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Generic Policy Alternatives and Implementation
Market and Government Failure
• They rarely happen in isolation!!• So we need to check for a market failure and
then from there look for a government failure
Generic Policies
• Various types of policy solutions– General strategies and approaches– Must be tailored if they will be viable
• Book clearly demonstrates the market failures, government failures, or equity concerns that each generic policy most appropriately addresses, as well as the most common limitations and undesirable consequences associated with the use of each
Categorizations
• Freeing, facilitating, and simulating markets• Using taxes and subsidies to alter incentives• Establishing rules• Supplying goods through nonmarket
mechanisms• Providing insurance and cushions
Freeing, Facilitating, and Simulating Markets
• Deregulation• Legalization• Privatization• Allocating Existing Goods• Creation of New Marketable Goods– Cap-and-trade
• Simulating Markets– Cable television…what makes pricing efficient?
Using Taxes and Subsidies to Alter Incentives
• Supply-Side Taxes– Output taxes– Tariffs
• Supply-Side Subsidies– Matching grants– Tax expenditures
• Demand-Side Subsidies– In-kind subsidies– Vouchers– Tax expenditures
• Demand-Side Taxes– Commodity taxes– User fees
Establishing Rules
• Frameworks– Civil laws– Criminal laws
• Regulations– Price regulation– Quantity regulation– Direct information provision– Indirect information provision– Regulation of the circumstances of choice
Supply through Nonmarket Mechanisms
• Baumol’s disease• Direct supply by government bureaus– Leman’s list of domestic production functions (p. 249)
• Independent agencies– Government corporations– Special districts
• Contracting out– Direct– Indirect
Providing Insurance and Costs
• Insurance– Mandatory– Subsidized
• Cushions– Stockpiling– Transitional assistance– Cash grants
HALFTIME!
Factors Assessing Success and Failure of Implementation
• Is the underlying theory reasonable?– Characteristics and circumstances of adoption– Likely to be intrinsically un-implementable if we
cannot specify a logical chain of behaviors that lead to desired outcomes
• Does it build incentives to implement?– Sticks and carrots– Street-level bureaucrats– Monetary resources, realistic time frame, staff to
train, good information technology systems
Factors Assessing Success and Failure of Implementation
• Who has the essential elements to assemble?– The more numerous and varied the elements that
must be assembled, the greater is the potential for problems
– Implementation is a series of adoptions– Tokenism, delayed compliance, or blatant resistance
• Availability of fixers: Who will manage assembly?– Want implementers to see a purpose in policy– Policies do not implement themselves
Forward Mapping• Specifying and questioning chain of behaviors
that link policies to desired outcomes• Exactly what must be done by whom for desired
outcome to occur?• Dirty mindedness• Must be willing to make predictions• 1) Write the scenario• 2) Critique it (always be sure to consider the dogs
that didn’t bark)• 3) Revise it
Backward Mapping
• Begin thinking about policies by looking at the behavior that you wish to change
• Suggest alternative solutions and iteratively return to adoption
Uncertainty and Error• Since we do so much prediction, it is expected that we will
make errors• Duplication and overlap are often considered to be
inefficient…but they can make policies more feasible and robust– Explain this!
• How will we evaluate a program or policy?– What key questions should we be asking before choosing to
evaluate a policy?• What should we do about future termination?
– Hard to repeal without sunset provisions– Want to keep cost of termination to employees low…will lead to
less resistance
How to Respond to Heterogeneity
• We need to have flexibility and decentralization built in to reduce implementation failures– Allow self-selection• SF Neighborhood example
– Encourage capacity building– Use phases of implementation