Publications

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2019
Working Paper

Optimal Interventions for Increasing Healthy Food Consumption Among Low Income Households

By: Retsef Levi, Elisabeth Paulson and Georgia Perakis

The federal government currently spends over $100 billion per year on policies aimed to increase fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption among low income households. These include price-, nutrition education-, and access-related interventions. Currently, the government... View Details

Keywords: Bi-level Optimization; Optimal Subsidies; Public Policy; Food Policy; Central Planner; Government Administration; Poverty; Food; Nutrition

SSRN

March 1, 2022
Article

Widespread Use of National Academies Consensus Reports by the American Public

By: Diana Hicks, Matteo Zullo, Ameet Doshi and Omar Isaac Asensio

In seeking to understand how to protect the public information sphere from corruption, researchers understandably focus on dysfunction. However, parts of the public information ecosystem function very well, and understanding this as well will help in protecting and... View Details

Keywords: Reports; Surveys; AI and Machine Learning; Knowledge Dissemination; Knowledge Use and Leverage

May 2019
Teaching Note

Universal Basic Income, Job Guarantees, or None of the Above?

By: William R. Kerr and Jordan Bach-Lombardo

Teaching Note for HBS No. 819-035. View Details

Keywords: UBI; Job Guarantee; Public Policy; EITC; Employment; Labor; Social Issues; Income; Governance; Policy; Welfare

Purchase

Article

The Supply Chain Economy: New Policies to Drive Innovation and Jobs

By: Mercedes Delgado and Karen G. Mills

The debate in economic policymaking about the drivers of innovation and job creation has long centered on manufacturing versus services. The predominant view is that manufacturing drives innovation, wages, and growth, and that services provide less innovation and... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain Industries; Supply Chain; Economy; Policy; Innovation and Invention; Jobs and Positions

Web

Privacy Policy & Legal Info | HBS Online

over any conflicting terms in this Notice to the extent permitted under applicable law. REGIONAL PRIVACY POLICY DISCLOSURE If you are located in certain specific regions (such as the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or... View Details

07 Apr 2011
What Do You Think?

When Should the Public Sector Take Over in a Meltdown?

Summing Up The variety of responses stimulated by this month's column may help explain why our public institutions are so often perceived as responding slowly to natural or man-made "meltdowns." First, as Ravindra Edirisooriya... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett; Energy; Utilities

02 Jan 2020
Op-Ed

Medicare for All or Public Option: Can Either Heal Health Care?

coverage—and improve the quality of care. Insurers could also offer plans that would be politically unfeasible for the public option. For example, private insurers can offer policies that transport members... View Details

Keywords: by Regina E. Herzlinger and James Wallace; Public Administration; Public Administration

August 1998
Article

Angel Financing and Public Policy: An Overview

By: Josh Lerner

Keywords: Financing and Loans; Policy

2017
Working Paper

Elite Ideas and Incremental Policy Change: The Expansion of Primary Education in India

By: Akshay Mangla

This paper analyzes India’s recent enactment of universal primary education. Given the clientelistic features of Indian democracy, this programmatic policy change presents a puzzle. Drawing on interviews and official documents, I find that committed state elites... View Details

Keywords: India; Political Economy; Ideas; Institutional Change; Education; Change Management; India

Fast Answer

Government data and information sources for public entrepreneurship

Resources and Reading Research Guides Public Policy Research Guide (Baker Library) U.S. Local Government Resources Research Guide (Harvard Kennedy School Library) Journals Government Information... View Details

April 5, 2023
Article

We Need an Operation Warp Speed for Long COVID

By: Esther K. Choo and Scott Duke Kominers

With millions of people affected and at least $1 trillion of economic value at stake, long COVID is our next national health emergency. View Details

Keywords: COVID; COVID-19; COVID-19 Pandemic; Scientific Research; Policy; Health Policy; Innovation; Science; Public Finance; Public Health; Health Disorders; Health Care and Treatment; Human Capital

2021
Article

Leisure Beliefs and the Subjective Well-being of Nations

By: Lucia Macchia and A.V. Whillans

Here, we construct a data set of 79 countries (N = 220,000) and explore whether differences in the prioritization of time (leisure) vs. money (work) explain cross-country differences in happiness. Consistent with our predictions, countries whose citizens value leisure... View Details

Keywords: Leisure; Work; Subjective Well-being; Public Policy; Employment; Happiness; Governance; Policy

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January 2017
Article

Impact Evaluation Methods in Public Economics: A Brief Introduction to Randomized Evaluations and Comparison with Other Methods

By: Dina Pomeranz

Recent years have seen a large expansion in the use of rigorous impact evaluation techniques. Increasingly, public administrations are collaborating with academic economists and other quantitative social scientists to apply such rigorous methods to the study of public... View Details

Keywords: Practice; Public Sector; Research; Policy; Performance Evaluation

1995
Chapter

Financial Infrastructure and Public Policy: A Functional Perspective

By: Robert C. Merton and Zvi Bodie

Keywords: Financial Markets; Financial Institutions; Policy; Government and Politics; Business and Government Relations; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry

Research Summary

Optimal Signaling Policy with Rational and Irrational Agents (with James Burns)

We examine situations in which a single informed agent signals a group of uniformed agents. The uniformed agents must then take an action based on this signal. The motivation for our work comes from real world examples such as terrorist alerts or job safety... View Details

Article

A Prescriptive Analytics Framework for Optimal Policy Deployment Using Heterogeneous Treatment Effects

By: Edward McFowland III, Sandeep Gangarapu, Ravi Bapna and Tianshu Sun

We define a prescriptive analytics framework that addresses the needs of a constrained decision-maker facing, ex ante, unknown costs and benefits of multiple policy levers. The framework is general in nature and can be deployed in any utility maximizing context, public... View Details

Keywords: Prescriptive Analytics; Heterogeneous Treatment Effects; Optimization; Observed Rank Utility Condition (OUR); Between-treatment Heterogeneity; Machine Learning; Decision Making; Analysis; Mathematical Methods