| Contents |
1. Policy Analysis as a Profession and a Process: An Overview 3 -- Process of Policy Analysis 6 -- Policy Analysis as Part of a Broader Profession: Expert Advice on Policy 22 -- Looking Ahead 23 -- 2. Deciding How to Decide: "Experts," "The People," and "The Market" 30 -- State of Nature: No Policies 35 -- Public Decisions Versus Collective Decisions 47 -- 3. A Benchmark for Performance: The Market 54 -- Overview of Markets 54 -- Opportunity Costs and Scarcity 58 -- How Do Markets Work? 62 -- Looking Inside Market Processes 69 -- Case 1 A Prison Camp Economy -- 4. "Evaluation and Market Failure": Criteria for Intervention 101 -- Tools for Evaluating Policy 101 -- Rationale for Government Intervention: The Market Failures Perspective 113 -- 5. Experts and "Advocacy": The Limits of Policy Analysis 134 -- Is Policy Analysis "Value Neutral"? 135 -- Alternatives to the Value-Neutral Focus on Market Efficiency 136 -- What Is the "Best" Alternative? 153 -- 6. Democratic Decisions and "Government Failure": The Limits of Choice by the People 162 -- General Problem of Decision 163 -- Institutions: The Choice of a Decision Rule 171 -- Alternative Decision Rules 178 -- Case 2 A Place of One's Own -- 7. Welfare Economics Paradigm 200 -- Representation of Preferences 202 -- Individual Demand and Consumer Surplus 208 -- Market Demand 215 -- Cost, Marginal Cost, and Prices 217 -- Market Supply and Equilibrium 222 -- Public Goods and Externalities 224 -- 8. Choice of Regulatory Form: Efficiency, Equity, or Politics 238 -- Markets versus Experts 240 -- Markets versus Politics 246 -- Experts versus Politics 261 -- Case 3 Social Security Crisis? -- 9. Discounting I: Expected Values, Probability, and Risk 280 -- Risk Discounting Using Probability 281 -- Basic Concepts of Probability 286 -- Logic and Language of Probability 295 -- General Rules of Probability 298 -- Risk Aversion 307 -- Decision Analysis 309 -- 10. Discounting II: Time 322 -- Interest and the Rental Price of Money 324 -- Discount Rates: Getting Back from the Future 328 -- Net Present Value: Combining Future Costs and Benefits 335 -- Internal Rate of Return and the "Public" Discount Rate 337 -- 11. Cost-Benefit Analysis 352 -- Assumption I Cost and Benefits Can Be Measured, and Added Up, in Dollars 353 -- Assumption II Risks of Failure and Chances of Success Can Be Captured through Probability Discounting 363 -- Assumption III Future and Present Values Can Be Measured Using Time Discounting 364 -- Cost-Benefit Analysis in Action 364 -- Review of the Policy Analysis Approach 384 -- Ideology as a Template for Policy Decision 385 -- Priming, Framing, and Attention: The Psychological Model 391. |
