Removing the Veil of Ignorance in Assessing the Distributional Impacts of Social Policies / Pedro Carneiro, Karsten T. Hansen, James J. Heckman.

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Carneiro, Pedro

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Material type: Text

TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w8840.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2002.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

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Abstract: This paper summarizes our recent research on evaluating the distributional consequences of social programs. This research advances the economic policy evaluation literature beyond estimating assorted mean impacts to estimate distributions of outcomes generated by different policies and determine how those policies shift persons across the distributions of potential outcomes produced by them. Our approach enables analysts to evaluate the distributional effects of social programs without invoking the 'Veil of Ignorance' assumption often used in the literature in applied welfare economics. Our methods determine which persons are affected by a given policy, where they come from in the ex-ante outcome distribution and what their gains are. We apply our methods to analyze two proposed policy reforms in American education. These reforms benefit the middle class and not the poor.

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Working Paper	Biblioteca Digital	Colección NBER	nber w8840 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Not For Loan

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Previous	nber w8837 Economic and Financial Crises in Emerging Market Economies: Overview of Prevention and Management /	nber w8838 Dollarization: Analytical Issues /	nber w8839 The Fed and Interest Rates: A High-Frequency Identification /	nber w8840 Removing the Veil of Ignorance in Assessing the Distributional Impacts of Social Policies /	nber w8841 How Much Should We Trust Differences-in-Differences Estimates? /	nber w8842 Testing Trade Theory in Ohlin's Time /	nber w8843 The Measure of Man and Older Age Mortality: Evidence from the Gould Sample /	Next

March 2002.

This paper summarizes our recent research on evaluating the distributional consequences of social programs. This research advances the economic policy evaluation literature beyond estimating assorted mean impacts to estimate distributions of outcomes generated by different policies and determine how those policies shift persons across the distributions of potential outcomes produced by them. Our approach enables analysts to evaluate the distributional effects of social programs without invoking the 'Veil of Ignorance' assumption often used in the literature in applied welfare economics. Our methods determine which persons are affected by a given policy, where they come from in the ex-ante outcome distribution and what their gains are. We apply our methods to analyze two proposed policy reforms in American education. These reforms benefit the middle class and not the poor.