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

Public Policy in an Uncertain World

Analysis and Decisions

Add to Cart

Product Details

HARDCOVER

$48.00 • £38.95 • €43.00

ISBN 9780674066892

Publication Date: 02/18/2013

x Text

224 pages

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

1 graph, 3 tables

World

Related Subjects

  • 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

Recent News

Black lives matter. Black voices matter. A statement from HUP »

From Our Blog

Book jacket: Vera Rubin: A Life, by Jacqueline Mitton and Simon Mitton, from Harvard University Press

Q&A with Jacqueline Mitton, coauthor of Vera Rubin: A Life

While astronomer Vera Rubin made significant contributions to our understanding of dark matter and championed the advancement of women in science, she is not that well known outside of the scientific community. HUP Executive Editor for Science, Janice Audet, spoke with Jacqueline Mitton, coauthor of Vera Rubin: A Life, about Rubin’s remarkable life and work and the writing of the book…