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Public policy advocates routinely assert that "research has shown" a particular policy to be desirable. But how reliable is the analysis in the research they invoke? And how does that analysis affect the way policy is made, on issues ranging from vaccination to minimum wage to FDA drug approval? Charles Manski argues here that current policy is based on untrustworthy analysis. By failing to account for uncertainty in an unpredictable world, policy analysis misleads policy makers with expressions of certitude. Public Policy in an Uncertain World critiques the status quo and offers an innovation to improve how policy research is conducted and how policy makers use research.

Consumers of policy analysis, whether civil servants, journalists, or concerned citizens, need to understand research methodology well enough to properly assess reported findings. In the current model, policy researchers base their predictions on strong assumptions. But as Manski demonstrates, strong assumptions lead to less credible predictions than weaker ones. His alternative approach takes account of uncertainty and thereby moves policy analysis away from incredible certitude and toward honest portrayal of partial knowledge. Manski describes analysis of research on such topics as the effect of the death penalty on homicide, of unemployment insurance on job-seeking, and of preschooling on high school graduation. And he uses other real-world scenarios to illustrate the course he recommends, in which policy makers form reasonable decisions based on partial knowledge of outcomes, and journalists evaluate research claims more closely, with a skeptical eye toward expressions of certitude.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Preface(p. xiii)
• Introduction(p. 1)
• Rumsfeld and the Limits to Knowledge(p. 1)
• Using Policy Analysis to Inform Decisions(p. 2)
• Organization of the Book(p. 4)
• I Policy Analysis
• 1 Policy Analysis with Incredible Certitude(p. 11)
• 1.1 The Logic and Credibility of Policy Analysis(p. 11)
• 1.2 Incentives for Certitude(p. 13)
• Support for Certitude in Philosophy of Science
• 1.3 Conventional Certitudes(p. 15)
• 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(p. 23)
• The RAND and IDA Reports on Illegal Drug Policy
• The National Research Council Assessment
• 1.5 Conflating Science and Advocacy(p. 27)
• Friedman and Educational Vouchers
• 1.6 Wishful Extrapolation(p. 30)
• 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(p. 37)
• Heritability
• What Does "More Important" Mean?
• Heritability and Social Policy
• Gene Measurement
• 1.8 Media Overreach(p. 44)
• "The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers" Peer Review and Credible Reporting
• 2 Predicting Policy Outcomes(p. 47)
• 2.1 Deterrence and the Death Penalty(p. 48)
• Estimates Using Data on Homicide Rates across States and Years
• 2.2 Analysis of Treatment Response(p. 51)
• Statistical Inference and Identification
• 2.3 Predicting Outcomes under Policies That Mandate a Treatment(p. 53)
• Sentencing and Recidivism
• Background
• Our Analysis
• Analysis Assuming Individualistic Treatment Response
• Numerical Findings
• Choosing a Policy
• 2.4 Identical Treatment Units(p. 59)
• Before-and-After Studies
• Difference-in-Differences Studies
• Employment in Fast-Food Restaurants and the Minimum Wage
• 2.5 Identical Treatment Groups(p. 63)
• Experiments with Random Assignment of Treatments
• The "Gold Standard"
• 2.6 Randomized Experiments in Practice(p. 67)
• 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(p. 77)
• Rational Treatment Choice and Selection Bias
• Outcome Optimization with Perfect Foresight
• Regression Discontinuity Analysis
• 2.8 Modeling Rational Treatment Choice(p. 81)
• Outcome Optimization as a Model of Sentencing Distributional Assumptions
• 3 Predicting Behavior(p. 85)
• 3.1 Income Taxation and Labor Supply(p. 86)
• The Theory of Labor Supply
• Empirical Analysis
• Basic Revealed-Preference Analysis
• Illustration: Labor Supply under Progressive and Proportional Taxes
• 3.2 Discrete Choice Analysis(p. 93)
• 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(p. 99)
• 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(p. 102)
• 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(p. 115)
• 4.1 Treating X-Pox(p. 116)
• 4.2 Elements of Decision Theory(p. 116)
• States of Nature
• The Welfare Function
• Welfare Functions in Studies of Optimal Income Taxation
• The Mirrlees Study
• 4.3 Decision Criteria(p. 121)
• 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(p. 125)
• 4.5 Vaccination with Partial Knowledge of Effectiveness(p. 127)
• Background
• Internal and External Effectiveness
• The Planning Problem
• Partial Knowledge of External Effectiveness
• Choosing a Vaccination Rate
• 4.6 Rational and Reasonable Decision Making(p. 131)
• 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(p. 139)
• Diversification and Profiling
• 5.1 Allocating a Population to Two Treatments(p. 141)
• 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(p. 148)
• Ex Ante and Ex Post Equal Treatment
• Combining Consequentialism and Deontological Ethics
• 5.3 Adaptive Diversification(p. 150)
• 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(p. 154)
• Diversification by Cohort
• Laboratories of Democracy
• 5.5 Adaptive Partial Drug Approval(p. 156)
• The Present Approval Process
• Binary versus Partial Approval
• Adaptive Partial Licensing
• 5.6 Collective Decision Processes(p. 160)
• 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(p. 169)
• Social Learning from Private Experiences
• Laissez-Faire Learning and Adaptive Diversification
• 6 Policy Analysis and Decisions(p. 173)
• Institutional Separation of Analysis and Decisions
• Doing Better
• Appendix A Derivations for Criteria to Treat X-Pox(p. 177)
• Appendix B The Minimax-Regret Allocation to a Status Quo Treatment and an Innovation(p. 179)
• Appendix C Treatment Choice with Partial Knowledge of Response to Both Treatments(p. 181)
• References(p. 183)
• Index(p. 193)

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Charles F. Manski is Board of Trustees Professor of Economics at Northwestern University.