • What Does “More Important“ Mean?
            • Heritability and Social Policy
            • Gene Measurement
        • 1.8 Media Overreach
          • “The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers“
          • Peer Review and Credible Reporting
      • 2. Predicting Policy Outcomes
        • 2.1 Deterrence and the Death Penalty
          • Estimates Using Data on Homicide Rates across States and Years
        • 2.2 Analysis of Treatment Response
          • Statistical Inference and Identification
        • 2.3 Predicting Outcomes under Policies That Mandate a Treatment
          • Sentencing and Recidivism
            • Background
            • Our Analysis
            • Analysis Assuming Individualistic Treatment Response
            • Numerical Findings
            • Choosing a Policy
        • 2.4 Identical Treatment Units
          • Before-and-After Studies
          • Difference-in-Differences Studies
            • Employment in Fast-Food Restaurants and the Minimum Wage
        • 2.5 Identical Treatment Groups
          • Experiments with Random Assignment of Treatments
          • The “Gold Standard“
        • 2.6 Randomized Experiments in Practice
          • Extrapolation
          • Compliance
            • The Illinois Unemployment Insurance Experiment
            • Random Compliance
            • Intention-to-Treat
          • The Mixing Problem
            • Extrapolation from the Perry Preschool Project
          • Social Interactions
            • Local and Global Interactions
          • Credible Analysis of Experimental Data
        • 2.7 Random Treatment Choice in Observational Studies
          • Rational Treatment Choice and Selection Bias
            • Outcome Optimization with Perfect Foresight
          • Regression Discontinuity Analysis
        • 2.8 Modeling Rational Treatment Choice
          • Outcome Optimization as a Model of Sentencing
          • Distributional Assumptions
      • 3. Predicting Behavior
        • 3.1 Income Taxation and Labor Supply
          • The Theory of Labor Supply
          • Empirical Analysis
          • Basic Revealed-Preference Analysis
            • Illustration: Labor Supply under Progressive and Proportional Taxes
        • 3.2 Discrete Choice Analysis
            • Random Utility Model Representation of Behavior
            • Attribute Representation of Alternatives and Decision Makers
            • Analysis with Incomplete Attribute Data
            • Practicality
          • College Choice in America
            • Predicting the Enrollment Effects of Student Aid Policy
            • Power and Price of the Analysis
          • Discrete Choice Analysis Today
        • 3.3 Predicting Behavior under Uncertainty
          • How Do Youth Infer the Returns to Schooling?
          • How Do Potential Criminals Perceive Sanctions Regimes?
          • Measuring Expectations
            • Pill, Patch, or Shot?
        • 3.4 Perspectives on Rational Choice
          • As-If Rationality
          • Bounded Rationality
          • Biases and Heuristics
            • Widespread Irrationality or Occasional Cognitive Illusions?
          • The Common Thread Is Certitude
    • II. Policy Decisions
      • 4. Planning with Partial Knowledge
        • 4.1 Treating X-Pox
        • 4.2 Elements of Decision Theory
          • States of Nature
          • The Welfare Function
          • Welfare Functions in Studies of Optimal Income Taxation
            • The Mirrlees Study
        • 4.3 Decision Criteria
          • Elimination of Dominated Actions
          • Weighting States and the Expected Welfare Criterion
          • Criteria for Decision Making under Ambiguity
            • Maximin
            • Minimax Regret
          • Using Different Criteria to Treat X-Pox
        • 4.4 Search Profiling with Partial Knowledge of Deterrence
        • 4.5 Vaccination with Partial Knowledge of Effectiveness
          • Background
          • Internal and External Effectiveness
          • The Planning Problem
          • Partial Knowledge of External Effectiveness
          • Choosing a Vaccination Rate
        • 4.6 Rational and Reasonable Decision Making
          • The Savage Argument for Consistency
          • Axiomatic Rationality and Actualist Rationality
          • Axiomatic and Actualist Perspectives on Subjective Probability
            • Ellsberg on Ambiguity
          • The Quest for Rationality and the Search for Certitude
      • 5. Diversified Treatment Choice
          • Diversification and Profiling
        • 5.1 Allocating a Population to Two Treatments
          • The Welfare Function
          • A Status Quo Treatment and an Innovation
            • Expected Welfare
            • Maximin
            • Minimax Regret
            • Choosing Sentences for Convicted Juvenile Offenders
            • Allocation of Wealth to a Safe and Risky Investment
          • Risk-Averse Planning
        • 5.2 Diversification and Equal Treatment of Equals
          • Ex Ante and Ex Post Equal Treatment
          • Combining Consequentialism and Deontological Ethics
        • 5.3 Adaptive Diversification
          • Adaptive Minimax Regret
            • Implementation in Centralized Health Care Systems
          • The AMR Criterion and the Practice of Randomized Clinical Trials
            • Fraction of the Population Receiving the Innovation
            • Group Subject to Randomization
            • Measurement of Outcomes
        • 5.4 Diversification across Time or Space
          • Diversification by Cohort
          • Laboratories of Democracy
        • 5.5 Adaptive Partial Drug Approval
          • The Present Approval Process
          • Binary versus Partial Approval
          • Adaptive Partial Licensing
        • 5.6 Collective Decision Processes
          • Majority-Rule Voting with Single-Peaked Preferences
            • The Credibility of Single-Peaked Preferences
          • Strategic Interactions
          • Learning and Heterogeneity of Policy Preferences
          • Bilateral Negotiations
            • Pareto Optimal Allocations
            • Incentive-Compatible Processes
            • Teacher Evaluation in New York City
        • 5.7 Laissez-Faire
          • Social Learning from Private Experiences
            • Laissez-Faire Learning and Adaptive Diversification
      • 6. Policy Analysis and Decisions
          • Institutional Separation of Analysis and Decisions
          • Doing Better
    • Appendix A: Derivations for Criteria to Treat X-Pox
    • Appendix B: The Minimax-Regret Allocation to a Status Quo Treatment and an Innovation
    • Appendix C: Treatment Choice with Partial Knowledge of Response to Both Treatments
    • References
    • Index