Journal of Policy Modeling最新文献

Health care spending has grown significantly in the US, and is a major cause of rising federal deficits. Official projections find that low economic growth and aging of the population will lead to a modest continuation of this situation, but they miss that labor shortages have a particular impact on inefficient sectors, raising the cost of health care. We develop a unified macroeconomic model to address this shortcoming, with key variables—particularly in the health care sector and interest rates—endogenously determined. We find that the current fiscal trajectory of the US is unsustainable, with future deficits and debt well beyond both historical norms and official projections. Policy steps, focusing on reducing health care spending, increasing capital, and fiscal retrenchment, can lead to sustainable fiscal conditions and raise living standards that will otherwise fall.

We propose a methodology to map structural reforms from granular data to an aggregate model, exploring their transmission mechanisms and their macroeconomic and social impacts. The study focuses on the rich case of the reforms associated with the Italian Recovery and Resilience Plan. We document a significant potential impact on medium- and long-term GDP and find that the labour market and education measures are the main drivers of the impact on GDP and employment. We also examine the distributional impact of the reforms on the functional income distribution.

The gender gap in both employment and labour participation has narrowed markedly in recent decades in Spain. However, this decline seems to have slowed and shows a certain persistence. The solution to this problem can respond to different regulatory or non-regulatory policies. This article studies the evolution of the regulatory framework for the formulation of possible policy recommendations. We identify and quantify for the first time when, at what rate and in what regions, Spanish administrations have adopted regulations aimed at combating discrimination against women, achieving gender equality or approved measures related to the work-life balance. The study is based on a text analysis of 297,402 regulations adopted in the period 1996–2022. The indicators reveal the high degree of heterogeneity in terms of the legislation. Non-discrimination legislation was the most developed and frequent, with 11,228 regional regulations and 2590 central administration regulations adopted. We show that the volume of new regulations, mainly those related to discrimination and work-life balance, has contributed to the reduction in gender gaps. Policy actions by administrations should concentrate on these two modes of intervention. The general analysis of regulation in this area also allows for some recommendations in terms of “better regulation” policies, such as the introduction of gender equality assessments (specific regulatory impact reports).

South Africa runs a primary fiscal deficit and the long-term interest rate on government borrowing, r, is greater than the long-term economic growth rate, g. Without intervention, debt will continue to rise until there is a disorderly fiscal stop. Reforms to raise growth have not materialised, leaving fiscal consolidation as the second-best solution. Using a medium-sized, open-economy, fiscal DSGE model of South Africa, we show that the least cost policy is to impose a time-consistent fiscal policy rule with debt-to-GDP as the fiscal anchor and a pre-announced path for government consumption spending as the intermediate operational objective. This result obtains with and without explicit policy coordination between the fiscal and monetary authorities.

The declaration by the World Health Organization and government-initiated actions by different countries for the COVID-19 vaccine have led to the rapid evolution of sentiments on various social media platforms. Real-time data related to vaccination has grown the need to anticipate the changes in vaccine uptake. Using Twitter dataset, the study models different emotions and their associated word. The emotions are majorly classified into hesitancy and willingness for vaccination. The study categorizes the tweets into pre-launch, post-launch, and booster doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. Based on comparative analysis, most sentiments were related to hesitancy for vaccination during pre-launch. In post-launch, the majority of sentiments were oriented towards willingness for vaccination. However, during the booster dose, the sentiments were oriented toward happy, adequate, and free emotions. Over the time period, the willingness of the COVID-19 vaccine has improved. The practitioners and policymakers can obtain real-time sentiments based on this approach and strategize the long-term vaccination policy for COVID-19 and other vaccination programs.

Evaluating the relevance of development policies is a complex task as many different dimensions must be considered. By focusing on one particular, quantifiable aspect of relevance, this study proposes a new method for generating data-driven evidence that can be used both for assessing the relevance of international development policies ex post, and for guiding decisions about future strategic priorities. For this purpose, relevance is defined as the match between (i) the types and scopes of support provided and (ii) the types and scopes of support most needed in a given context, according to measurable indicators (proxies). The latter is operationalized using a multidimensional vulnerability score constructed based on a set of empirical indicators commonly argued to proxy vulnerability to shocks. Comparing the vulnerability score with the sector-specific allocation of support yields two empirical measures of relevance, one at the country level and one at the sector level within each country. The proposed method is then applied to evaluate the relevance of the World Bank Group’s early response to Covid-19 across 133 countries. At the same time, many of the modeling insights are more broadly applicable and may also be useful in informing evaluations of development policies beyond the specific application considered here.

The energy issue in both developed and developing countries remains vital. However, in developing countries, energy pressure is much greater. Despite this, few studies have examined credit, entrepreneurship, and energy transition in developing countries. We addressed this research gap by using the data collected from six regions in Burkina Faso. Employing the multivariate probit and the endogenous switching probit model, three scenarios are explored. We find that entrepreneurship promotes energy transition while access to credit is not useful to the energy transition. However, the joint effect of access to credit and entrepreneurship is 4 times higher for solar PV use and 3 times for biogas adoption. Access to credit promotes the energy transition when credit is devolved to the entrepreneur supporting the trinity rather than the trilemma.