Social experimentation / edited by Jerry A. Hausman and David A. Wise.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Hausman, Jerry A.

Wise, David A.

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Conference report (National Bureau of Economic Research)

A Conference report / National Bureau of Economic Research

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Electric utilities--Rates--Time-of-use pricing--United States--Evaluation--Congresses.

Electric utilities.

Evaluation research (Social action programs)--Congresses.

Evaluation research (Social action programs).

Housing subsidies--United States--Evaluation--Congresses.

Housing subsidies.

Medical policy--United States--Evaluation--Congresses.

Medical policy.

Negative income tax--United States--Evaluation--Congresses.

Negative income tax.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (304 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1985.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Since 1970 the United States government has spent over half a billion dollars on social experiments intended to assess the effect of potential tax policies, health insurance plans, housing subsidies, and other programs. Was it worth it? Was anything learned from these experiments that could not have been learned by other, and cheaper, means? Could the experiments have been better designed or analyzed? These are some of the questions addressed by the contributors to this volume, the result of a conference on social experimentation sponsored in 1981 by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The first section of the book looks at four types of experiments and what each accomplished. Frank P. Stafford examines the negative income tax experiments, Dennis J. Aigner considers the experiments with electricity pricing based on time of use, Harvey S. Rosen evaluates housing allowance experiments, and Jeffrey E. Harris reports on health experiments. In the second section, addressing experimental design and analysis, Jerry A. Hausman and David A. Wise highlight the absence of random selection of participants in social experiments, Frederick Mosteller and Milton C. Weinstein look specifically at the design of medical experiments, and Ernst W. Stromsdorfer examines the effects of experiments on policy. Each chapter is followed by the commentary of one or more distinguished economists.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Introduction

1. The Residential Electricity Time-of-Use Pricing Experiments: What Have We Learned?

2. Housing Behavior and the Experimental Housing-Allowance Program: What Have We Learned?

3. Income-Maintenance Policy and Work Effort: Learning from Experiments and Labor-Market Studies

4. Macroexperiments versus Microexperiments for Health Policy

5. Technical Problems in Social Experimentation: Cost versus Ease of Analysis

6. Toward Evaluating the Cost-Effectiveness of Medical and Social Experiments

7. The Use of Information in the Policy Process: Are Social-Policy Experiments Worthwhile?

8. Social Science Analysis and the Formulation of Public Policy: Illustrations of What the President "Knows" and How He Comes to "Know" It

Contributors

Author Index

Subject Index

Notes:

Papers presented at a conference held in 1981 sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Includes bibliographies and indexes.

ISBN:

9786611223564

9781281223562

1281223565

9780226319421

0226319423

OCLC:

476229174