Research

Published Research

Performance and Legacy of Housing Policies

Authors: Edgar O. Olsen, Jens Ludwig, Martha J. Bailey, Sheldon Danziger (eds)

Improving the housing of the poorest families was a high priority for President Lyndon B. Johnson. The widely-publicized problems found in the nation’s most distressed public housing projects, together with the fairly steady official poverty rate in the US since LBJ’s administration, have led many to a pessimistic view about what was accomplished by the War on Poverty’s housing programs for low-income families. 

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Published Research

Understanding Overeating and Obesity

Authors: Christopher J. Ruhm

The combination of economic and biological factors is likely to result in overeating, in the current environment of cheap and readily available food. This propensity is shown using a “dual-decision” approach where choices reflect the interaction between two parts of the brain: a “deliberative” system, operating as in standard economic models, and an “affective” system that responds rapidly to stimuli without considering long-term consequences. 

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Published Research

Policy Diffusion: Seven Lessons for Scholars and Practitioners

Authors: Craig Volden

The scholarship on policy diffusion in political science and public administration is extensive. This article provides an introduction to that literature for scholars, students, and practitioners. It offers seven lessons derived from that litereature, build from numerous empirical studies an applied to contemporary policy debates. Based on these seven lessons, the authors offer guidance to policy makers and present opportunities for future research to students and scholars of policy diffusion.

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Published Research
Environmental Policy

Rethinking Environmental Federalism in a Warming World

Authors: William Shobe

Climate change policy analysis has focused almost exclusively on national policy and even on harmonizing climate policies across countries, implicitly assuming that the harmonization of climate policies at the subnational level would be mandated or guaranteed. We argue that the design and implementation of climate policy in a federal union will diverge in important ways from policy design in a unitary government. 

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Published Research
Advocacy

Racial Bias in Perceptions of Others’ Pain

Authors: Sophie Trawalter, Kelly M. Hoffman, Adam Waytz

The present work provides evidence that people assume a priori that Blacks feel less pain than do Whites. It also demonstrates that this bias is rooted in perceptions of status and the privilege (or hardship) status confers, not race per se. Archival data from the National Football League injury reports reveal that, relative to injured White players, injured Black players are deemed more likely to play in a subsequent game, possibly because people assume they feel less pain.

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