Final Review Flashcards
Effectiveness
Likelihood of achieving policy goals and objectives or demonstrated achievement of them.
Efficiency
The achievement of program goals or benefits in relationship to the costs. Least cost for given benefit or the large benefit for a given cost.
Equity
Fairness or justice in the distribution of the policy’s costs, benefits and risks across population subgroups.
Where is Equity criterion used?
Civil rights, disability rights, tax cuts for the well off and/or the middle class, access to health services and higher education.
Where is Efficiency criterion used?
Regulatory policies, such as consumer product protection, food safety, workplace safety and environmental protection.
Liberty/freedom
Extent to which public policy extends or restricts privacy and individual rights and choices.
Political feasibility
The extent to which elected officials accept and support a policy proposal.
Where is Political feasibility most likely used?
Any controversial policy such as gun control, immigration, raising gas taxes, tax cuts for the wealthy or subsidies for oil and gas drilling.
Social acceptance
The extent to which the public will accept and support a policy proposal.
Administrative feasibility
the likelihood that a department or agency can implement the policy well.
Technical feasibility
The availability and reliability of technology needed for policy implementation.
Cost benefit analysis
A form of policy analysis in which the costs and benefits or proposed policy actions are considered carefully. Fogged although not all always, the major costs and benefits are measured quantitatively by their value in dollars.
Opportunity costs
The value of opportunities that are forgone when time or resources are spent on a given activity.
Discount rate
Allows analysts to determinate value of future benefits today, but the choice if the rate, essentially an estimate of inflation over time, clearly can have a profound impact on the results.
Contingent valuation method
The use of questionnaires or interviews to determine the economic value that people place on good or services for which there is no market value. (time spent stuck in traffic or the preservation of lakes or forests)
Sensitivity analysis
A way to adjust policy analysis by making it sensitive or responsive to changes in any one variable so that the consequences can be better understood under thee varying assumptions.
Example: forecasting can be made sensitive to different assumptions about economic growth or inflation.
Cost-effectiveness analysis
A comparison of the relative value of policy alternatives in terms of a given benefit that is delivered; a method for comparing policy alternatives when a dollar value cannot easily be placed on the benefits of action, such as the value lives that are saved by requiring safer automobiles.
Risk management
Identifies, estimates, and evaluates the magnitude of the risk to citizens from exposure to various situations such as terrorism, natural hazards ( what governments do to deal with risks)
Impact assessment
A form of policy analysis that examines the likely effects or impacts of proposed or adopted policies. May be environmental, social, economic, or other significant impacts.