Interdependent program evaluation: Geographic and social spillovers in COVID-19 closures and reopenings in the United States

In an interconnected world, understanding policy spillovers is essential. We propose a program evaluation framework to measure policy spillover effects and apply that framework to study the governmental responses to COVID-19 in the United States. Our analysis suggests the presence of social spillovers. We estimate that while state closures directly reduced mobility by 3 to 4%, all other states locking down further decreased mobility in the focal state by 8 to 14%. Similarly, while reopening directly increased mobility by 2 to 3%, all other states’ reopening increased mobility in the focal state by 12 to 21%. Our analysis also suggests geographic spillovers: Travel from locked down origins to open destinations increased by 12 to 29%. In contrast, travel from reopened origins to locked down destinations decreased by 6 to 7% for nearby counties and by 14 to 18% for distant counties. Despite its limitations, we believe that our approach takes the first steps toward creating a framework for interdependent program evaluation across policy domains.

A cooperative culture may affect trustworthiness assessments derived from the human face

Trust is crucial for successful social interactions and personal well-being. Among the many mechanisms potentially favoring the evolution of trust, spillovers of social institutions on subsequent behavior have received little attention within evolutionary psychology. Although a plethora of research has investigated pro-social spillovers in economic experiments, research has thus far largely overlooked the impact of spillovers on person perception. Additionally, given that most studies on such spillovers use one-off measurement of the subsequent behavior, the stability of pro-social spillovers over time has not been investigated so far. In a three-stage laboratory experiment (n = 208), we provide evidence that pro-social spillovers occur even when perceptual cues provide an additional source of information to base decisions on. In Stage 1, participants played a series of trust games against unknown, videotaped targets to assess their baseline trust behavior against strangers, taking into account their trust perception. Subsequently, we randomly exposed them to a repeated prisoner’s dilemma in which cooperation is either favored (“C-culture”) or discouraged (“D-culture”). In the final stage – another series of 30 trust decisions against different targets – participants from the “C-culture” initially respond with higher levels of trust. This spillover effect, however, is short-lived and behavior converges back to the pre-intervention levels. Thus, our findings confirm pro-social spillovers even when participants behavior may also be influenced by perceptual cues but raise the question about their temporal stability. We complemented the experiment with an independent survey (n = 132) on the trustworthiness of the targets. Results show that these perception affects quickly gain predictive quality, suggesting the intervention effect only temporarily crowds out the trustworthiness perception as a key driver of trust behavior.

Assessing Sustainability in Housing LED Urban Regeneration: Insights from a Housing Association in Northern England

How far do current assessment methods allow the thorough evaluation of sustainable urban regeneration? Would it be useful, to approach the evaluation of the environmental and social impacts of housing regeneration schemes, by making both hidden pitfalls and potentials explicit, and budgeting costs and benefits in the stakeholders’ perspective? The paper aims at answering these questions, by focusing on a case study located in the Manchester area, the City West Housing Trust, a nonprofit housing association. Drawing from extensive fieldwork and including several interviews with key experts from this housing association, the paper first attempts to monetize the environmental and social value of two extant projects – a high-rise housing estate and an environmentally-led program. It then discusses whether and how a stakeholder-oriented approach would allow more engagement of both current and potential funders in the projects at hand. Findings from both the literature and the empirical data that was gathered show how in current housing regeneration processes, room for significant improvements in terms of assessment methods still exist. Findings additionally show that the environmental and social spillovers are largely disregarded because of a gap in the evaluation tools. This may also hinder the potential contributions of further funders in the achievements of higher impacts in terms of sustainability.

Partners in Crime

Social interactions may explain the large variance in criminal activity across neighborhoods and time. We present direct evidence of social spillovers in crime using random variation in neighborhood residence along opposite sides of a newly drawn school boundary. We first show evidence for agglomeration effects—within small neighborhood areas, grouping more disadvantaged students together in the same school increases total crime. We then show that these youths are more likely to be arrested for committing crimes together—to be “partners in crime.” Our results show that neighborhood and school segregation increase crime by fostering social interactions between at-risk youth. (JEL I24, I28, J13, K42, R11, R23, Z13)

Causal Spousal Health Spillover Effects and Implications for Program Evaluation

Current methods of cost effectiveness analysis implicitly assume zero spillovers among social ties. This can underestimate the benefits of health interventions and misallocate resources toward interventions with lower comprehensive effects. We discuss the implications of social spillovers for program evaluation and document the first evidence of causal spillovers of health behaviors between spouses by leveraging experimental data from the Lung Health Study (smoking) and COMBINE Study (drinking). We find large decreases in spousal substance use from treatments with a therapy component, which reduces the incremental cost effectiveness ratios of some treatments by 12 to 18 percent. (JEL D61, H52, I12, I18, J12)