17.303j    Policy Analysis

Assignments

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Paper #1:

Due March 4.

1.  Choose a substantive policy area that you will work in for the remainder of the term.  Examples include: environmental policy, transportation policy, defense policy, health policy, housing policy, etc.

2. Select a policy decision (choice) in your policy area that decision-makers are confronting, or will confront in the near future.  That choice must involve at least three opposing policy prescriptions.  For example, in social security policy the choice might be: (1) adding more funds to the Social Security trust, (2) allowing contributions to private pension plans to offset contributions, (3) raising the age limit for payments. 

The choices need not be mutually exclusive, however they should have advocates who see a clear choice in priority and emphasis.  In other words, there should be competition among the alternatives.

3.  Survey the news media to derive the problem formulations.  That is, what are the causal stories, underlying theories, and empirical "facts" that support the different policy prescriptions.

4. Write a five page essay that examines each of the policy formulations as presented by the news media.  What are the key causal stories -- theories?  What "facts" are placed in evidence?   Do different news sources present one or more formulations in the same light or do you find a "bias?"  Would readers of some new sources come to understand the policy issue differently compared to readers of other news sources?  

5. Try to construct a criteria-alternatives matrix (CAM) to summarize what you found.  Some cells of the matrix may well be blank.

Paper #2:

Due April 3.

Read the academic literature and get an overview of disciplinary approaches to the policy question that you reviewed in the media literature. Identify the discipline or disciplines that you want to review and examine the main disciplinary journals for your review.

You may want to "reference trace" backwards from a seminal book on the subject you are interested in. What you want to extract from this literature is a clear statement of the underlying causal story for any given policy option , and the disciplinary theory on which the causal analysis is based. Sometimes the literature will develop a model -- conceptual or empirical -- to support a given causal story or to reject an alternative narrative. Sometimes the journal article will have a review of the literature which can be particularly helpful in seeing how the discipline approaches the topic.

Your essay should not summarize each article you look at as you might in a literature review. Your essay should analyze the scholarly literature for its ability to inform the policy debate.

Limit your writing to 4-5 pages.

 
Paper #3:

Due May 8.

This will be the final assignment.  Your paper should be 8 to 10 pages.  You may choose either of the paper assignments below.

1)Select an empirical quantitative study on your subject area and provide a detailed critique of the methods used, the findings and their implications. This can be either a welfare economic approach, a cost benefits analysis or a policy or program evaluation.

2) Select a case study that makes use of some qualitative approaches to your policy question and offer a critical review of what you learn when you compare quantitative and qualitative approaches. Provide a detailed critique of the methods used, the findings, and their  implications.

 
Paper #4:  

 

 

 

 

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