Rational Economic Policy Research Articles

Evaluation of marine economic development demonstration zone policy on marine industrial structure optimization: a case study of Zhejiang, China

The marine economic development demonstration zone (MEDDZ) is the regional marine functional policy that assumes the significant tasks of innovation in the system and mechanism of the marine economy, optimization of the marine industrial structures, and the construction of marine ecological civilization. This paper constructs a panel database of 11 coastal provinces in China from 2006 to 2019, takes the Zhejiang Marine Economy Development Demonstration Zone Plan officially approved by the State Council of China in 2011 as a quasi-natural experiment, applies the synthetic control method (SCM) to evaluate the effect of implementation of the MEDDZ policy on marine industrial structure optimization in Zhejiang. The results show that: (1) The MEDDZ policy significantly promotes the structure optimization of the marine industry in Zhejiang and the existence of the policy lag phenomenon. (2) Based on the results of the robustness tests, we find that the fitted path of policy effects is better when the time of MEDDZ implementation is adjusted to 2012. (3) Government financial support and marine cargo capacity play a role in implementing the MEDDZ policy, positively affecting and optimizing the coastal marine industry’s structure. Therefore, we make some suggestions from the perspectives of strengthening the policy implementation process, focusing on the policy lag phenomenon, and broadening funding sources, thus enriching theoretical research on policies in the field of the marine industry and providing practical references for the development of other coastal demonstration zones.

Did Partial Lockdown Policy Effectively Reduce the First Wave of COVID-19 in Indonesia? A Regression Discontinuity Approach

One of the crucial issues in determining pandemic mitigation is deciding the optimal lockdown policy, whether a complete or partial lockdown could effectively reduce the spreading of COVID-19 without a vaccination policy, which could avoid global economic recession. The conventional pandemic model has limitations in predicting these linkages. The latest Causal Inference method that has been powerful in economic and health policy evaluation, such as Regressions Discontinuity Design (RDD), can contribute to this analysis. In contrast, RDD analysis in existing references is underused. This paper's objective is how the partial lockdown policy in Indonesia effects on spreading COVID-19 virus using RDD analysis. The results indicate that the partial lockdown policy reduced new cases of COVID-19 compared with having no partial lockdown policy. The results close to complete lockdown. This study uses panel data from official health, Waze, and other social variables. The pandemic model was developed from theoretical and empirical estimation. The spillover analysis was estimated using a Bayesian panel fixed-effect with Markov Chain Monte Carlo to relax the SUTVA problem. The DKI Jakarta has effectively reduced the spread of confirmed COVID-19 cases by about 10% to 22% from the baseline. The impact was less in West Java, at about 5%–18.5% from baseline. The government can control mobility during weekend periods and at the beginning of Ramadan. Policy enacted at the level of government (subdistrict level) most proximal to households had more influence on spillover effect reduction than those enacted at higher levels of government. The RDD analysis offers new implications to existing references for incorporating economic and pandemic variables for further research. Collaborating across the government level against the pandemic is paramount to controlling human mobility close to households.

Evaluation of central and local economic policies on hawkers in the post-epidemic era and suggestions for improvement

Evaluation of central and local economic policies on hawkers in the post-epidemic era and suggestions for improvement

SOCIOECONOMIC POLICY EVALUATION: PARTISANSHIP AND PARTISAN BIAS EFFECT

Public support of socioeconomic reforms is one of the most important factors for their successful implementation, and conversely, lack of public approval doesn’t allow achieving the expected effect and may result in negative externalities. In this regard, it is relevant to study the origins of people’s opinions and factors affecting their evaluation of social and economic policies. This paper is devoted to the following aspects of this multidimensional problem as partisanship and partisan bias. Their research has been actively promoted by foreign scientists, but so far presented extremely limited in Ukrainian literature. In this paper the critical review of foreign scientific papers devoted to this topic is presented; the main hypotheses about the influence of party identification on public opinion and the effect of partisan bias are highlighted; features of the methodology are noted and research results are summarized. The methodology used by foreign specialists for research of this problem is based on experimental methods, among them the main place belongs to laboratory experiments. A laboratory experiment means observing people’s behavior (participants’ behavior) under strictly controlled conditions when the influence of uncontrolled factors is limited to a minimum. In foreign studies of partisan bias and its influence on citizens' evaluation of socioeconomic policies, laboratory experiments serve as the main tool for testing hypotheses. The results of the research give evidence, on the one hand, that the partisan bias mechanism provides wide possibilities to manipulate the people’s opinion and public opinion in general, on the other hand, that correct objective information about the policy content and goals can significantly weaken the partisan bias effect. Foreign studies prove that party signal influence depends on the people’s properties, policy content, political systems, and party characteristics. In Ukraine, there is a lack its own research in this field, however, as democratic institutions, civil society, and people’s political consciousness and activity develop, these studies become more relevant to the political and economic life in Ukrainian society.

Evaluation of economic development policies using a spherical fuzzy extended TODIM model with Z̆-numbers.

Zadeh's Z̆-numbers are able to more effectively characterize uncertain information. Combined with "constraint" and "reliability". It is more powerful at expressing human knowledge. While the reliability of data can have a direct impact on the precision of decisions. The key challenge in solving a Z̆-number issue is reasoning about both fuzzy and probabilistic uncertainty. Existing research on the Z̆-number measure is only some, and most studies cannot adequately convey the benefits of Z̆-information and the properties of Z̆-number. Considering this study void, this work concurrently investigated the randomness and fuzziness of Z̆-number with Spherical fuzzy sets. We first introduced the spherical fuzzy Z-numbers (SFZNs), whose elements are pairwise comparisons of the decision-maker's options. It can be used effectively to make true ambiguous judgments, reflecting the fuzzy nature, flexibility, and applicability of decision making data. We developed the operational laws and aggregation operators such as the weighted averaging operator, the ordered weighted averaging operator, the hybrid averaging operator, the weighted geometric operator, the ordered weighted geometric operator, and the hybrid geometric operator for SFZ̆Ns. Furthermore, two algorithm are developed to tackle the uncertain information in the form of spherical fuzzy Z̆-numbers based to the proposed aggregation operators and TODIM methodology. Finally, we developed the relative comparison and discussion analysis to show the practicability and efficacy of the suggested operators and approach.

The economics of the COVID-19 pandemic: economic evaluation of government mitigation and suppression policies, health system innovations, and models of care.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the scope of health economics literature, which will increasingly examine value beyond health care interventions such as government policy and broad health system innovations. The study analyzes economic evaluations and methodologies evaluating government policies suppressing or mitigating transmission and reducing COVID-19, broad health system innovations, and models of care. This can facilitate future economic evaluations and assist government and public health policy decisions during pandemics. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) was used. Methodological quality was quantified using the scoring criteria in European Journal of Health Economics, Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards (CHEERS) 2022 Checklist and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence's (NICE) Cost Benefit Analysis Checklist. PUBMED, Medline, and Google Scholar were searched from 2020-2021. Cost utility analysis (CUA) and cost benefit analysis (CBA) analyzing mortality, morbidity, quality adjusted life year (QALY) gained, national income loss, and value of production effectively evaluate government policies suppressing or mitigating COVID-19 transmission, disease, and impacting national income loss. The WHO's pandemic economic framework facilitates economic evaluations of social and movement restrictions. Social return on investment (SROI) links benefits to health and broader social improvements. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) can facilitate vaccine prioritization, equitable health access, and technology evaluation. Social welfare function (SWF) can account for social inequalities and population-wide policy impact. It is a generalization of CBA, and operationally, it is equal to an equity-weighted CBA. It can provide governments with a guideline for achieving the optimal distribution of income, which is vital during pandemics. Economic evaluations of broad health system innovations and care models addressing COVID-19 effectively use cost effectiveness analysis (CEA) that utilize decision trees and Monte Carlo models, and CUAs that effectively utilize decision trees and Markov models, respectively. These methodologies are very instructive for governments, in addition to their current use of CBA and the value of a statistical life analytical tool. CUA and CBA effectively evaluate government policies suppressing or mitigating COVID-19 transmission, disease, and impacts on national income loss. CEA and CUA effectively evaluate broad health system innovations and care models addressing COVID-19. The WHO's framework, SROI, MCDA, and SWF can also facilitate government decision-making during pandemics. The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10389-023-01919-z.

Excess healthcare costs of mental disorders in children, adolescents and young adults in the Basque population registry adjusted for socioeconomic status and sex

BackgroundMental illnesses account for a considerable proportion of the global burden of disease. Economic evaluation of public policies and interventions aimed at mental health is crucial to inform decisions and improve the provision of healthcare services, but experts highlight that nowadays the cost implications of mental illness are not properly quantified. The objective was to measure the costs of excess use of all healthcare services by 1- to 30-year-olds in the Basque population as a function of whether or not they had a mental disorder diagnosis.MethodsA real-world data study was used to identify diagnoses of mental disorders and to measure resource use in the Basque Health Service Registry in 2018. Diagnoses were aggregated into eight diagnostic clusters: anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorders, mood disorders, substance use, psychosis and personality disorders, eating disorders, and self-harm. We calculated the costs incurred by each individual by multiplying the resource use by the unit costs. Annual costs for each cluster were compared with those for individuals with no diagnosed mental disorders through entropy balancing and two-part models which adjusted for socioeconomic status (SES).ResultsOf the 609,381 individuals included, 96,671 (15.9%) had ≥ 1 mental disorder diagnosis. The annual cost per person was two-fold higher in the group diagnosed with mental disorders (€699.7) than that with no diagnoses (€274.6). For all clusters, annual excess costs associated with mental disorders were significant. The adjustment also evidenced a social gradient in healthcare costs, individuals with lower SES consuming more resources than those with medium and higher SES across all clusters. Nonetheless, the effect of being diagnosed with a mental disorder had a greater impact on the mean and excess costs than SES.ConclusionsResults were consistent in showing that young people with mental disorders place a greater burden on healthcare services. Excess costs were higher for severe mental disorders like self-harm and psychoses, and lower SES individuals incurred, overall, more than twice the costs per person with no diagnoses. A socioeconomic gradient was notable, excess costs being higher in low SES individuals than those with a high-to-medium SES. Differences by sex were also statistically significant but their sizes were smaller than those related to SES.

Relationship between the actual environmental landscape surrounding residents and their willingness to pay for the landscape: Evidence from a discrete choice experiment

This study investigates the relationship between existing environmental and non-environmental landscapes and residents' preferences for landscapes in their neighborhoods. Investigating this relationship contributes to expanding the knowledge on the spatial heterogeneity in people's environmental preferences. Spatial heterogeneity in people’s environmental preferences is related to the economic evaluation of environmental policies and the efficient provision of environmental amenities. We conducted a discrete choice experiment on 579 residents in Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan. The survey data were combined with geographic information system (GIS) data on land use and analyzed as a spatial structured data of 1 km2 using a mixed logit model. The main empirical finding is that the willingness to pay for a marginal increase in the surrounding landscape generally increases with the abundance of the surrounding landscape. We also found that the increase in the willingness to pay depends on the type of environmental and non-environmental landscape. Moreover, there was no relationship between the existing landscape and the preference for abandoned environmental landscapes. This study highlights the spatial sorting phenomenon in residential choice, which is a source of spatial heterogeneity in environmental preferences. When conducting environmental evaluation, it is necessary to explicitly incorporate the spatial heterogeneity in environmental preferences into any analytical framework.

Vietnam’s geoeconomic features: advantages and problems

Geographical features which are mostly considered as privileges to Vietnam are now dragging the country into some international issues namely the South China Sea, The US China trade war and COVID-19 pandemic. The research points out unique geographical features of Vietnam and how they have been used to Vietnams national interest. Then, the research underlines some note-worthy impacts of specific current geographical issues on Vietnams and regional economy. By stating and analyzing these issues, the evaluation of the government's economic policies in response can be further clarified. Ultimately, the research provides implications for foreign governments and investors in future cooperation or investment in Vietnam.

QALY Maximization and the Social Optimum

The quality-adjusted life year (QALY) approach as a paradigmatic measure of health outcomes is widely used in the economic evaluation of health policies and is even trying to be emulated in other public policy areas. The objective of this paper is to structure the arguments underlying the use of QALYs in cost-effectiveness analyses, which condition its applicability. To this effect, the paper intervenes in the unreasonable use of the approach in terms of its limitations when prioritizing health services. In short, the authors are generally in favor of the instrument but do not have blanket enthusiasm in support of it.

Why Economic Valuation Does Not Value the Environment: Climate Policy as Collective Endeavour

Economics takes an individualistic approach to human behaviour. This is reflected in the use of ‘contingent valuation’ surveys to conduct cost benefit analysis for economic policy evaluation. An individual's valuation of a policy is assumed to be unaffected by the burdens it places on others. We report a survey experiment to test this supposition in the context of climate change policy. Willingness to pay for climate change mitigation was higher when richer individuals were to bear higher costs than when, as is usual, no explicit information was provided about cost distribution. This result is inconsistent with the usual interpretation of contingent valuation data. It also suggests that the data may be biased indicators of policy acceptance. Additional survey questions suggest that a collective mode of reasoning is common.

Evaluating childhood policy impacts on lifetime health, wellbeing and inequality: Lifecourse distributional economic evaluation

We introduce and illustrate a new framework for distributional economic evaluation of childhood policies that takes a broad and long view of the impacts on health, wellbeing and inequality from a cross-sectoral whole-lifetime perspective. Total lifetime benefits and public cost savings are estimated using lifecourse microsimulation of diverse health, social and economic outcomes for each individual in a general population birth cohort from birth to death. Cost-effectiveness analysis, policy targeting analysis and distributional analysis of inequality impacts are then conducted using an index of lifetime wellbeing that allow comparisons of both value-for-money (efficiency) and distributional impact (equity) from a cross-sectoral lifetime perspective. We illustrate how this framework can be applied in practice by re-evaluating a training programme in England for parents of children at risk of conduct disorder. Our illustration uses a simple index of lifetime wellbeing based on health-related quality of life and consumption, but other indices could be used based on other kinds of outcomes data such as life satisfaction or multidimensional quality of life. We create the detailed underpinning data needed to apply the framework by using a previously published meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials to estimate the short-term effects and a previously published lifecourse microsimulation model to extrapolate the long-term effects.

The Impact of Assuming Perfect Foresight When Planning Infrastructure in the Water–Energy–Food Nexus

Perfect foresight hydroeconomic optimization models are tools to evaluate impacts of water infrastructure investments and policies considering complex system interlinkages. However, when assuming perfect foresight, optimal management decisions are found assuming perfect knowledge of climate and runoff, which might bias the economic evaluation of investments and policies. We investigate the impacts of assuming perfect foresight by using Model Predictive Control (MPC) as an alternative. We apply MPC in WHAT-IF, a hydroeconomic optimization model, for two study cases: a synthetic setup inspired by the Nile River, and a large-scale investment problem on the Zambezi River Basin considering the water–energy–food nexus. We validate the MPC framework against Stochastic Dynamic Programming and observe more realistic modeled reservoir operation compared to perfect foresight, especially regarding anticipation of spills and droughts. We find that the impact of perfect foresight on total system benefits remains small (<2%). However, when evaluating investments and policies using with-without analysis, perfect foresight is found to overestimate or underestimate values of investments by more than 20% in some scenarios. As the importance of different effects varies between scenarios, it is difficult to find general, case-independent guidelines predicting whether perfect foresight is a reasonable assumption. However, we find that the uncertainty linked to climate change in our study cases has more significant impacts than the assumption of perfect foresight. Hence, we recommend MPC to perform the economic evaluation of investments and policies, however, under high uncertainty of future climate, increased computational costs of MPC must be traded off against computational costs of exhaustive scenario exploration.

Інституційні моделі суспільного порядку як чинник економічного розвитку та національного добробуту

The relevant scientific problems include characterizing different models of public order in the context of divergence of economic development; deepening the understanding of public welfare as a measure to meet the needs and results of public policy; assessment of the cognitive and practical potential of modern concepts of historical and institutional explanation of the differentiation of the world economy for the optimization of regulatory measures of economic policy in Ukraine. The purpose of this article is to determine the features of the relationship between the nature of institutions, in particular institutional models of public order, on the one hand, and economic development and social welfare on the other. The research methodology combines the tools of evolutionary economic theory, comparative analysis and institutional history. The theoretical basis is the idea of D. North on the types of institutional models of public order. Despite the historical and national features of the formation and functioning of different economic systems, their success and failure can be explained on the basis of typology of North's models. The open access model is more conducive to economic growth and social welfare. Ensuring the institutional conditions for the realization of human rights, economic freedom and legal protection contributes to higher results. Instead, the restricted access model is characterized by slow economic growth and vulnerability to challenges, low level of social consolidation and economic solidarity, dominance of hierarchical ties and insecurity of property rights. It has been proven that institutional changes aimed at increasing public welfare should ensure the transformation of the economic model towards greater availability of resources and opportunities, replacing extractive relations and vertical relations with partnerships and horizontal relations. Economic policy analysis and evaluation is an important component of successful institutional transformations.

The Impact of Import, Export and FDI on the Economic Growth of the Western Balkans Countries

Macroeconomic stability is one of the important factors influencing the growth and development of national economies in today’s modern global economy. Economic policy should create conditions for macroeconomic stability and economic growth based on increased investment, exports, savings, productivity, and competitiveness, while reducing macroeconomic imbalances, especially the fiscal deficit, inflation, and the current account deficit. In order to achieve macroeconomic stability, as well as sustainable economic growth, it is important to pursue a rational economic policy and carry out accelerated structural reforms. The main objective of the paper is to analyze the impact of key indicators, i.e., export and import of goods and services and FDI on economic growth of the Western Balkans countries. Such an analysis is important to show the state of the economy and predict its stability. The research focuses on the countries of the Western Balkans, while the analysis uses secondary data from the UNCTAD database for the period 2011-2020. The research results indicate that Serbia is progressing much faster than other countries of the Western Balkans. In the coming period, a growth trend can be expected in all Western Balkan countries, which will result in better economic development and increasing openness to new investments.

Empirical Support for Establishing Common Assumptions in Cost Research in Education

The economic evaluation of educational policies and programs employing the ingredients method for cost, cost-effectiveness, or benefit-cost analysis is no exception to the critique that economic models require an untenable number of assumptions. Educational economists must make assumptions due to two sources of uncertainty: model uncertainty, as in the well-documented debate over the selection of the appropriate social discount rate to calculate present value and empirical uncertainty due to the infeasibility of gathering sufficiently detailed data on all resources. This paper highlights the frequency of empirical assumptions made in the education literature and proposes a set of harmonized assumptions to address empirical uncertainty that can be used to increase comparability of economic evaluation across programs and across studies. By building consensus on a set of reasonable, empirically derived assumptions that are selected so as to minimally distort the results of evaluations, differences in costs, cost effectiveness, and benefit-cost ratios can be more confidently ascribed to meaningful differences in resource use, program implementation, and program effectiveness, as opposed to differences in choices made by the analyst.

Reassessing Quasi-experiments: Policy Evaluation, Induction, and SUTVA

This paper defends the use of quasi-experiments for causal estimation in economics against the widespread objection that quasi-experimental estimates lack external validity. The defence is that quasi-experimental replication of estimates can yield defeasible evidence for external validity. The paper then develops a different objection. The stable unit treatment value assumption (SUTVA), on which quasi-experiments rely, is argued to be implausible due to the influence of social interaction effects on economic outcomes. A more plausible stable marginal unit treatment value assumption (SMUTVA) is proposed, but it is demonstrated to severely limit the usefulness of quasi-experiments for economic policy evaluation.

Directions and objectives of investment policy of Ukraine in the context of nationally oriented economy

At the present time, the main issue of busines regulation of the state’s influence on economic relations is remains relevant, taking into account the market vector of the economy chosen by the Ukrainian people. Today, there is still no sufficient reason to assert that the optimal forms of legal economic order mentioned in Art. 5 of the Commercial Code of Ukraine. As stated in this norm, the legal economic oder is the optimal combination of market self-regulation of economic relations of business entities and state regulation of macroeconomic processes.That is why the commercial code contains an independent chapter dedicated to certain areas and forms of participation of the state and local self-government in the sphere of economic activity, and the existence of the norms of Articles 9 and 10 is an important asset in this area.The legal economic oder is the result of the introduction of state economic policy. One of the most important directions of which, of course, is the investment policy of the state, which is designed to provide a dynamic process of expansion and reproduction of economic activity. Every state in the world is obliged to pursue and implement rational economic policy. This phenomenon is considered difficult, as it consists of a considerable number of interconnected and integral elements. One component of economic policy is the investment policy of the state.Analysis of recent research and publications. Important theorological and methodological problems of ensuring the investment policy of the state, research of the investment market, mechanisms of formation of investment policy, including in certain sectors of the national economy occupy a significant place in the work of scientists-owners, namely: D.V. Zadikhailo, V.V. Kudryavtseva, V.I. Kukhar, V.K. Mamutov, O.P. Podtserkovny, V.A. Ustymenko, V.S. Shcherbina, etc. However, these scientists examining these issues paid insufficient attention to such concepts as the essence, objectives and modern directions of investment policy of the state, as well as did not analyze certain objects of state investment policy on their regulatory impact on investment activities and the economy of Ukraine as a whole.Purpose and objectives: the purpose of this article is to explore and identify promising directions of investment policy of Ukraine, to formulate the tasks of state regulation of investment activity

Evaluation of community economic building movement policy in East Flores Regency

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the Policy of Community Economic Building Movement in East Flores Regency. Research methodology: The research method used in this research is a descriptive research method with a qualitative approach. Results: The findings in this study are that there are many deficiencies in terms of both content of policy and policy implementation. Limitations: this research only discusses and evaluates the policies of community economic development movements in the East Flores district. Contribution: This research becomes scientific information for public administration science. Keywords: Evaluation, Empowerment

The Food Bank of Madrid: A Linear Model for Optimal Nutrition.

This work proposes a mathematical linear programming model that addresses the food provisioning problem of the food bank of Madrid. It aims to determine the most appropriate weekly decisions to meet the macro-nutritional requirements of the beneficiaries of this social service, by minimizing the total cost considering third-party donations. The model has been applied to a realistic case study considering a sociological structure of beneficiaries categorized by age and gender and representing the first decile of incomes of the Spanish population. The demand of macronutrients is satisfied by means of nine different groups of food, used to provide some level of variability in the consumption patterns of the beneficiaries. The results provide insight on cost-cutting opportunities related to centralizing the decision-making process, indicating a 10% reduction both in provisioning costs and food quantities. This suggests that the proposed model might serve as a tool for designing new strategies for the provisioning or evaluation of economic and social support policies for the food bank of Madrid.