Journal of Policy Analysis and Management最新文献

The last few decades have seen rapid growth in the size of the Veterans Affairs Disability Compensation (VADC) program, which provides tax-free cash benefits to veterans with disabilities connected to military service. Given this recent growth, VADC is on pace to eclipse Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) to become the largest U.S. disability program by expenditures. Although there are decades of causal research on the design and impacts of SSDI, there is no comparable body of evidence for VADC. In this Policy Insight, we discuss how causal evidence was produced for Social Security-administered disability programs and why there is a lack of this evidence for VADC. Chief among the explanations is a lack of VADC data access available to the broader researcher community, access that Social Security facilitates for the programs it administers. However, even with this access, the proliferation of benefits and services targeted to service-disabled veterans implies that existing earnings loss studies and causal estimates of the impact of VADC benefit receipt on any given outcome of interest likely are mismeasurements of true effects. We conclude with recommendations for restructuring approaches to research design to accurately estimate impacts of VADC benefits as well as the wide array of other programs supporting service-disabled veterans.

Many public service organizations engage in commercialization, or market-oriented strategies designed to generate non-public revenue for the organization. Managers and policymakers sometimes choose to “buy” these commercialization strategies by setting up separate organizations, ostensibly to avoid inefficiencies associated with coordinating market activity within an organization designed for public service. Using a synthetic control approach, this study measures the effect on efficiency of a commercialization strategy in the tech transfer domain by leveraging the spin-off of a large public tech transfer enterprise. I find that the spin-off decreased revenue and licensing activity, and I find no meaningful effect on contract costs. My findings suggest that government entities in pursuit of revenue and efficiency gains should not consider “buying” commercialization strategies a magic bullet for efficiency gains.

Peck, L.R. (2024). Why SNAP Works: A Political History—and Defense—of the Food Stamp Program by Christopher Bosso. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2023, 257 pp., $24.95 (US) (Hardcover). ISBN 978–0520392816. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 43(2), 644–648. https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.22576

The book review misspelled the book author's name. The author is Christpher Bosso (not Busso). We apologize for this error.

We conducted a randomized control trial to study the impact of two information messages aimed at reducing the stigma associated with mental illness on the willingness to seek mental health care among adults in Nepal. The first intervention shares information about the prevalence of mental health issues and the efficacy of treatment. The second intervention shares information about the mental health struggles of a Nepali celebrity and how he benefited from treatment. We find three results. First, compared to a no-information control group, both interventions increase participants’ stated willingness to seek mental health treatment. This effect is driven by participants with high personal and anticipated stigma, less severe symptoms of depression and anxiety, and who hold strong beliefs about conformity to masculinity. Second, the impact on participants’ stated willingness to seek mental health treatment mirrors their willingness to pay for counseling. Third, participants are, on average, more likely to report willingness to seek help when the enumerator is female.