Author: Jason Scott Johnston
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739169467
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 235
Book Description
Institutions and Incentives in Regulatory Science explores fundamental problems with regulatory science in the environmental and natural resource law field. Each chapter covers a variety of natural resource and regulatory areas, ranging from climate change to endangered species protection and traditional health-based environmental regulation. Regulatory laws and institutions themselves strongly influence the direction of scientific research by creating a system of rewards and penalties for science. As a consequence, regulatory laws or institutions that are designed naively end up incentivizing scientists to generate and then publish only those results that further the substantive regulatory goals preferred by the scientists. By relying so heavily on science to dictate policy, regulatory laws and institutions encourage scientists to use their assessment of the state of the science to further their own preferred scientific and regulatory policy agendas. Additionally, many environmental and natural resource regulatory agencies have been instructed by legislatures to rely heavily upon science in their rulemaking. In areas of rapidly evolving science, regulatory agencies are inevitably looking for scientific consensus prematurely, before the scientific process has worked through competing hypotheses and evidence. The contributors in this volume address how institutions for regulatory science should be designed in light of the inevitable misfit between the political or legal demand for regulatory action and the actual state of evolving scientific knowledge.
Institutions and Incentives in Regulatory Science
Author: Jason Scott Johnston
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739169467
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 235
Book Description
Institutions and Incentives in Regulatory Science explores fundamental problems with regulatory science in the environmental and natural resource law field. Each chapter covers a variety of natural resource and regulatory areas, ranging from climate change to endangered species protection and traditional health-based environmental regulation. Regulatory laws and institutions themselves strongly influence the direction of scientific research by creating a system of rewards and penalties for science. As a consequence, regulatory laws or institutions that are designed naively end up incentivizing scientists to generate and then publish only those results that further the substantive regulatory goals preferred by the scientists. By relying so heavily on science to dictate policy, regulatory laws and institutions encourage scientists to use their assessment of the state of the science to further their own preferred scientific and regulatory policy agendas. Additionally, many environmental and natural resource regulatory agencies have been instructed by legislatures to rely heavily upon science in their rulemaking. In areas of rapidly evolving science, regulatory agencies are inevitably looking for scientific consensus prematurely, before the scientific process has worked through competing hypotheses and evidence. The contributors in this volume address how institutions for regulatory science should be designed in light of the inevitable misfit between the political or legal demand for regulatory action and the actual state of evolving scientific knowledge.
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739169467
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 235
Book Description
Institutions and Incentives in Regulatory Science explores fundamental problems with regulatory science in the environmental and natural resource law field. Each chapter covers a variety of natural resource and regulatory areas, ranging from climate change to endangered species protection and traditional health-based environmental regulation. Regulatory laws and institutions themselves strongly influence the direction of scientific research by creating a system of rewards and penalties for science. As a consequence, regulatory laws or institutions that are designed naively end up incentivizing scientists to generate and then publish only those results that further the substantive regulatory goals preferred by the scientists. By relying so heavily on science to dictate policy, regulatory laws and institutions encourage scientists to use their assessment of the state of the science to further their own preferred scientific and regulatory policy agendas. Additionally, many environmental and natural resource regulatory agencies have been instructed by legislatures to rely heavily upon science in their rulemaking. In areas of rapidly evolving science, regulatory agencies are inevitably looking for scientific consensus prematurely, before the scientific process has worked through competing hypotheses and evidence. The contributors in this volume address how institutions for regulatory science should be designed in light of the inevitable misfit between the political or legal demand for regulatory action and the actual state of evolving scientific knowledge.
Incentives and Market-based Institutions
Author: Clayton Ray Featherstone
Publisher: Stanford University
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 149
Book Description
In this dissertation, we will study three market-based institutions and the incentives that govern them. The first institution is that of centralized school choice, which has become increasingly important over the past decade. Students submit ordinal rankings over schools and a central mechanism uses those rankings to assign students. We study an important mechanism that is seen in the field, the Boston mechanism, and another mechanism with nice theoretical properties, the Deferred acceptance mechanism (DA), that has been adopted in several large school districts. One of the biggest reasons that DA is theoretically nice is that it makes truthful preference revelation a dominant strategy for the students. In a lab experiment, we show that students fail to truthfully reveal their rankings over schools when it is profitable to do so (under Boston), but tell the truth when it is not (under DA). In this sense, the experiment confirms the intuition that designers of school choice mechanisms should be worried about strategic manipulation of preference reports. We also, however, look at a different preference environment where truth-telling is a Bayes- Nash equilibrium under Boston and a dominant strategy equilibrium under DA. What's more, under this environment, given truthful revelation, Boston yields outcomes that stochastically dominant those of DA from the interim perspective that considers others' preferences unknown. In this environment, we see truth-telling rates that are not significantly different, which means that we might be able to implement better outcomes if we look to mechanisms that implement truth-telling as a Bayes-Nash equilibrium, instead of as a dominant strategy. Next, we look at two-sided labor matches, such as the one used by the National Residency Matching Program (NRMP) to match newly-minted doctors to residency programs. Again, we see two major types of mechanisms -- priority mechanisms that try to implement potential matches in a particular order, and Deferred Acceptance mechanisms, which rely on the Gale-Shapley algorithm. Relative to truthful preference revelation, DA is ex post stable, while priority mechanisms are not. Ex post stability intuitively prevents unraveling. In equilibrium, though, we do not expect truthful preference revelation, and in fact, this leads to instability in the equilibria of both mechanisms. Still, in the field, we see that priority mechanisms tend to unravel, while DA mechanisms do not. This is a puzzle which can be resolved if agents truthfully reveal under DA, in spite of the fact that they could profit by deviating. In the lab, we show that this is exactly what we see, which provides a complementary explanation for the success of DA to the core-convergence-based explanations. Finally, we look at long-distance trade without enforcement. When we think of pre-modern trade, a major problem was the worry that agents carrying goods might abscond with those goods instead of carrying them to their intended destinations. Explanations in the literature have tended to rely on models of reputation. These models, in turn, rely on the theory of infinitely repeated games. This is usually justified via the thought that traders formed some sort of tightly knit community or had some sort of dynastic continuation. We look at the question of finite trade. Although the conventional wisdom is that finite trade would unravel from the last period, we show a mechanism by which this does not happen. Beyond merely making a technical point, we think this model of finite trade provides a good model with which to think about impersonal trade.
Publisher: Stanford University
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 149
Book Description
In this dissertation, we will study three market-based institutions and the incentives that govern them. The first institution is that of centralized school choice, which has become increasingly important over the past decade. Students submit ordinal rankings over schools and a central mechanism uses those rankings to assign students. We study an important mechanism that is seen in the field, the Boston mechanism, and another mechanism with nice theoretical properties, the Deferred acceptance mechanism (DA), that has been adopted in several large school districts. One of the biggest reasons that DA is theoretically nice is that it makes truthful preference revelation a dominant strategy for the students. In a lab experiment, we show that students fail to truthfully reveal their rankings over schools when it is profitable to do so (under Boston), but tell the truth when it is not (under DA). In this sense, the experiment confirms the intuition that designers of school choice mechanisms should be worried about strategic manipulation of preference reports. We also, however, look at a different preference environment where truth-telling is a Bayes- Nash equilibrium under Boston and a dominant strategy equilibrium under DA. What's more, under this environment, given truthful revelation, Boston yields outcomes that stochastically dominant those of DA from the interim perspective that considers others' preferences unknown. In this environment, we see truth-telling rates that are not significantly different, which means that we might be able to implement better outcomes if we look to mechanisms that implement truth-telling as a Bayes-Nash equilibrium, instead of as a dominant strategy. Next, we look at two-sided labor matches, such as the one used by the National Residency Matching Program (NRMP) to match newly-minted doctors to residency programs. Again, we see two major types of mechanisms -- priority mechanisms that try to implement potential matches in a particular order, and Deferred Acceptance mechanisms, which rely on the Gale-Shapley algorithm. Relative to truthful preference revelation, DA is ex post stable, while priority mechanisms are not. Ex post stability intuitively prevents unraveling. In equilibrium, though, we do not expect truthful preference revelation, and in fact, this leads to instability in the equilibria of both mechanisms. Still, in the field, we see that priority mechanisms tend to unravel, while DA mechanisms do not. This is a puzzle which can be resolved if agents truthfully reveal under DA, in spite of the fact that they could profit by deviating. In the lab, we show that this is exactly what we see, which provides a complementary explanation for the success of DA to the core-convergence-based explanations. Finally, we look at long-distance trade without enforcement. When we think of pre-modern trade, a major problem was the worry that agents carrying goods might abscond with those goods instead of carrying them to their intended destinations. Explanations in the literature have tended to rely on models of reputation. These models, in turn, rely on the theory of infinitely repeated games. This is usually justified via the thought that traders formed some sort of tightly knit community or had some sort of dynastic continuation. We look at the question of finite trade. Although the conventional wisdom is that finite trade would unravel from the last period, we show a mechanism by which this does not happen. Beyond merely making a technical point, we think this model of finite trade provides a good model with which to think about impersonal trade.
Making Sense of Incentives
Author: Timothy J. Bartik
Publisher: W.E. Upjohn Institute
ISBN: 0880996684
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180
Book Description
Bartik provides a clear and concise overview of how state and local governments employ economic development incentives in order to lure companies to set up shop—and provide new jobs—in needy local labor markets. He shows that many such incentive offers are wasteful and he provides guidance, based on decades of research, on how to improve these programs.
Publisher: W.E. Upjohn Institute
ISBN: 0880996684
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180
Book Description
Bartik provides a clear and concise overview of how state and local governments employ economic development incentives in order to lure companies to set up shop—and provide new jobs—in needy local labor markets. He shows that many such incentive offers are wasteful and he provides guidance, based on decades of research, on how to improve these programs.
Incentives for Environmental Protection
Author: Thomas C. Schelling
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Book Description
Prices as regulatory instruments; The regulation of aircraft noise; The problem of aicraft noise; Federal noise-control strategies; Noise- control strategies for individual airports; An evaluation of incentive-based strategies; The regulation of airborne benzene.
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Book Description
Prices as regulatory instruments; The regulation of aircraft noise; The problem of aicraft noise; Federal noise-control strategies; Noise- control strategies for individual airports; An evaluation of incentive-based strategies; The regulation of airborne benzene.
Decision Making for the Environment
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309095409
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297
Book Description
With the growing number, complexity, and importance of environmental problems come demands to include a full range of intellectual disciplines and scholarly traditions to help define and eventually manage such problems more effectively. Decision Making for the Environment: Social and Behavioral Science Research Priorities is the result of a 2-year effort by 12 social and behavioral scientists, scholars, and practitioners. The report sets research priorities for the social and behavioral sciences as they relate to several different kinds of environmental problems.
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309095409
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297
Book Description
With the growing number, complexity, and importance of environmental problems come demands to include a full range of intellectual disciplines and scholarly traditions to help define and eventually manage such problems more effectively. Decision Making for the Environment: Social and Behavioral Science Research Priorities is the result of a 2-year effort by 12 social and behavioral scientists, scholars, and practitioners. The report sets research priorities for the social and behavioral sciences as they relate to several different kinds of environmental problems.
Varieties of Capitalism
Author: Peter A. Hall
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199247749
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 557
Book Description
Applying the new economics of organisation and relational theories of the firm to the problem of understanding cross-national variation in the political economy, this volume elaborates a new understanding of the institutional differences that characterise the 'varieties of capitalism' worldwide.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199247749
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 557
Book Description
Applying the new economics of organisation and relational theories of the firm to the problem of understanding cross-national variation in the political economy, this volume elaborates a new understanding of the institutional differences that characterise the 'varieties of capitalism' worldwide.
An American Sickness
Author: Elisabeth Rosenthal
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698407180
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 434
Book Description
A New York Times bestseller/Washington Post Notable Book of 2017/NPR Best Books of 2017/Wall Street Journal Best Books of 2017 "This book will serve as the definitive guide to the past and future of health care in America.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene At a moment of drastic political upheaval, An American Sickness is a shocking investigation into our dysfunctional healthcare system - and offers practical solutions to its myriad problems. In these troubled times, perhaps no institution has unraveled more quickly and more completely than American medicine. In only a few decades, the medical system has been overrun by organizations seeking to exploit for profit the trust that vulnerable and sick Americans place in their healthcare. Our politicians have proven themselves either unwilling or incapable of reining in the increasingly outrageous costs faced by patients, and market-based solutions only seem to funnel larger and larger sums of our money into the hands of corporations. Impossibly high insurance premiums and inexplicably large bills have become facts of life; fatalism has set in. Very quickly Americans have been made to accept paying more for less. How did things get so bad so fast? Breaking down this monolithic business into the individual industries—the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and drug manufacturers—that together constitute our healthcare system, Rosenthal exposes the recent evolution of American medicine as never before. How did healthcare, the caring endeavor, become healthcare, the highly profitable industry? Hospital systems, which are managed by business executives, behave like predatory lenders, hounding patients and seizing their homes. Research charities are in bed with big pharmaceutical companies, which surreptitiously profit from the donations made by working people. Patients receive bills in code, from entrepreneurial doctors they never even saw. The system is in tatters, but we can fight back. Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn't just explain the symptoms, she diagnoses and treats the disease itself. In clear and practical terms, she spells out exactly how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care you and your family deserve. She takes you inside the doctor-patient relationship and to hospital C-suites, explaining step-by-step the workings of a system badly lacking transparency. This is about what we can do, as individual patients, both to navigate the maze that is American healthcare and also to demand far-reaching reform. An American Sickness is the frontline defense against a healthcare system that no longer has our well-being at heart.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698407180
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 434
Book Description
A New York Times bestseller/Washington Post Notable Book of 2017/NPR Best Books of 2017/Wall Street Journal Best Books of 2017 "This book will serve as the definitive guide to the past and future of health care in America.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene At a moment of drastic political upheaval, An American Sickness is a shocking investigation into our dysfunctional healthcare system - and offers practical solutions to its myriad problems. In these troubled times, perhaps no institution has unraveled more quickly and more completely than American medicine. In only a few decades, the medical system has been overrun by organizations seeking to exploit for profit the trust that vulnerable and sick Americans place in their healthcare. Our politicians have proven themselves either unwilling or incapable of reining in the increasingly outrageous costs faced by patients, and market-based solutions only seem to funnel larger and larger sums of our money into the hands of corporations. Impossibly high insurance premiums and inexplicably large bills have become facts of life; fatalism has set in. Very quickly Americans have been made to accept paying more for less. How did things get so bad so fast? Breaking down this monolithic business into the individual industries—the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and drug manufacturers—that together constitute our healthcare system, Rosenthal exposes the recent evolution of American medicine as never before. How did healthcare, the caring endeavor, become healthcare, the highly profitable industry? Hospital systems, which are managed by business executives, behave like predatory lenders, hounding patients and seizing their homes. Research charities are in bed with big pharmaceutical companies, which surreptitiously profit from the donations made by working people. Patients receive bills in code, from entrepreneurial doctors they never even saw. The system is in tatters, but we can fight back. Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn't just explain the symptoms, she diagnoses and treats the disease itself. In clear and practical terms, she spells out exactly how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care you and your family deserve. She takes you inside the doctor-patient relationship and to hospital C-suites, explaining step-by-step the workings of a system badly lacking transparency. This is about what we can do, as individual patients, both to navigate the maze that is American healthcare and also to demand far-reaching reform. An American Sickness is the frontline defense against a healthcare system that no longer has our well-being at heart.
Democracy, Public Expenditures, and the Poor
Author: Philip Keefer
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0031210104
Category : Democracy
Languages : en
Pages : 36
Book Description
Countries vary systematically with respect to the incentives of politicians to provide broad public goods, and to reduce poverty. Even in developing countries that are democracies, politicians often have incentives to divert resources to political rents, and to private transfers that benefit a few citizens at the expense of many. These distortions can be traced to imperfections in political markets, that are greater in some countries than in others. The authors review the theory, and evidence on the impact of incomplete information of voters, the lack of credibility of political promises, and social polarization on political incentives. They argue that the effects of these imperfections are large, but that their implications are insufficiently integrated into the design of policy reforms aimed at improving the provision of public goods, and reducing poverty.
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0031210104
Category : Democracy
Languages : en
Pages : 36
Book Description
Countries vary systematically with respect to the incentives of politicians to provide broad public goods, and to reduce poverty. Even in developing countries that are democracies, politicians often have incentives to divert resources to political rents, and to private transfers that benefit a few citizens at the expense of many. These distortions can be traced to imperfections in political markets, that are greater in some countries than in others. The authors review the theory, and evidence on the impact of incomplete information of voters, the lack of credibility of political promises, and social polarization on political incentives. They argue that the effects of these imperfections are large, but that their implications are insufficiently integrated into the design of policy reforms aimed at improving the provision of public goods, and reducing poverty.
Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance
Author: Douglass C. North
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521397346
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 164
Book Description
An analytical framework for explaining the ways in which institutions and institutional change affect the performance of economies is developed in this analysis of economic structures.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521397346
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 164
Book Description
An analytical framework for explaining the ways in which institutions and institutional change affect the performance of economies is developed in this analysis of economic structures.
Innovation and Public Policy
Author: Austan Goolsbee
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022680545X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 259
Book Description
A calculation of the social returns to innovation /Benjamin F. Jones and Lawrence H. Summers --Innovation and human capital policy /John Van Reenen --Immigration policy levers for US innovation and start-ups /Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr --Scientific grant funding /Pierre Azoulay and Danielle Li --Tax policy for innovation /Bronwyn H. Hall --Taxation and innovation: what do we know? /Ufuk Akcigit and Stefanie Stantcheva --Government incentives for entrepreneurship /Josh Lerner.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022680545X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 259
Book Description
A calculation of the social returns to innovation /Benjamin F. Jones and Lawrence H. Summers --Innovation and human capital policy /John Van Reenen --Immigration policy levers for US innovation and start-ups /Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr --Scientific grant funding /Pierre Azoulay and Danielle Li --Tax policy for innovation /Bronwyn H. Hall --Taxation and innovation: what do we know? /Ufuk Akcigit and Stefanie Stantcheva --Government incentives for entrepreneurship /Josh Lerner.