Abstract This paper reports the results of a telephone survey of state-level officials as to the influence of evaluations of three state welfare innovations: California's GAIN, New York's CAP, and Florida's Project Independence. The three experiments were known to those interviewed, yet they did...

This paper uses meta-analysis to investigate whether random assignment (or experimental) evaluations of voluntary government-funded training programs for the disadvantaged have produced different conclusions than nonexperimental evaluations. Information includes several hundred estimates from 31...

A major reason the quality of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) varies widely is inconsistent use of the social discount rate (SDR). This article offers guidance about the choice of the SDR. Namely, we recommend the following procedures: If the project is intragenerational (does not have effects...

This paper is an exploratory attempt to view the role that social experiments in general, and the income maintenance experiments and work|welfare demonstrations in particular, have played in the policy process through the lens provided by the knowledge utilization literature. In addition to...

Since 1968 more than thirty-five social policy experiments have been conducted in the United States. During this period through 1976 these experiments were generally long-term, large-scale tests of major new programs; thereafter, experiments became markedly more modest in scope. Although...

Data from 76 experimental welfare-to-work programs conducted in the United States between 1983 and 1998 are used to investigate whether the impacts of such programs on employment had been improving over time and whether specific program features influencing such changes can be identified. Over...

This article describes how microsimulation analysis was used to help design a social experiment currently being conducted in two provinces in Canada. To the authors' knowledge, microsimu lation has never been used before for this purpose, although the technique has been used to assist...

This study uses meta-analysis to synthesize findings from 31 evaluations of 15 voluntary government-funded training programs for the disadvantaged that operated between 1964 and 1998. On average, the earnings effects of the evaluated programs seem to have been largest for women, quite modest for...

This article argues that the existence of a wage subsidy as the sole component of an income transfer system is both unlikely and undesirable. A mixed wage subsidy-public assistance program is defined. Using traditional analysis and new graphical methods developed in the article, the effects on...

Benefit-cost analysis is used extensively in the evaluation of social programs. Often, the success or failure of these programs is judged on the basis of whether the calculated net benefits to society are positive or negative. Almost all existing benefit-cost studies of social programs count...