Journal of Policy Analysis and Management最新文献

At least 17 states have adopted school vouchers combined with “education savings accounts” (ESAs) that are nearly universal in student and school eligibility—just since 2020. These policies allow families to use government funds to pay for tuition at essentially any in-person private school, including religious schools, and to use the funds to pay for qualified educational expenses, such as tutors and computers. The funding, while still below that of neighborhood public schools (NPSs),1 is substantial, ranging from about $7000 to $10,000 per pupil annually.

The terms that the program's supporters use have created confusion about the program design. The term “savings account” is common and it is partially accurate in the sense that the funds are paid to providers from accounts created in students' and family names, but the first word also implies that families contribute from their own savings. Some of the state policies are also called “scholarships,” implying that they are based on academic merit. But these are neither savings accounts nor scholarships. Because these policies couple school vouchers with ESAs, it is more apt to think of them as super-vouchers. I will just call them “vouchers/ESAs” for purposes here.

The fact that vouchers/ESAs combine two types of policies complicates the analysis. As I explain, the voucher element allows schools to discriminate against certain students, entwines government with religion, involves a large fiscal cost, and has shown fairly poor, or at best inconclusive, academic results. Home and virtual schooling, funded by the ESA element, do not suffer much from the first three problems but seem to generate even worse academic outcomes. Despite their differences, this Point-Counterpoint combines the debates because vouchers/ESAs are currently being adopted as a package.

As in any policy debate, we must also consider the policy alternatives. Since the early 1990s, the status quo of American education, originally built on NPSs, has been transformed into a multifaceted system that already has many forms of school choice. Almost one third of American K–12 students no longer attended their NPSs before the recent voucher/ESA push (Harris et al. 2017; USDOE 2018). In addition to tuition-paying private schools, the modern American school system already includes almost 8000 charter schools,2 homeschooling3 supported by subsidized virtual charter schools,4 and open enrollment that allows students to attend public schools outside their attendance zones and school districts. Whether vouchers are wise relative to NPSs is still a legitimate debate, but today's debate is really about whether we should continue to expand public school choice or expand religious and other private school choice.

In assessing these policy alternatives, I adopt the well-known voucher evaluation framework by Levin (2002), which includes two criteria common to almost any empiri

States and localities have passed labor standards to raise the floor on job quality, including mandating employer provision of paid sick leave (PSL). However, contemporary political polarization makes the enactment of national labor standards and of state standards in many states unlikely. Prior literature has examined how labor standards may “spill over” spatially to affect firms, jobs, and workers in nearby places who are not covered by labor standards. We motivate and empirically examine the potential for “intra-firm spillovers.” We argue that multi-state firms facing a patchwork of labor standards may align company labor practices with the most stringent regulatory environments that they face given the geographic distribution of their establishments. To test this possibility, we take advantage of new employer–employee linked data from The Shift Project and focus on the case of paid sick leave. We find that state and local paid sick leave mandates spillover through multi-state employers to provide workers in places without mandates effective access to paid sick leave, and these findings survive a placebo test using other fringe benefits. Companies act as conduits through which the reach of local mandates that raise the floor on job quality are expanded to a broader set of workers.

This study uses a novel framework based on the “negotiated staffing equilibrium” between governmental agencies and governing bodies to estimate the net benefits of increasing employment in public sector occupations that experience chronic labor shortages. The marginal values of these labor inputs, as perceived by the parties during budget negotiations, are inferred from information on the cost and productivity of labor in short supply compared to those values at the funded equilibrium employment level. If labor is not in short supply, then the net marginal benefits are either zero or negative. This model can be parameterized by elasticities and informed by principles of derived demand. The example of U.S. Air Force fighter pilots is used to illustrate the methodology because this occupation has frequently been understaffed, and the benefits of military staffing have generally been assumed to be intractable to value. The estimates here of the annual marginal net benefit of these fighter pilots is about $1.02 million, based on pilot shortages as of 2017. Eliminating that shortage would yield $458 million in additional net benefits. The results from estimating this model can inform labor allocations, budget debates and provide input values for decision-making tools such as benefit-cost analyses.

Gun buyback programs (GBPs), which use public funds to purchase civilians' privately-owned firearms, aim to reduce gun violence. However, next to nothing is known about their effects on firearm-related crime or deaths. Using data from the National Incident Based Reporting System, we find no evidence that GBPs reduce gun crime. Given our estimated null findings, with 95% confidence, we can rule out decreases in firearm-related crime of greater than 1.2% during the year following a buyback. Using data from the National Vital Statistics System, we also find no evidence that GBPs reduce suicides or homicides where a firearm was involved. These results call into question the efficacy of city gun buyback programs in their current form.