Policy Questions Research Articles

Gambling consumption and gambling harm: evidence from three British surveys

Abstract Background Commercial gambling has increased rapidly, with attendant concerns about impact. A critical policy question is whether increased provision and consumption leads to greater levels of harm. The Total Consumption Model posits that that there is a close link between mean consumption and excessive levels of harm in a population, and has been used to justify population level interventions to reduce harm. Using data from three British studies, we assess whether the TCM applies to gambling behaviour. Methods Three independent British datasets from 2015 to 2020 were used to analyse the association between gambling consumption and gambling harm by comparing associations across several sub-samples (eg, area deprivation; region). To assess the shape of the risk curves for gambling consumption and risk of gambling-related harm, we used lowess curves, and moderation effects were assessed by interacting gambling consumption measures with sociodemographic groups. Results The results from sub-groups analyses in all datasets show that higher mean consumption corresponds to greater levels of harm. The risk curves for the three datasets suggest that gambling harm increases with levels of consumption, however the extent of harm varies by type of gambling activity, with greater levels of harm observed among online gambling and electronic gambling machines. Moderation analyses suggest that men, younger age groups, those from the most deprived communities, in manual employment, and without university degree are more likely to experience greater levels of harm. Conclusions In conclusion, the findings support the application of the Total Consumption Model to gambling in Britain. This provides evidential support for population-level intervention that reduce population consumption. This is especially true for certain forms of gambling, like online gambling or gambling on electronic gambling machines. Key messages • The first rigorous analysis showing support for the TCM in Great Britain. • An important question that remains is whether the TCM applies to changes over time, which can only be tested using longitudinal data.

Legal Challenges to Generative AI, Part II

Deliberating on inconclusive AI-generated policy questions.

‘No rest from the mess’: an intersectional analysis of young women’s pandemic lives in Aotearoa New Zealand

ABSTRACT This paper examines how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the everyday lives of young women living in Aotearoa New Zealand. Engaging a feminist intersectional and youth studies approach and drawing upon interviews and focus groups with 45 young women (16–25 years) from diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, we reveal how culture, ethnicity, socio-economic and living conditions impacted the gendered and emotional labor expected of young women (i.e. caring for younger siblings, vulnerable family members, various chores, part-time work), and how the practices of care for others impacted young women’s capacity for their own educational, social and career development. Ultimately, this paper highlights the remarkable agency of young women during the pandemic, their compassion and empathy for others, their learnings and reflections, and how this period of radical social disruption impacted their future imaginings for themselves. In so doing, our analysis raises important questions for youth-focused pandemic educational, social and employment policies, calling for more intersectional approaches that consider how COVID-19 is continuing to significantly and unevenly shape the identity development and life trajectories of young women.

How can quantitative policy analysis inform the energy transition? The case of electrification

Quantitative analyses may aim to provide actionable answers to policy questions and to generate tools or insights for decision-making. Given the deep uncertainties involved in any realistic reckoning of policy questions, this study argues that only the second of these goals is achievable. Here, this argument is illustrated by considering analyses of how the electrification of an activity changes the damage from the air pollution emissions that occur because of that activity. The sources of uncertainty in such an analysis include the long life of the technologies being studied. Consequently, the structure and operation of the electricity grid might change because of the new technology and independent of it. Analysts must make subjective choices about what to include in their analysis and what to exclude. For example, policies modeled in isolation may, in reality, be bundled with other policies; interactions between technologies may be missed if the analysis focuses on only one technology; and certain benefits or costs may be neglected because they lie outside the scope of the analysis and the expertise of the analyst. Quantitative policy analysis must aim to be part of the broader discussions in society that ultimately determine what policies get implemented.

The Costs of Polarizing a Pandemic: Antecedents, Consequences, and Lessons

Polarization has been rising in the United States of America for the past few decades and now poses a significant—and growing—public-health risk. One of the signature features of the American response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been the degree to which perceptions of risk and willingness to follow public-health recommendations have been politically polarized. Although COVID-19 has proven more lethal than any war or public-health crisis in American history, the deadly consequences of the pandemic were exacerbated by polarization. We review research detailing how every phase of the COVID-19 pandemic has been polarized, including judgments of risk, spatial distancing, mask wearing, and vaccination. We describe the role of political ideology, partisan identity, leadership, misinformation, and mass communication in this public-health crisis. We then assess the overall impact of polarization on infections, illness, and mortality during the pandemic; offer a psychological analysis of key policy questions; and identify a set of future research questions for scholars and policy experts. Our analysis suggests that the catastrophic death toll in the United States was largely preventable and due, in large part, to the polarization of the pandemic. Finally, we discuss implications for public policy to help avoid the same deadly mistakes in future public-health crises.

Influencing educational change through policy-engaged research

In this essay we begin with a discussion of what we call the “great gap” between our research and its influence on society. We point out that although there is ample evidence speaking to these areas, a lack of societal change suggests that evidence has largely gone unnoticed, ignored, or not well promoted or disseminated. Throughout this section, we provide thoughts on why this research has failed to convince stakeholders and offer suggestions on what educational psychologists could (and should) do differently. Next, we talk about the utility of “policy-engaged” scholarship. A scholar adopting policy-engaged framework or research identity is one who aims to carry out the research enterprise with the goal of studying, describing, informing, or influencing the policies that drive the educational practices they seek to understand and improve. Throughout our discussion, we offer examples for how educational psychology science might be utilized, applied, and/or created to study questions of education policy. We end with recommendations for how the field might move forward to better inform educational policy and the educational practices the field aims to improve.

How Large Is Unemployment and Its Impact on Workers’ Economic Leverage?

The reserve army of the unemployed is typically proxied by the unemployment rate. This article takes seriously measurement choices in calculating unemployment severity. Should everyone experiencing unemployment (unemployment incidence) be the measure? Should “discouraged” and involuntarily part-time workers be included? It then asks the policy question, to what extent have state and federal unemployment-compensation policies increasingly exacerbated unemployment duress? And, it interrogates the impact of women’s paid work on the burden of unemployment on households. JEL Classification: E24, E3

An entertainment-education policy approach to teach campus literacy, safety, and social norms

This study represents an application of the entertainment education approach utilizing aspects of arts education to deliver campus policy and protocols to a population of incoming first year students at new student orientation. Consistent with previous applications in research, these theatrical entertainment messages were combined with a post-show discussion followed by a post-show survey. Data for this study consisted of those three elements (the show, the discussion, and the survey) and we describe these data using AI-based content analyses and network modeling. We report on the recall of campus information including emergency phone numbers and on questions of campus policy regarding student behavior. For this population, we recommend a dual-pronged approach where the meaning related to the information is provided during the heightened period of audience involvement during NSO, and recall is supported through targeted resource communication in the following months and/or through first-year seminar courses. The prevalence and specificity of student responses lends toward the consideration of policies for new students related to the limitation of logistical obstacles, and multifaceted approaches to the dissemination of health-related information, and crisis response formats.

What's a School Worth to a Neighborhood? A Spatial Hedonic Analysis of Property Prices in the Context of Accommodation Reviews in Ontario

Due to a change in capital funding formula, many school boards across the Province of Ontario engaged in Accommodation Reviews to rationalize the supply of school capacity. This process led to numerous school closures and raised important policy questions regarding the economic value of a school in terms of its capitalization into property values and, by extension, how the closure of a school might affect local neighborhoods. To explore these questions, this research uses spatial hedonic methods to estimate the implicit value of accessibility to schools in the City of Hamilton, Ontario. Spatial Durbin model results provide evidence of a significant negative correlation between distance to schools and housing prices in the Canadian context. This suggests that accessibility to schools is capitalized into property values and that the closure of a neighborhood school may result in potentially significant losses of economic value in communities.

The role of policy design in policy continuation and ratcheting-up of policy ambition

Abstract Effectively addressing grand societal challenges like climate change and environmental degradation requires policy intervention that is not only continuous but also increasing in ambition over time. However, negative feedback could lead to policies being weakened or even discontinued after a while. An important but unresolved policy question, therefore, is whether policies can be deliberately designed to survive (i.e., to “stick”) and, ideally, be replaced with more ambitious ones over time (i.e., to “ratchet up”). We bridge policy feedback and policy design scholarship to derive hypotheses on the effects of two policy design features—“intensity” (i.e., a measure of policies’ overall design) and “specificity” (i.e., a measure of policies’ targeted focus)—on policy (dis-)continuation and ratcheting-up (-down) of ambition. Focusing on policy design, we contribute to the theorization and empirical understanding of endogenous factors behind policy change. We test our hypotheses with an event history dataset of 627 low-carbon energy policies in eight developed countries. Conducting a multilevel survival analysis, we find statistically significant evidence of more intense policies being replaced with less intense ones, i.e., more intense policies lead to ratcheting-down of ambition. We also find that more specific policies are more likely to be replaced with more intense policies, i.e., more specific policies lead to ratcheting-up of ambition. Based on these novel insights, we discuss how policy design can navigate these complex dynamics. In this sense, our approach also contributes to the discussion about the “forward-looking” potential of the policy sciences.

Data at your fingertips: How the Integrated Data Service is helping to promote collaboration and efficient decision-making in the UK

The Integrated Data Service (IDS) is a cross-government initiative, designed to transform the way de-identified data is made available for vital research and decision-making about our society and economy.
 It will improve the capability for researchers, allowing them to link data effectively through state-of-the-art systems and technologies.
 The IDS will enable more collaborative data research and analysis to take place.
 The service will enable access to data sets from a range of sources, across government departments and Devolved Administrations, presented alongside analytical and visualisation tools. Linking data to help answer complex policy questions is essential for addressing the cross-cutting and complex issues required to improve today’s society. The Reference Data Management Framework (RDMF) makes it possible to link data on a consistent and convenient basis.
 The IDS will link data to provide otherwise untapped insight and to allow rapid analysis on a growing range of integrated data assets. This cross-government service will provide policy makers with robust and collaborative evidence, informing the decisions made across UK society.
 This session will introduce IDS to our academic audience, highlighting the benefits for data suppliers, analysts and the wider public that will be available through standardised data, streamlined data linkage, outputs, and the state-of-the-art dissemination technology.
 Building on the IDS showcase in April 2023, the presenter will outline the timeline for the continued development of the IDS, and how researchers and existing SRS users can get involved. They will also discuss the ongoing SRS to IDS transition.
 The service is open to analysts within the UK government, devolved administrations, and external accredited researchers, such as scientists, academics, and researchers, allowing them to carry out analysis that addresses major societal challenges.
 You will learn the advantages of IDS, and the progression the service has made in the last year. The audience will have an increased awareness of the IDS, how to get involved and what the potential impact will be for analysts, users, contributors, and the public.

Cash transfers amid shocks: A large, one-time, unconditional cash transfer to refugees in Uganda has multidimensional benefits after 19 months

Refugees in protracted displacement are often limited in their opportunities for income-generating activities and investments, making them dependent on aid for meeting basic needs. In the context of stretched humanitarian aid budgets, it is a necessary policy question to determine ways to increase refugees’ self-reliance. In this study, we combine a randomized controlled trial with extensive longitudinal qualitative data to explore the multidimensional impacts of a large, one-time, unconditional transfer of 1,000 USD to households of predominantly South Sudanese refugees living in protracted displacement in Uganda. Estimated after 19 months, we find that the transfer significantly increased households’ consumption, asset values, business ownership, business revenue, psychological well-being, and self-reliance. We find positive but insignificant effects on food security, migration, employment, or female empowerment. Overall, a large one-time cash transfer given in the context of shocks has multidimensional improvements in refugees’ lives, providing meaningful movement towards self-reliance.

Open Data Infrastructure for Social Science and Economic Innovations (ODISSEI)

The Open Data Infrastructure for Social Science and Economic Innovations (ODISSEI) equips social scientists in the Netherlands with the data, tools, and skills that are necessary to answer groundbreaking questions for scientific and policy making purposes. With a variety of use cases to pick from, we aim at engaging in a discussion with other Research data infrastructures to identify synergies but also challenges ahead.

Spatial justice, mobile futures and First Nations telecommunications landscapes in regional and rural Australia

In an Australian regional and rural context, inequalities in the location of telecommunications infrastructure and uneven development pose urgent spatial justice questions for policy and planning. These spatial injustices are reinforced by the imaginaries and ideologies of telecommunications development and which populations and locations can benefit from the growth gains attributed to enhanced telecommunications infrastructures. First Nations contributions to telecommunications planning and development are marginalised within the imagined futures and current experiences of internet and mobile coverage in regional and rural towns. Drawing on data from a project focused on regional and rural consumer understandings of smart technologies in North West New South Wales, Australia, we suggest that in order to more substantively position First Nations as growth contributors to telecommunications futures, a re-orientation of place, connectivity, and mobility in planning and engagement is necessary.

Transparency for what purpose?: Designing outcomes‐focused transparency tactics for digital platforms

AbstractTransparency has long been held up as the solution to the societal harms caused by digital platforms' use of algorithms. However, what transparency means, how to create meaningful transparency, and what behaviors can be altered through transparency are all ambiguous legal and policy questions. This paper argues for beginning with clarifying the desired outcome (the “why”) before focusing on transparency processes and tactics (the “how”). Moving beyond analyses of the ways algorithms impact human lives, this research articulates an approach that tests and implements the right set of transparency tactics aligned to specific predefined behavioral outcomes we want to see on digital platforms. To elaborate on this approach, three specific desirable behavioral outcomes are highlighted, to which potential transparency tactics are then mapped. No single set of transparency tactics can solve all the harms possible from digital platforms, making such an outcomes‐focused transparency tactic selection approach the best suited to the constantly‐evolving nature of algorithms, digital platforms, and our societies.

Input Crisis in the Agricultural Sector of Nepal

Amidst 21st century when agriculture is cherished with advancement in all kind of technology backed by multifarious dimensions of research and innovation internationally, the mainstay sector of Nepal still remains darker. Poverty, hunger and food deprivation have become common characteristics of the peasantry and the sector remains at a very marginal level in its productivity and total product. Import of agricultural product of millions of worth has become destiny of the country. In this line crisis in agricultural input supply is found as a major determinant. Precisely by inputs we mean essential commodities as chemical fertilizers (urea, potash and DAP), agricultural tools and machines, improved seeds and saplings, agricultural finance. As per provisions of such inputs Nepal is found weaker in almost all segments of procurement. The country still doesn’t have any chemical fertilizer production unit of its own. Vast and diverse areas of agricultural land are still far from irrigation catchment. Breeding of improved seeds by modern aerobiological means is still under progress and very less is achieved compared to the desired target. Agricultural tools and machine production inside the country is still at nascent stage. Agricultural finance still falls under policy and implement question. The country relies heavily on neighboring countries for the supply of such inputs through formal and informal channels that would raise the question over food security and sovereignty as well. Therefore, to make efficient, reliable and sufficient provisions of agricultural input to the agriculture sector of Nepal is a crucial need of the day.

Evaluating the Science to Inform the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans Midcourse Report

Evaluating the Science to Inform the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans Midcourse Report

The scientization of public policy and politics: A new approach to conceptualizing and identifying the phenomenon

AbstractWe know that deep scientization (DS)—the misrepresentation of political issues as technical/scientific ones best handled by experts—can unduly limit public deliberation and lead to policy misdesign. Yet, tools for investigating DS remain lacking. This article develops a new approach to diagnosing DS that works by identifying where experts have used their discretion to construct policy claims that contravene existing, shared epistemic standards. This approach's value is demonstrated through a case study of U.S. chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) policy. The study shows that, whereas government experts originally developed CFS as a research construct, they have since used their discretionary power to recast CFS as a serious disease requiring new policy interventions. This epistemically unjustified transformation of CFS has limited public discussion of important value‐laden policy questions and arguably yielded poor policy outcomes. The approach developed here can also be used to uncover DS in other policy areas.Related ArticlesCarlsson, Lars. 2017. “Policy Science at an Impasse: A Matter of Conceptual Stretching?” Politics & Policy 45(2): 148–68. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12196.Lemire, Sebastian, Laura R. Peck, and Allan Porowski. 2023. “The Evolution of Systematic Evidence Reviews: Past and Future Developments and Their Implications for Policy Analysis.” Politics & Policy 51(3): 373–96. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12532.Luján, José Luis. 2023. “Evidence‐based Policies: Lessons from Regulatory Science.” Politics & Policy 51(4). https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12543.

Taxing the rich (more)

AbstractThis issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy addresses whether and how to tax the rich more, drawing on the expertise of 16 author teams, most of whom are economists but also spanning legal scholarship and political science. The papers in this issue ask a range of research and policy questions about the way governments tax the rich. How can we measure the effective tax rates on the incomes and/or wealth of the rich? How do governments tax specific sources of income that the rich earn, and is there need for reform? Who bears the burden of different types of taxes, and do potential gains from reducing the tax burden on the rich ‘trickle down’? How do the rich respond to the taxes imposed on them?

Government debt, European Institutions and fiscal rules: a synthetic control approach

Public debt and its development are key questions of public sector economics and fiscal policy. This paper uses the Synthetic Control Method to study how different large-scale steps of European integration and the establishment of the EU fiscal framework have affected government debt in EU Member States. The results point to a notable debt-restricting effect of EU membership and the introduction of the Stability and Growth Pact for a large majority of the studied country groupings as well as for individual countries. Outside of a few individual countries, the actual government debt levels are substantially lower than in the synthetic alternatives.