Policy Experiments Research Articles

Corrigendum to “Economic impact of more stringent environmental standard in China: Evidence from a regional policy experimentation in pulp and paper industry” Resources, Conservation and Recycling 158 (2020), 104831

Corrigendum to “Economic impact of more stringent environmental standard in China: Evidence from a regional policy experimentation in pulp and paper industry” Resources, Conservation and Recycling 158 (2020), 104831

Basic income in crisis? (Hard) lessons from the pandemic

AbstractThis short paper reflects on the key lessons we can learn from the political debate around and policy experimentation with (emergency) basic income schemes in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic. While the pandemic crisis initially seems to have opened up a policy window for introducing a basic income as a crisis instrument, theoretical arguments and empirical observations strongly suggest the reliance of some basic income advocates on crisis events, such as the pandemic, to push forward their policy ideas involves wishful thinking rather than political reality. A feasible roadmap towards introducing basic income requires the hard work of raising public awareness, constructing broad constituencies, and building robust political coalitions rather than waiting for the next crisis to come around the corner.

Payment and billing strategies to support methadone take-home medication: Perspectives of financial leaders of opioid treatment program organizations in New York State

IntroductionRecent federal regulatory changes governing the delivery of methadone treatment for opioid use disorder at Opioid Treatment Programs (OTPs) support continued practice changes towards greater and flexible methadone take-home medication. Existing payment models for OTPs were closely tied with onsite medication administration and thus misaligned with the need to conduct more and flexible take-homes. This study aims to understand OTP organizations' experience with the newly created OTP bundled payment model in New York State as an alternative to the pre-existing per-service payment model during 2020–2023 to inform financing strategies to support and sustain practice changes. MethodsThe study conducted semi-structured interviews with financial leaders and staff from OTP organizations in New York State. Snowball sampling supplemented purposeful sampling of OTP organizations based on their billing practices by. Qualitative data from 12 interviews (with 11 OTP organizations and 1 trade organization) were analyzed with an integrated (inductive and deductive) approach to derive themes. ResultsStudy informants recognized that the bundled payment model served to protect revenue in a time when OTPs had to pivot quickly to increase take-home medication to patients. Informants described a wide spectrum of practices to operationalize billing in the alternative payment systems, revealing confusion with the billing rules and significant logistical and technical challenges. Informants expressed concerns regarding the substantial difference between the full bundled rate, paid in weeks with one or more qualifying services, and the medication-only rate, reporting that extended (2 weeks or more) take-homes might not be sustainable under the two-tiered model with the low medication-only rate and advocating for a single bundled rate. Informants believed that increased take-home medication and federal regulatory changes had profound implications for the delivery of counseling services, the counselor workforce, and financial viability for OTPs. ConclusionsOur study of OTP organization experience in New York State provided data on OTP organization perspectives regarding the potential revenue-protecting effects of bundled payments and generated insights to inform future research and policy experimentation to support flexible take-home medication. Future implementation studies are needed to better understand the roles of financing strategies at large in supporting clinical practice changes in substance use disorder treatment.

The decriminalization of illicit drugs in British Columbia: a national evaluation protocol

BackgroundOn January 31st, 2023, the province of British Columbia (BC), Canada, was granted a federal exemption allowing adults (aged 18 +) to possess up to 2.5 g of select illicit drugs. The exemption will be in place for three years (2023–2026), marking the first formal decriminalization of illicit drug policy reform in Canada. BC’s decriminalization initiative is premised on several goals. This project seeks to evaluate each of these goals and their individual and combined contributions to determine the overall success of this policy.MethodsThe following protocol paper provides a detailed outline of a five-year (2022-2027) national evaluation of BC’s decriminalization initiative, as well as the specific objectives, methodologies, and planned analyses for eight interrelated sub-studies that comprise the evaluation. These sub-studies fall under the following five topical areas of research: 1) people who use drugs (PWUD), 2) the police and the criminal justice system, 3) the general public, 4) the health services system, and 5) an economic analysis. Additional research activities may also be explored.ResultsThe overall evaluation and specific sub-study designs were informed by intensive stakeholder engagement. The evaluation was developed in collaboration with an international expert committee who came together to undertake a nominal group technique to decide on the final evaluation design and corresponding logic model. The evaluation will also employ an advisory board and individual sub-study working groups comprised of experts and PWUD who will oversee the development and implementation of the overall evaluation as well as each sub-study.DiscussionThis evaluation will draw on implementation science research practices to evaluate and understand the full impacts of this novel drug policy experiment. Results will be widely disseminated through manuscripts, reports, presentations, and infographics, which will be adapted and tailored for specific audiences. The protocol identifies several anticipated challenges and limitations. This evaluation’s evidence-based findings will be poised to offer pivotal insights that can shape and refine the discourse on drug policy and will serve as a critical resource for understanding the multifaceted impacts of decriminalization.

It is about time! Exploring the clashing timeframes of politics and public policy experiments

Abstract Although existing studies on experimental policymaking have acknowledged the importance of the political setting in which policy experiments take place, we lack systematic knowledge on how various political dimensions affect experimental policymaking. In this article, we address a specific gap in the existing understanding of the politics of experimentation: how political timeframes influence experimental policymaking. Drawing on theoretical discussions on experimental policymaking, public policy, electoral politics, and mediatization of politics, we outline expectations about how electoral and problem cycles may influence the timing, design, and learning from policy experiments. We argue electoral timeframes are likely to discourage politicians from undertaking large-scale policy experiments and if politicians decide to launch experiments, they prefer shorter designs. The electoral cycle may lead politicians to draw too hasty conclusions or ignore the experiment’s results altogether. We expect problem cycles to shorten politicians’ time horizons further as there is pressure to solve problems quickly. We probe the plausibility of our theoretical expectations using interview data from two different country contexts: Estonia and Finland.

The roles and unexplored potential of policy experimentation in climate adaptation governance: A systematic literature review

AbstractPolicy experimentation has emerged globally as a novel governance approach to address complex socio‐environmental problems. In the climate adaptation literature, policy experiments that test technical and governance innovations on a small scale in real‐world conditions are increasingly utilized to explore new pathways for climate adaptation. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence on how policy experiments lead to transformative change in climate adaptation governance, particularly regarding their role as a change strategy. This systematic literature review aims to thoroughly investigate the topic by mapping the empirical characteristics of policy experiments, their role and their outcomes. An existing analytical framework was adapted to fulfill this objective by qualitatively and quantitatively analyzing 27 empirical papers. The findings reveal that policy experiments in climate adaptation often address multiple climate hazards, sectors and actors, yet they are spatially and temporally limited, being predominantly located in Europe. Moreover, the study highlights the transformative potential of policy experiments in climate adaptation governance, emphasizing their effectiveness in testing technical and governing innovations, as well as implementing adaptation policies. Policy experiments predominantly contribute to social learning rather than direct policy changes, requiring specific strategies to upscale the knowledge generated. We conclude the paper with a research agenda that stresses the need for more cumulative and comparative (post)assessments of climate adaptation experiments. This is important given the potential of policy experiments as governing approaches in the advancement of climate adaptation.

What works? Researching participants’ experiences of a social policy RCT through qualitative interviews

Increasingly, evidence-based policymaking, in the form of randomized control trials (RCTs) in particular, are advocated as a means for studying the effects of planned social policy measures. Additionally, a Finnish basic income experiment was conducted in 2017–2018 as an RCT as a means of exploring alternative policy solutions, which gained widespread national and international political, media and scholarly attention. Despite the popularity of RCTs, there is a lack of studies of participants’ experiences of participation in social policy RCTs. In this article, we depart from the notion of ‘lived experiences’ when investigating a bottom-up participant perspective of the Finnish social policy experiment with the purpose of contributing to the understanding and future planning of ethically and methodologically sustainable policy experiments. Drawing on a qualitative, in-depth interview study of 81 Finnish basic income experiment participants, we examined their lived experiences and related views on the experiment. The analysis shows that although the idea of experimenting to demonstrate ‘what works’ in social policy was supported by participants in principle, various questions arose both concerning the tactical and political purposes of the experiment and the nature of scientific ‘evidence’. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that the impact of the media and political attention often surrounding more controversial policy experiments, like the Finnish one, can also challenge the RCT principles of ‘non-contamination’. Participants in highly politicized experiments also easily feel that they become objects of strong moral expectations and judgements, which in the Finnish basic income case clearly resulted in feelings of frustration and personal failure.

Which client is worthy of using discretion? Analysing storytelling practices of Dutch street-level bureaucrats in inter-departmental settings

Abstract Multiple welfare states are re-emphasising the need for street-level bureaucrats’ (SLBs) discretion to stimulate responsive service provision. However, little is known about how SLBs with diverse backgrounds in inter-departmental settings deliberate what it means to use discretion well when different rules, eligibility criteria, and interpretations apply to a client. We address this gap by investigating the stories that participants of a Dutch policy experiment told each other to justify which clients should be granted a flexible interpretation of entitlement categories amid scarcity. We found that ‘caretakers’ used the ‘victim of circumstances’ and ‘good citizen’ plot-type to convince ‘service providers’ that the use of discretion was the right thing to do, whereas the latter used the ‘not needy enough’ or ‘the irresponsible citizen’ plot-type for contestation. Our analysis shows that storytelling helped SLBs to make sense of and bring cohesion to complex situations. Moreover, the analysis shows how stories can have a strong emotional appeal and create a sense of urgency to act collectively, yet can also create divisions and opposition among SLBs. As such, storytelling influences how SLBs think and feel about the client, themselves, and each other, and influences how discretion is used at the front-line of public policy.

Decentralization and attitudes towards the environment: Survey-based evidence

Attitudes towards the environment are changing around the world. This may be due to greater awareness about environmental challenges, in part motivated by climate change, but also innovations in the policy landscape, such as those associated with decentralization, or the assignment of policymaking, administrative and political responsibilities to the subnational levels of administration. Decentralization brings the government closer to the people and creates room for bottom-up policy experimentation and citizen participation in policy design, which may influence attitudes. To shed light on these linkages, this paper provides survey-based empirical evidence based on data from the World Values Survey that exposure to decentralization contributes to more favorable attitudes towards the environment, controlling for personal and household characteristics of respondents, as well as country and cohort fixed effects.

Study on Non-Point Source Pollution Prevention and Control System in Nansi Lake Basin Based on System Dynamics Approach

Agriculture, as an important activity on which human beings depend for their livelihood, brings serious environmental problems while meeting the needs of human survival, among which agricultural non-point source (NPS) pollution is one of the most urgent environmental problems. This study quantitatively assessed the loading characteristics spatial and temporal evolution patterns of two agricultural NPS pollutants, chemical oxygen demand (COD) and ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N), from 2010 to 2020 in the Nansi Lake Basin as an example, and constructed a system dynamics (SD) simulation model to simulate and analyze agricultural NPS pollution under different development and treatment scenarios, based on an investigation of the regional prevention and control strategy of agricultural NPS pollution and the technological system. The results show that the current status of agricultural NPS pollution load in the Nansi Lake Basin is poor, and the level of pollution load is high, showing obvious geographical differences. In terms of temporal changes, the pollution loads of the two pollutants showed a decreasing trend from 2010 to 2020, among which the pollution load of NH3-N showed the largest change. Spatially, the spatial distribution of each type of pollutant has some similarities, with smaller pollution loads in Jining and Zaozhuang and relatively larger pollution loads in Heze and Ningyang. The main source of COD pollution in the Nansi Lake Basin is rural life, with an emission proportion of 52.85%, and the main sources of NH3-N pollution from agricultural NPS pollution in the area are rural life and livestock and poultry farming, with emission proportions of 47.55% and 35.36%, respectively. Under the status quo continuum scenario, the pollution load values for COD are consistently higher than those for NH3-N, so the relative impact of COD is greater. In this study, the principles and methods of SD in system science are adopted to deal with the agricultural NPS pollution of Nansi Lake Basin, and the evolution of its behavioral characteristics are simulated, forecasted, and predicted, and policy experiments are conducted, with a view to providing references for the prevention and control of agricultural NPS pollution in Nansi Lake Basin and further research.

Improving the Quality of Climate Change Adaptation Planning Through State Mandate: The Case of California

Problem, research strategy, and findings As communities everywhere experience accelerating climate change impacts, local governments must proactively plan and implement adaptation or resilience strategies. A significant challenge is effectively scaling up these efforts in diverse communities. In 2015, the State of California passed Senate Bill 379 (SB379), requiring climate change adaptation and resilience strategies in local plans, making it the first U.S. state to broadly mandate such requirements locally. Our study measured the effects of SB379 on the quality of local plans that address climate change adaptation or resilience and assessed which types of plans jurisdictions selected to meet the requirements. Using a longitudinal study, we analyzed plan quality before and after SB379 took effect using criteria developed for earlier studies of voluntary climate adaptation plans. We found that California plans have significantly improved when assessed against theoretical criteria, and most jurisdictions have chosen their local hazard mitigation plans to meet the requirements. The flexible and cooperative design of the mandate and its loose enforcement suggest local jurisdictions are willing to address climate change, even when challenged with more stringent requirements if incentives align. As a natural policy experiment, California’s experience offers a unique opportunity to examine the effects of a state planning mandate and the choices local jurisdictions make to comply. Takeaway for practice Cooperative mandates that require local governments to address climate change adaptation and resilience in their plans but offer flexibility in how they do so may improve the quality of plans. Practitioners should seek to leverage flexibility in such mandates to the advantage of their local communities.

Ad hoc bank taxation and credit supply

AbstractThis paper studies the introduction of new temporary taxation on banks and its effects on banks' lending decisions. Focusing on a unique policy experiment in Slovenia in 2011, where the government imposed a 0.1% tax on banks' total assets, I find that the introduction of the tax resulted in a lower credit supply of loans to corporates. In particular, for each percentage point increase in the share of tax in the capital, banks charge, on average, 8 basis points higher lending rates and decrease their lending amount by 0.5%. The findings of this research carry strong policy implications for countries contemplating or having already implemented windfall or other temporary taxes on banks. The introduction of the tax might lead to a reduction in lending beyond what would be warranted from the standpoint of monetary or other policies.

Pursuing urban sustainability through policy experimentations? Insights from the pay-as-you-throw experiment in China

Drawing on political economy literature at the nexus of urban entrepreneurialism and policy experimentation, this paper explores how policy experiments are purposely used to stage the restructuring of urban sustainability and what entrepreneurial urban experiments function in actual. This article focuses on the case of a local experimental policy, “pay-as-you-throw,” to show how urban experiments employed by the entrepreneurial municipality are not always a silver bullet, and their effectiveness is conditional. We demonstrate that entrepreneurial local governments’ efforts to enhance urban sustainability were undermined by three combined factors in the government-led approach to urban experiments: the false delegation of experimental discretion, routinized implementation of experiments, and positive selection of pilot sites.

Policy Learning and the Diffusion of Autonomous Vehicle Policy in the American States

This study examines the multifaceted mechanisms driving the adoption of autonomous vehicle (AV) policy in the United States. Drawing from diffusion and network governance theories, it explores the intricate interplay between state governments, private industry, and shared mobility services in shaping AV policies. Several states like California, Nevada, and Texas have emerged as frontrunners in AV testing and innovation. However, policymakers grapple with unique challenges related to AV technology, including safety, liability, and infrastructure enhancement, necessitating innovative policy solutions. As AVs signify a transformative shift in transportation, state governments assume a pivotal role in policy innovation and experimentation. Using a blend of dyadic quantitative analysis and qualitative interviews, this study examines to what extent policy learning predominantly drives AV policy adoption. In doing so, we explore specific diffusion mechanisms, including policy learning and competitive dynamics, to understand how they shape the early adoption of AV policies across states. We find substantial evidence for interstate learning facilitated by intergovernmental organizations and the private sector.

Transformations in the sanitation sector in the State of Rio de Janeiro: neoliberalism and regulatory changes

This article analyzes the reconfiguration of water supply services provided to municipalities across the State of Rio de Janeiro. It seeks to examines how advancements in the neoliberalization of Brazil's basic sanitation sector have contributed to a fragmentation in the provision of services and to the emergence of uneven geographies on a regional scale. This will be conducted through the lens of policy experimentation, particularly after the approval of Law 14.026/2020. The study is based on an approach concerning the commodification of public services within the context of neoliberalism, marked by a complex reformulation of regulatory mechanisms. The methodology combines an analysis of secondary data, documentary research, and thematic mapping. The results reveal that the management of sanitation services is increasingly guided by market logic, with the experimentation of controversial regulatory mechanisms that have exacerbated fragmentation and deepened territorial inequality.

Achieving research impact in medical research through collaboration across organizational boundaries: Insights from a mixed methods study in the Netherlands

BackgroundIn the Netherlands, university medical centres (UMCs) bear primary responsibility for conducting medical research and delivering highly specialized care. The TopCare program was a policy experiment lasting 4 years in which three non-academic hospitals received funding from the Dutch Ministry of Health to also conduct medical research and deliver highly specialized care in specific domains. This study investigates research collaboration outcomes for all Dutch UMCs and non-academic hospitals in general and, more specifically, for the domains in the non-academic hospitals participating in the TopCare program. Additionally, it explores the organizational boundary work employed by these hospitals to foster productive research collaborations.MethodsA mixed method research design was employed combining quantitative bibliometric analysis of publications and citations across all Dutch UMCs and non-academic hospitals and the TopCare domains with geographical distances, document analysis and ethnographic interviews with actors in the TopCare program.ResultsQuantitative analysis shows that, over the period of study, international collaboration increased among all hospitals while national collaboration and single institution research declined slightly. Collaborative efforts correlated with higher impact scores, and international collaboration scored higher than national collaboration. A total of 60% of all non-academic hospitals’ publications were produced in collaboration with UMCs, whereas almost 30% of the UMCs’ publications were the result of such collaboration. Non-academic hospitals showed a higher rate of collaboration with the UMC that was nearest geographically, whereas TopCare hospitals prioritized expertise over geographical proximity within their specialized domains. Boundary work mechanisms adopted by TopCare hospitals included aligning research activities with organizational mindset (identity), bolstering research infrastructure (competence) and finding and mobilizing strategic partnerships with academic partners (power). These efforts aimed to establish credibility and attractiveness as collaboration partners.ConclusionsResearch collaboration between non-academic hospitals and UMCs, particularly where this also involves international collaboration, pays off in terms of publications and impact. The TopCare hospitals used the program’s resources to perform boundary work aimed at becoming an attractive and credible collaboration partner for academia. Local factors such as research history, strategic domain focus, in-house expertise, patient flows, infrastructure and network relationships influenced collaboration dynamics within TopCare hospitals and between them and UMCs.

The impact of energy use rights trading policy on industrial companies’ green investments –Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China

As the world's largest energy consumer, China's energy strategy is of great significance in achieving a low-carbon economy for the world. Among the various pathways towards a low-carbon economy, green investment represents a pivotal element. In contrast to traditional investment, which tends to undervalue externalities, green investment considers both economic and environmental effects. This multifunctional approach necessitates the implementation of effective environmental regulation to stimulate green investment. In 2015, China initiated a pilot energy use rights trading policy, offering a quasi-natural experiment in policy for corporate green investment. This paper examines the impact of China's energy use rights trading policy on increasing green investment by Chinese industrial companies. The aim is to provide a valuable reference for the promotion of increased green investment by industrial companies in China and other major economies. The paper empirically examines the micro-economies under the method of multi-period difference-in-differences, taking 4037 observations of 1166 A-share listed industrial companies in China as the research sample from 2013 to 2021, sourced from the Wind database and hand-collected financial statements. It is found that (1) the energy use rights trading policy can significantly promote Chinese industrial companies to increase green investment. (2) After controlling for companies' relevant financial data and undergoing a series of robustness tests, including the placebo test and the propensity score matching difference-in-difference (PSM-DID) test, our main findings remain significant and robust. (3) The heterogeneity results show that the energy use rights trading policy has a more significant role in promoting the increase of green investment in non-state-owned companies, companies in the central region, and companies in high energy-consuming industries.(4) In terms of mechanism analysis, we demonstrate that energy use rights trading policy can promote an increase in green investments by increasing the environmental responsibility index in companies’ ESG ratings.

Heterogeneous peer effects under endogenous selection: An application to local and migrant children in elementary schools in Shanghai

This paper develops a model that allows for heterogenous contemporaneous peer effects among different types of agents who are endogenously selected into different peer groups. We apply our approach to migrant and local students in Shanghai, where local students all go to public schools, but migrant students are endogenously selected into either public schools or lower-quality private schools. The results suggest large contemporaneous peer effects among all student groups. We conduct policy experiments to examine the effect of transferring migrant students from private schools to public schools, and show that peer effect can be substantially more important than the school effect.

Do Family Policies Reduce Gender Inequality? Evidence from 60 Years of Policy Experimentation

Do family policies reduce gender inequality in the labor market? We contribute to this debate by investigating the joint impact of parental leave and childcare, using administrative data covering Austrian workers over more than half a century. We start by quasi-experimentally identifying the causal effects of all family policy reforms since the 1950s on the full dynamics of male and female earnings. We then map these causal estimates into a decomposition framework to compute counterfactual gender inequality series. Our results show that the enormous expansions of parental leave and childcare have had virtually no impact on gender convergence. (JEL D63, J13, J16, J31, J32)

Sustainability outcomes and policy implications: Evaluating China's "old urban neighborhood renewal" experiment.

Globally, old urban neighborhood transformation has become a new urban sustainability focus for its significant contribution to the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goal 11. A regeneration-oriented approach is particularly important for Chinese cities with a dwindling land supply, obsoleting infrastructure, and inadequate standard of living. Using a mixed-methods approach informed by BREEAM Communities, we examined two Chinese initiatives-old urban neighborhood renewal (OUNR) and sponge city development (SCD)-through a comprehensive study of pilot project sustainability, policy emphases and gaps, and broader governance implications. We found that SCD's top-down technocratic management was highly efficient in enhancing neighborhood hydrological functions and physical environment. However, successes were undermined by the lack of climate considerations and civic participation. Besides actionable recommendations for applied scholarship and policymaking in China, we provide insight into how the OUNR/SCD initiatives may broadly inform worldwide urban regeneration practices through project and policy experimentations that build adaptive capacity.