front cover of Behavioral Public Finance
Behavioral Public Finance
Edward J. McCaffery
Russell Sage Foundation, 2006
Behavioral economics questions the basic underpinnings of economic theory, showing that people often do not act consistently in their own self-interest when making economic decisions. While these findings have important theoretical implications, they also provide a new lens for examining public policies, such as taxation, public spending, and the provision of adequate pensions. How can people be encouraged to save adequately for retirement when evidence shows that they tend to spend their money as soon as they can? Would closer monitoring of income tax returns lead to more honest taxpayers or a more distrustful, uncooperative citizenry? Behavioral Public Finance, edited by Edward McCaffery and Joel Slemrod, applies the principles of behavioral economics to government's role in constructing economic and social policies of these kinds and suggests that programs crafted with rational participants in mind may require redesign. Behavioral Public Finance looks at several facets of economic life and asks how behavioral research can increase public welfare. Deborah A. Small, George Loewenstein, and Jeff Strnad note that public support for a tax often depends not only on who bears its burdens, but also on how the tax is framed. For example, people tend to prefer corporate taxes over sales taxes, even though the cost of both is eventually extracted from the consumer. James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian, and Andrew Metrick assess the impact of several different features of 401(k) plans on employee savings behavior. They find that when employees are automatically enrolled in a retirement savings plan, they overwhelmingly accept the status quo and continue participating, while employees without automatic enrollment typically take over a year to join the saving plan. Behavioral Public Finance also looks at taxpayer compliance. While the classic economic model suggests that the low rate of IRS audits means far fewer people should voluntarily pay their taxes than actually do, John Cullis, Philip Jones, and Alan Lewis present new research showing that many people do not underreport their incomes even when the probability of getting caught is a mere one percent. Human beings are not always rational, utility-maximizing economic agents. Behavioral economics has shown how human behavior departs from the assumptions made by generations of economists. Now, Behavioral Public Finance brings the insights of behavioral economics to analysis of policies that affect us all.
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front cover of Better Environmental Decisions
Better Environmental Decisions
Strategies for Governments, Businesses, and Communities
Edited by Ken Sexton, Alfred A. Marcus, K. William Easter, and Timothy D. Burkhardt
Island Press, 1999
Better Environmental Decisions reponds to the need for improved environmental decision making by bringing together leading scholars and practitioners to provide a comprehensive interdisciplinary introduction to the subject. Each chapter describes an important aspect of environmental decision making; identifies key issues, problems, and barriers; and recommends ways to improve both the process and the final result.Topics examined include: Congressional decisions about regulatory reform environmental benefit/cost analysisvaluing environmental impacts comparing risks and setting priorities strategic environmental management corporate accounting for environmental and social factors corporate responses to rules and regulations community decisions about environmental riskscivic environmentalismcommunity partnerships with industry and governmentThroughout, contributors focus on providing tools to make better decisions, and on presenting solutions to real-world problems.Better Environmental Decisions describes and analyzes the key decision making criteria of each of the stakeholders involved -- governments, businesses, and communities -- and offers a compendium of techniques necessary for achieving success. It will be a landmark reference and resource for anyone involved with environmental decisionmaking, including legislators, regulators, business and environmental managers, environmental advocates, community activists, reporters, researchers, educators, and students.
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front cover of Beyond Groupthink
Beyond Groupthink
Political Group Dynamics and Foreign Policy-making
Paul 't Hart, Eric K. Stern, and Bengt Sundelius, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 1997
Strategic issues and crises in foreign policy are usually managed by relatively small groups of elite policymakers and their closest advisors. Since the pioneering work of Irving Janis in the early 1970s, we have known that the interplay between the members of these groups can have a profound and, indeed, at times a pernicious influence on the content and quality of foreign policy decisions. Janis argued that "groupthink," a term he used to describe a tendency for extreme concurrence-seeking in decision-making groups, was a major cause of a number of U.S. foreign policy fiascoes. And yet not all small groups suffer from groupthink; in fact many high-level bodies are handicapped by an inability to achieve consensus at all.
Beyond Groupthink builds upon and extends Janis's legacy. The contributors develop a richer understanding of group dynamics by drawing on alternate views of small-group dynamics. The relevant literature is reviewed and the different perspectives are explored in detailed case studies. The contributors link the group process to the broader organizational and political context of the policy process and stress the need to develop a multi-level understanding of the collegial policy-making process, combining the insights drawn from micro-level theories with those derived from study of broader political phenomena. The contributors include Alexander George, Sally Riggs Fuller, Paul D. Hoyt, Ramon J. Aldag, Max V. Metselaar, Bertjan Verbeek, J. Thomas Preston, Jean A. Garrison, and Yaacov Y. I. Vertzberger.
This book should appeal to political scienctists and international relations specialists, as well as researchers in social psychology, public administration, and management interested in group decision-making processes.
Paul 't Hart is Associate Professor, Department of Public Administration, Leiden University and Scientific Director of of the Leiden-Rotterdam Crisis Research Center. Eric Stern is Professor of Political Science at Stockholm University. Bengt Sundelius is Professor of Political Science at Stockholm University.
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front cover of Blinders, Blunders, and Wars
Blinders, Blunders, and Wars
What America and China Can Learn
David C. Gompert
RAND Corporation, 2014
The history of wars caused by misjudgments, from Napoleon’s invasion of Russia to America’s invasion of Iraq, reveals that leaders relied on cognitive models that were seriously at odds with objective reality. Blinders, Blunders, and Wars analyzes eight historical examples of strategic blunders regarding war and peace and four examples of decisions that turned out well, and then applies those lessons to the current Sino-American case.
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Bureaucrats, Clients, and Geography
The Bailly Nuclear Power Plant Battle in Northern Indiana
Nancy J. Obermeyer
University of Chicago Press, 1989


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