Journal of Policy Analysis and Management最新文献

There is widespread speculation and some evidence that grades and grading standards changed during the pandemic, making higher grades relatively easier to achieve. In this paper we use longitudinal data from students in Washington State to investigate middle and high school grades in math, science, and English pre- and post-pandemic. Our descriptive analysis of the data reveals that—in accordance with state guidance—almost no students received an F in the spring of 2020, and the share of students receiving A's jumped dramatically. While English and science grades returned to pre-pandemic levels in the years following the 2019/2020 school year, grades in math did not. To understand how well grades reflect objective measures of learning we regress test scores on student grades separately by subject and year and find that the strength of the relationship between grades and test scores has diminished over time in math. The diminishment of the signal value of grades may be a concern given that schools and families use grades as a signal of when students are ready to progress and when they might need more help.

When people lose their job, labor market programs help them get back to work. But administrative burdens can hinder enrollment in such programs. We report results from a mixed-method project to increase enrollment in employment services during the first 3 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. First, we interviewed jobseekers and frontline staff to uncover administrative burdens. Second we worked with staff to co-design a behavioral “nudge” intervention. Finally, in a large field experiment (N = 14,008), we evaluate the impact of this intervention on participation in employment services. We present two main findings. First, reducing administrative burden triples enrollment in the program within the first 30 days. Second, we test two motivational frames—one emphasizing social norms, another using checklist messaging. We find that message framing drives engagement with communications, such as email open rates and website click-throughs. However, framing generates no statistically significant difference in enrollment rates. Our results demonstrate the potential for applied behavioral science to improve implementation of labor market policy. We also contribute to current debates about the effectiveness of nudging to increase take-up of public services.

School districts serving newcomer English Learners (ELs) generally offer short-term intensive English programs designed to teach foundational language skills and guide students’ integration into the U.S. school system. Despite the growing popularity of newcomer programs, however, there is limited rigorous evidence of their efficacy. In this paper, we present evidence on the causal effect of an intensive English program on the academic achievement of newcomer EL students. Access to the program is determined by a test score cutoff which we leverage to employ a regression discontinuity design. On average, students who are eligible for the program in elementary grades experience a boost in their academic achievement for up to 3 years following initial eligibility. Conversely, newcomer EL students who are marginally eligible for intensive English language instruction in middle school grades see a decline in achievement that tends to exacerbate over time.

There is no shortage of proposals for U.S. health insurance reform. In our recent book, We've Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care (Einav & Finkelstein, 2023), we offered one more. It grew out of our internal debates over healthcare reform, between two academic economists who work (often together) on U.S. health policy but have not yet been involved in making that policy.

We started by trying to define the goal: what is the problem that healthcare policy should address? There are many good reasons for government to be involved, but the reasons are usually assumed rather than articulated when proposing or evaluating a specific policy proposal. That's unfortunate. It's hard to have a constructive debate about solutions unless we've articulated—and hopefully agreed upon—goals.

We therefore spent a fair amount of time trying to identify the driving impetus behind our history of health policy reforms and attempted reforms. From this, we ended up concluding that our health policy has been motivated by an enduring, if unwritten, social contract: access to essential health care, regardless of resources.

We expected a fair amount of push back on this definition of the goal of U.S. health policy. After all, we are a society known for advocating independence and liberty, and for lifting oneself up by the bootstraps. We are also, (in)famously, the only high-income country without universal health insurance coverage. We therefore devoted about a third of our book to trying to convince our readers that in fact this social contract exists, and that the myriad problems with the current U.S. health insurance “system” reflect our failure to fulfill our obligations, not their absence.

Somewhat to our surprise, in the many reactions we've received from readers across the political spectrum, there has been near-universal agreement with our premise: that the U.S. is committed as a society to trying to ensure access to essential medical care for everyone, whether or not they can pay for it. Reactions have instead focused on particular elements of our proposal for how to fulfill this commitment.

We described what we thought an ideal system would look like, freed from political, but not economic, constraints. It contains two main elements. The first is universal coverage that is automatic, free to the patient, and basic. The second is the option—for those who want and can afford it—to purchase supplemental coverage in a well-functioning marketplace. We argued that we could thus fulfill our social contract without tackling the other multi-trillion-dollar elephant in the room: the problem of high and often inefficient healthcare spending.

In what follows, we briefly describe how we arrived at these key elements.

We estimate that about two thirds of Americans—those who are covered by Medicare or by private health insurance through an employer—would want to supplement beyond the basic. The