Tuesdays 5:30-8:00
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Professor Deborah A. Bräutigam
Email: dbrauti@american.edu
TA: Meghan Olivier: meghan.olivier@american.edu
Office: Hurst 201a
Telephone: 202-885-1696
Office Hours : By appointment: Mondays 5:00-8:00pm; Tuesdays 4:00-5:00 and 8:10-10:10pm.
Contact the IDP office to make an appointment: IDPSIS@american.edu.
Please contact Meghan first about technical issues having to do with Blackboard, and me about substantive issues regarding our course content.
Overview of the Course :
This is a course on social policy – on the political decisions made by developing country governments and international agencies to provide health, education, social insurance, and other services to citizens, and on the implementation of those decisions. Social policy is a highly contested issue in our globalized world, with intense debates over issues such as solidarity versus competition, universal coverage versus targeting, efficiency versus equity, centralized versus local control, public versus private provision, and so on. There are no easy answers to these questions; most of them involve contested values. There are tools, however, that can enable us to develop better social policies in conditions of limited resources.
In this course, we review the background of social policy and its history; we discuss the current issues of globalization, standards, and rights. We then review policy analysis tools: cost-benefit analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, decision/problem trees, stakeholder analysis, benefit incidence analysis, targeting, etc. We do not cover a number of important social policy issues that are covered by other courses at SIS (SIS 635 Urban Development, for example, covers housing, sanitation, and water, etc.;
SIS 533 Population, Migration and Development covers issues of demographics, fertility, etc.). While there are no prerequisites for this class, it is expected that you have the kind of basic understanding of development issues provided in SIS 637 International Development . You should not take this class as your first development class.
Blackboard :
I will be using Blackboard for much of our course communication. This means that you must check
Blackboard regularly , and you must be enrolled using your current email. By formally registering for this course, you will be enrolled in Blackboard using your AU email . To change your email address on our Blackboard site, scroll down to Tools, and open it. Click on “Personal Information,” then “Edit
Personal Information.” Change email address and other personal information as appropriate. Do add

phone numbers in case we need to reach you. Readings in our coursepack will NOT be on reserve, as we are limited in the number of readings we can put on reserve. The coursepack is a required purchase, and well worth the investment. The Kennedy School cases will be placed on reserve.
Requirements of the Course :
A. Class participation (15%)This grade will obviously be affected by participation in class discussions, by your completion of assigned homework, and by attendance.
B. Memos (45%). Three professional memos will be required. Instructions will be posted on
Blackboard.
C. Group Teaching/Presentation (15%). Instructions to be provided on Blackboard. Focus will be on subjects we haven’t covered in class, such as social marketing, water, pension reform, or labor rights.
These can take the form of a video, or a more traditional presentation. Groups will provide a two page policy brief on their subject as a handout and as part of their grade. Groups can begin to form immediately, and all groups must be formed by Week 7, before spring break.
D. Individual Research Paper (25%). This should be on a subject related to the group presentation, although it could be on a different subject. All subjects need to be approved in advance by week 10, on the basis of a paragraph that includes the research question and a bibliography of at least 12 sources (no more than a third from the internet; however, online library resources are not considered internet sources, nor are working papers from universities and institutes that you happen to download). You can use this opportunity to do some early research for your SRP topic. Paper instructions will be on Blackboard. Papers should be approximately 8000 words in length (20 pages of text), not including footnotes or references list.
This class will be run primarily through mediated discussion, including a number of “teaching cases” on various social policy issues. I will supplement this with short lectures, but lectures will not be the dominant medium for instruction. You need to be prepared for each class. The most important aspect of preparation is reading and thinking before class.
SNOW DAYS POLICY : If the university is closed due to a snow day, we will hold class ONLINE using Blackboard. I will send out an email describing how we will do this, should the need arise.
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: By registering for courses at American University you have agreed to abide by the American University Academic Integrity Code:
"Members of the academic community are expected to conduct themselves with integrity as a matter of course. Academic violations include (but are not limited to) the following:
Plagiarism : To plagiarize is to use the work, ideas, or words of someone else without attribution. Plagiarism may involve using someone else's wording without using quotation marks--a distinctive name, a phrase, a sentence, or an entire passage or essay. It may also involve misrepresenting the sources that were used."
This means in particular that all material used in any formal papers for this course – including internet sources – must have proper citations: endnotes in this case. You must put all material that you did not write yourself in quotation marks, whether it is a full sentence, part of a sentence, a paragraph, or even a distinctive phrase.
You must credit other sources for any ideas you use. Violations of the academic integrity code will receive an F for that assignment, will be reported to the Dean of SIS or the appropriate unit, and may result in a permanent record and even expulsion from the university.
2

Web Resources:
 http://www.eldis.org/ “Gateway to Development Information.” This is a terrific British website managed by the Institute for Development Studies at Sussex. Covers a number of social development topics, and reports range from academics to NGOs, and many by mixed teams. I highly recommend that you visit this site and bookmark it for frequent reference.
 United Nations, “Report on the World Social Situation 2005.” http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/rwss/media%2005/cd-docs/fullreport05.htm

World Bank, World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for Poor People.
The entire report is available online: we will be reading selected parts of the report. http://econ.worldbank.org/external/default/main?menuPK=477704&pagePK=64167702&piP
K=64167676&theSitePK=477688
Required :
Coursepack. The course reader will be available for purchase. Sign up in week 1. With very few exceptions, all the readings will be in the course reader (except the teaching cases).
Cases. Five times during the semester we will be using cases from the Kennedy School of
Government. Even when we are not writing memos on these cases, they will form a central part of our discussions, and you will need to read them carefully and prepare for class. You will probably need to buy and download these cases from their website: http://www.ksgcase.harvard.edu/ Be sure to register for the lower, academic price. One copy of each case will also be placed on reserve in the library, but most likely it won’t be possible to put them on Blackboard.
Part I: APPROACHES TO SOCIAL POLICY
Jan 16 Wk 1: COURSE INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT FOR SOCIAL POLICY
Sign up for course pack (bound, or unbound copies). Readings in the Coursepack will begin with
Week 3 and the packet will be available in my office after class, Week 2.
Handouts:
Richard Morin, “Case Not Closed,” Washington Post , November 14, 2004.
Jennifer Steinhauer, “States Prove Unpredictable in Aiding Uninsured Children,” The New York
Times September 28, 2000.
Juliet Eilperin, “Climate Shift Tied to 150,000 Fatalities,” Washington Post November 17, 2005.
The Economist. “Psst, wanna buy a kidney?” November 18, 2006.
David Archer, “The IMF’s Barriers to Education.” Washington Post, September 21, 2005.
Larry Rohter. Brazil Collides with IMF Over a Plan to Aid the Poor.” February 21, 2000.
Jan 23 Wk 2: CONTEXT FOR SOCIAL POLICY Cont.
[these readings will all be available on
Blackboard, in Course Documents Week 2: Readings.]
Homework: 1 page, single-spaced “Government, Social Policy and Development: This I Believe” essay. Write down your personal convictions and beliefs about what role governments should play in social policy. No grade. See below for additional homework!
3

*Simon Szreter, “Economic Growth, Disruption, Deprivation, Disease, and Death: on the Importance of the Politics of Public Health for Development, Population and Development Review , 23(4),
December 1997: 693-728. [“lessons of history”]
*Miriam S. Chaiken. 1998. “Primary Health Care Initiatives in Colonial Kenya,” World Development v. 26, n. 9: 1701-1717. [many of you read this in SIS 637. Re-read if you don’t remember it]
*C. W. Dugger, “Africa Needs More Health Workers, Report Says,”
New York Times Nov. 26, 2004.
*Ruth Levine, et al. 2004. Millions Saved: Proven Successes in Global Health. Center for Global
Development Washington, DC. Case 1: Eradicating Smallpox.
*Michael Lavalette. 2001. “Marxism and Social Welfare.” In M. Lavalette and Alan Pratt, eds. Social
Policy: A Conceptual and Theoretical Introduction (2 nd ed.) Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.
*Nancy Birdsall. 2002. “ From Social Policy to an Open-Economy Social Contract in Latin America ,”
Center for Global Development , Working Paper 21, Washington, D.C., pp. 1-16. [pdf]
*UNRISD. 2006. “Transformative Social Policy: Lessons from UNRISD Research.” UNRISD
Research and Policy Brief 5. [pdf]
Recommended : J. A Patz , Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum , Tracey Holloway , Jonathan A Foley, “Impact of regional climate change on human health ,” Nature. November 17, 2005, v. 438, n. 7066, p.
310-318.
Homework for Wk 2 : Check Blackboard to be sure you can enter, and to be sure your email address is the one you want me to use. If necessary, change your email address (click on Tools, then on
Personal Information). All students: check the class roster to see if you are listed, and if your email address is correct. Print out the roster, circle or highlight your correct email address, and hand in to me in class, Week 2. If you are not listed, check first to see that you are officially registered for the course, then email Meghan who can enroll you in Blackboard.
To forward mail from your AU address (used by Blackboard unless you have changed it) to the address you use most of the time, login to the my.american.edu
portal and click on
TECHNOLOGY . Then click on " Forward My AU E-Mail " and follow the instructions.
Jan 30 Wk 3: GOVERNANCE AND SOCIAL POLICY
TA Note: Reserve film; book VHS player.
We will draw on the cases in Part A as examples throughout the course, so be sure you know them well.
Film : “Effective Government in the Developing World,” part 1 “Governments Caring for People.” and part 3 “Cleaning Up Corruption,” [Brazil case only].
Video Clip : PSA for ABA-CEELI [“chain of corruption”] http://www.abanet.org/ceeli/countries/armenia/alph_of_law_psas.html
http://www.abanet.org/ceeli/countries/armenia/psas_2003.html
A: Case Studies
*Emily Wax. 2005. “Underfunded and Overrun, ‘Harvard of Africa’ Struggles to Teach.” Washington
Post, October 29.
*Judith Tendler and Sara Freedheim, "Trust in a Rent-Seeking World: Health and Government
Transformed in Northeast Brazil," World Development (Dec. 1994), v. 22, n. 12, pp. 1771-1791.
*T. N. Krishnan, “The Route to Social Development in Kerala: Social Intermediation and Public
Action,” in Mehrotra and Jolly, pp. 204-234.
*Santosh Mehrotra, In-Hwa Park, and Hwa-Jong Baek, “Social Policies in a Growing Economy: The
Role of the State in the Republic of Korea,” in Mehrotra and Jolly, pp. 264-296.
B. Governance, Corruption, and Social Policy
4

*L. Rohter. “Hospitals Blighted by a Venezuelan Disease: Graft,” NYT, Nov. 19, 1999.
*Economist. “The State is Looking After You.” April 8, 2006.
*F. Halsey Rogers. 2005. “Missing in Action: Teacher and Medical Provider Absence in Developing
Countries.” The World Bank.
*R. Allen. “Yemen Spends Heavily on Defence Despite the Poverty of its People.”
Financial Times ,
Dec. 13, 2002.
*R. Reinikka and J. Svensson. 2006. “Using Micro-Surveys to Measure and Explain Corruption,”
World Development 34(2): 359-370.
*Bettina Meier. 2004. “Corruption in the Education Sector: An Introduction,” Transparency
International, July 2004.
*Maureen Lewis. 2006. “Tackling Health Care Corruption and Governance Woes in Developing
Countries.” Center for Global Development Policy Brief.
Recommended:
Richard Jolly. “Profiles in Success,” in Sahtosh Mehrotra and Richard Jolly, eds. Development With A
Human Face (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 3-18.
Transparency International. “Stealing the Future: Corruption in the Classroom,” 2005.
David Chapman, “Corruption and the Education Sector,” Management Systems International/USAID,
November 2002.
Omar Azfar. “Corruption and the Delivery of Health and Education Services,” in Bertram I. Spector, ed. Fighting Corruption in the Developing World: Strategies and Analysis Kumarian Press, 2005.
John C. Cadwel, “Routes to Low Mortality in Poor Countries,” Population and Development Review
12:2 (June 1986): 171-220. excellent overview, with interesting information on Jamaica; Costa
Rica case focus, also Kerala.
Anders Aslund. “Social Developments and Policy,” in Building Capitalism: the Transformation of the
Former Soviet Bloc New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
*Jan Dehn, Ritva Reinikka, and Jakob Svensson, “Survey Tools for Assessing Performance in Service
Delivery,” World Bank/Development Research Group, March 2003.
Feb 6 Wk 4: RIGHTS-BASED APPROACHES
First Memo Due Today! Instructions will be posted on Blackboard.
Kennedy School Case: Daniel Schneider. 1627.0 “The Constitutional Right to Housing in South
Africa: The Government of the Republic of South Africa Versus Irene Grootboom,” [show video]
Possible Guest speaker:
*Tracy Kidder. 2004. “Mountains Beyond Mountains: Treating the Ills of Poverty in Haiti,” Amnesty
Now (Spring): 6-10.
*Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” United Nations, December 10, 1948.
* Economist. 2001.
“The Politics of Human Rights,” and “Special Report: Human Rights” August 18.
* The Economist
. 2006. “The View From the Shacks.” April 8.
B*Philip Alston. 2005. “Ships Passing in the Night: The Current State of the Human Rights and
Development Debate Seen Through the Lens of the Millennium Development Goals,” Human
Rights Quarterly . v. 27, pp. 755-829. [more detail than you need on the legal issues, but excellent for giving background. This will be on Blackboard, but not in your reader. Read to get the gist of the issue.]
*Andrea Cornwall and Celestine Nyamu-Musembi. 2004. “Putting the Rights-based Approach to
Development into Perspective,” Third World Quarterly 25(8): 1415-1437.
*Jeremy Shiffman. 2003. “Generating Political Will for Safe Motherhood in Indonesia,” Social
Science and Medicine 56(6): 1197-1207.
5

Note: STC has its organizational mission pinned to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Recommended :
Alicia Ely Yamin. 2005. “The Future in the Mirror: Incorporating Strategies for the Defense and
Promotion of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights into the Mainstream Human Rights Agenda.”
Human Rights Quarterly 27 (2005): 1200-1244. [a case from Peru; on Blackboard]
Stephen Marks. 2003. “Obstacles to the Right to Development,” Harvard.
Laure-Hélène Piron with Tammie O’Neill, “Integrating Human Rights into Development,” A
Synthesis of Donor Approaches and Experiences,” prepared for OECD/DAC, Overseas
Development Institute, September 2005. [on Blackboard]
Philip Alston and Mary Robinson, eds. 2005. Human Rights and Development: Toward Mutual
Reinforcement New York: Oxford University Press. [includes chps. on economics of social rights, child labor, PRS process, etc.].
Feb 13 Wk 5: GLOBALIZATION AND SOCIAL POLICY: WTO and TRIPS
Video clip: “Yesterday”
Video: “Paying the Price” AIDS in South Africa and Uganda
Video: “Brazil Winning Against AIDS.” VRC 2887 at Gelman Library (27 min).
Kennedy School Case: 1736.0 Charan Devereaux. 2005. “TRIPS Part II: International Trade meets
Public Health: TRIPS and Access to Medicines.”
*Tina Rosenberg, 2001. "Look at Brazil." New York Times Magazine. (January 28).
*Jeffrey P. Nadler, “The Answer to AIDS Worldwide?” from Infections in Medicine 18(4):184-185,
2001, reprinted in AIDS Bulletin (Medscape) http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/410153
*”Uganda-AIDS-drugs: Uganda’s AIDS programme in trouble as donated drugs are sold.” Agence
France Presse, October 7, 2002.
*Sarah Joseph. 2003. “Pharmaceutical Corporations and Access to Drugs: the ‘Fourth Wave’ of
Corporate Human Rights Scrutiny,” Human Rights Quarterly 25 (2003): 425-452.
Recommended:
[for good background] Kennedy School of Government, “International Trade Meets Intellectual
Property: the Making of the TRIPS Agreement.” [available on reserve in library; not e-reserve due to copyright restrictions.]
Jayashree Watal. 2000. “Access to Essential Medicines in Developing Countries: Does the WTO
TRIPS Agreement Hinder It?” Science, Technology and Innovation Discussion Paper No. 8, Harvard
Center for International Development, http://www2.cid.harvard.edu/cidbiotech/dp/discussion8.pdf
Teaching Note: See Paul Nelson & Dorsey manuscript for an overview of this issue and interesting cases.
Feb 20 Wk 6: FOREIGN AID AND SOCIAL POLICY I:
SOCIAL INSURANCE => SOCIAL SAFETY NETS
Tool 1: Social Policy Matrix
*Margaret Grosh, “Five Criteria for Choosing Among Poverty Programs,” in Nora Lustig, ed. Coping with Austerity Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995.
*Andrea Giovanni Cornia. 1999. “Social Funds in Stabilization and Adjustment Program: A
Critique,” Development and Change 32: 1-32
6

*Judith Tendler. 2004.
“ Why Social Policy is Condemned to a Residual Category of Safety Nets and
What to Do About It,” in Thandika Mkandawire, ed.
Social Policy in a Development
Context.
UNRISD. November 2002.
*Lant Pritchett and Michael Woolcock. 2004. “Solutions When the Solution is the Problem: Arraying the Disarray in Development.” World Development 32(2): 191-212.
Feb 27 Wk 7: FOREIGN AID II: PRSPs, CONDITIONAL CASH TRANSFERS,
GLOBAL FUND
Guest Speaker. Global Fund for AIDS, TB, and Malaria.
Video: “Whose Agenda Is it Anyway?” PRSPs in Malawi (23 min)
Guest Lecturer: Bea Reaud
Kennedy School Case: Sanjeev Khagram. “The Challenge of Participation: Drafting Mauritania's
PRSP (A)” Kennedy School of Government 1623.0
*D. Craig and D. Porter. 2003. “Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers: A New Convergence.” World
Development 31 (1): 53-69.
*Fantu Cheru. 2006. “Building and Supporting PRSPs in Africa: What Has Worked Well so Far?
What Needs Changing?” Third World Quarterly 27(2): 355-376.
*Frances Stewart and Michael Wang. 2006. “Do PRSPs Empower Poor Countries and Disempower the World Bank, or is it the other way round?” in Globalization and the Nation State: The Impact of IMF and the World Bank. Ed. G. Ranis, J. R. Vreeland & S. Kosack, New York: Routledge.
*Wendy Hunter and David S. Brown. 2000. “World Bank Directives, Domestic Interests, and the
Politics of Human Capital Investment in Latin America,” Comparative Political Studies 33 (1)
February: 113-143.
*Jeremy Shiffman. 2005. “Donor Funding Priorities for Communicable Disease Control in the
Developing World,” unpublished paper. [available on BB]
Recommended [on Blackboard]
Jorge Aguero, Michael R. Carter and Ingrid Woolard. 2006. “The Impact of Unconditional Cash
Transfers on Nutrition: The South African Child Support Grant.”
NOTE: Last chance to sign up for Final Groups this week, on Blackboard Discussion Board!
Mar 6 Wk 8: INTRODUCTION TO POLICY ANALYSIS
Tool 2: Problem Tree
Tool 3: Decision Tree [handouts]
Second Memo Due Today.
KSG Case: “Tackling Poor Performance, Extreme Inequality, Public Complaisance: Brazil’s
Education Minister Forges a New Role for the Ministry.” C15-00-1571.
*Varun Gauri, 2004. “Social Rights and Economics: Claims to Health Care and Education in
Developing Countries,”
World Development 32 (3): 465-477. [a view from the World Bank].
*Ruth W. Grant. 2006. “Ethics and Incentives: A Political Approach,” American Political Science
Review 100(1): 29-38.
[this article is a little tough going but is guaranteed to make you think.
Persevere!]
* The Economist . 2002. “Cheap Cures: Donors Should Give More, but the poor should spend what they have more rationally.” August 17: 13-14.
*The Economist . “2004. “Special Report: Copenhagen Consensus: Putting the World to Rights,”
7

June 5: 63-65.
*Jay Mathews, “Academic Research a Study in Politics: Scholars and Stars Square Off, with
Educational Policy on the Line,”
Washington Post April 22, 2003.
*World Bank. “Identifying Causal Factors: The Decision Tree Approach,” [an example of an education decision tree] in ch. 19 Education, Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper Sourcebook.
*Lesley Gill. “Neoliberalism and Public Education: the Relevance of the Bolivian Teachers’ Strike of
1995,” in Lynne Phillips, ed. The Third Wave of Modernization in Latin America: Cultural
Perspectives on Neoliberalism (Lynne Reinner Publishers, 1998).
*Martin I. Meltzer, David T. Dennis and Kathleen A. Orloski, “The Cost Effectiveness of Vaccinating against Lyme Disease,” Emerging Infectious Diseases 5(3) May-June, 1999, pp. 321-328 [read for an example of the formal decision-tree technique applied. It’s quite technical, but quite short].
Recommended:
Jere Bereman and James Knowles. 1998. “Population and Reproductive Health: An Economic
Framework for Policy Evaluation,” Population and Development Review (December). 697-737.
[highly recommended: try to struggle through this even if you find it hard going. On BB].
Gill Walt and Lucy Gilson, “Reforming the Health Sector in Developing Countries: the Central Role of Policy Analysis,” Health Policy and Planning v. 9, n. 4: 353-370. [available on Blackboard]
Spring Break is March 10-18
Mar 20 Wk 9: MEASURING BENEFITS AND COSTS
Tool 4: Discounting
KSG Case: 1766.0 Edgar Raymundo Arágon Mladosich, “LICONSA and the Program of Social
Assistance for Milk”
Focus on costs and benefits from perspective of different stakeholder groups: national government, beneficiaries; Liconsa itself, etc.
QALYs, DALYs, GBD
*World Bank. ”Measuring the Burden of Disease.” pp. 26-27.
*Kara Hanson. “Measuring Up: Gender, Burden of Disease, and Priority Setting,” in Sen, George and
Ostlin, eds. Engendering International Health: The Challenge of Equity (MIT Press, 2002).
*Elizabeth Kolbert, “The Calculator: How Kenneth Feinberg Determines the Value of Three
Thousand Lives,” The New Yorker November 25, 2002.
* The Economist , “The Price of Safety,” November 25, 2000.
*Peter Delp, et al. *”Discounting
*”A Primer on Discounting.” Environment March 1999 (41)2: 33.
Recommended:
*Guy Hutton and Rob Baltussen. “Cost-Valuation in Resource-Poor Settings,” Health Policy and
Planning v. 20, n. 4 (July 2005): 252.
*Philip E. Graves. “Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing,”
Journal of Economic Literature v. 43, n. 1 (March 2005). 192-195.
Mar 27 Wk 10: COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS AND COST-EFFECTIVENESS ANALYSIS
Tool 5: Net Present Value/Worth
Homework Due Today: Discounting and Net Present Value Exercise. Many of you will find this very hard, but the purpose of trying it before we have it in class is to prepare you better for what
8

we are learning today. Homework is not graded.
*Peter Delp, et al. “Net Present Worth,” “Cost-Benefit Analysis,” “Cost-Effectiveness Analysis” in
Systems Tools for Project Planning.
*Coralie Bryant and Louise White. “Feasibility… etc.” Managing Development in the Third World
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 119-125.
*Dorte Gyrd-Hansen and Jes Sogaard. 1998. “Discounting Life-Years: Whither Time Preference?”
Health Economics 7: 121-127.
*John J. Donohue. 1999. “Why We Should Discount the Views of Those Who Discount
Discounting,” Yale Law Journal 1999: 1901-1911. [pdf]
*W. C. Robinson and G. L. Lewis, “Cost-effectiveness analysis of behavior change interventions: a proposed new approach and an application to Egypt,” Journal of Biosocial Science v. 35, n. 4
(October 2003): 499-512. [This article will be posted on Blackboard].
Recommended:
T. Tan-Torres Edejer, et al, “Cost Valuation,” and “Discounting,” in World Health Organization
Guide to Cost-Effectiveness Analysis Geneva: WHO, 2003, pp. 36-48 and pp. 67-71 [the entire book is on Blackboard]. This is harder than the rest, but if you really want to understand these issues, it should help.
Johannesson, Magnus. “The relationship between cost-effectiveness analysis and cost-benefit analysis,” Social science & medicine . 41, no. 4, (1995): 483 (8 pages). Requested via ILL
Apr 3 Wk 11: CBA & CEA CONTINUED
Third Memo Due Today!
KSG Case: Confronting HIV/AIDS in Pingxiang, China
Debates on CBA & CEA
*Nakashima, Ellen. 2002. “For Bush’s Regulatory ‘Czar’, The Equation is Persuasion: Graham
Wields Cost-Benefit Analysis for, Against Rules.” Washington Post May 10, p. A35.
*Kelman, Steven. 1981. “Cost-Benefit Analysis: An Ethical Critique,” Regulation ( January) 1981: 33-
40.
*DeLong, James, Robert Solow, Gerard Butters, John Calfree, Paulene Ippolito, and Robert Nisbet.
1981. “Defending Cost-Benefit Analysis,”
Regulation (March-April): 39-43.
*D. Evans, G. Azene, and J. Kirigia. 1997. “Should governments subsidize the use of insecticideimpregnated mosquito nets in Africa? Implications of a cost-effectiveness analysis,” Health Policy and Planning 12, no. 2: 107-114.
For Further Reading:
“How Much is the Sea Otter Worth?”
Business Week August 21, 1989, 59-62.
Kumaranayake, L. and Walker, D. “Cost-Effectiveness Analysis and Priority Setting: Global
Approach without Local Meaning?” in Lee, K. Buse, K. and Fustukian, S., eds. (2002) Health
Policy in a Globalising World, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 140-156.
Rushby, JA Fox ; Hanson, K “Calculating and presenting disability adjusted life years (DALYs) in cost-effectiveness analysis,” Health Policy and Planning 16, no. 3 (2001): 326 (6 pages). Very technical .
Apr 10 Wk 12: UNIVERSALISM, USER FEES, TARGETING, CROSS-SUBSIDIES
BENEFIT INCIDENCE ANALYSIS
Kennedy School Case: 1450.0 “ Vaccines for the Developing World: the Challenge to Justify Tiered
Pricing.”
9

* The Economist
. “Economics Focus: India’s Poor Law.” January 29, 2005.
*Nancy Alexander, “User Fees,” Services for All Newsletter, November 25, 2006.
*Marc Lacey, “Primary Schools in Kenya, Fees Abolished, Are Filled to Overflowing,”
Washington
Post January 7, 2003.
*Alec Ian Gershberg. 2004. “Empowering Parents While Making them Pay: Autonomous Schools and
Education Reform Processes in Nicaragua,” in Kaufman and Nelson, Crucial Needs, Weak
Incentives.
*Lazlo Lovei, et al. 2000. “Scorecard for Subsidies: How Utility Subsidies Perform in Transition
Economies.” Public Policy for the Private Sector World Bank Note No. 218. [on Blackboard]
*Adam Wagstaff. 2005. “Health Systems in East Asia: What can Developing Countries Learn from
Japan and the Asian Tigers?” WPS3790 (December).
Benefit (and Tax) Incidence Analysis:
“Incidence of Public Programs Vary Widely: Concentration Coefficients for Programs in Mexico.”
*Dominique van de Walle. 1998. “Assessing the Welfare Impacts of Public Spending,” World
Development 26(3): 365-379.
* F. Castro-Leal, J. Dayton, L. Demery and K. Mehra, “Public Spending on Health Care in Africa: Do the Poor Benefit?” Bulletin of the World Health Organization , v. 78, n. 1: 66-78.
*Peter Lanjouw and Martin Ravallion. 1999. “Benefit Incidence, Public Spending Reforms, and the
Timing of Program Capture,” World Bank Economic Review (13): 257-263 only. [You can skip the technical material but try to understand the main points. The rest of the article is available from the library’s e-journals, FYI].
*Stephen Younger, David Sahn, Steven Haggblade, and Paul A. Dorosh, “Tax Incidence in
Madagascar; An Analysis Using Household Data,” World Bank Economic Review (13): 303-309 only [as above, the rest of the article is available from the library].
Recommended:
Lionel Demery, “Analyzing the Incidence of Public Spending,” ch. 2 in World Bank,
Tool Kit for
Evaluating the Poverty and Distributional Impact of Economic Policies [have pdf] This is fairly technical. Read it if you want to explore this policy analysis tool further.
If interested, you can read more about Benefit Incidence Analysis here: http://web.worldbank.org/WBITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/EXTPSIA/0,,contentMDK:
20472485~menuPK:1108016~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:490130,00.html
Apr 17 Wk 13 Group Presentations
Topic 1: The Water Wars: Water Utilities and Private Participation
Bolivia; Ghana, South Africa; others]
[cases: Cochabamba,
Readings:
*D. Brown, “Impact of Safe Water, Sanitation on World’s Poor,”
Washington Post , Nov. 22, 2004.
*Paul Constance. 1999. “What Price Water? Why People in some of the poorest communities would rather pay more.” Interamerica (August).
*Paul Constance. 2005. “Who Won the Water Wars?” IDBAmérica,
Inter-American Development
Bank. (June)
*World Trade Organization, “GATS: Fact and Fiction, Misunderstandings and scare stories.”
September 9, 2003. www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/serv_e/gats_factfiction8_e.htm
*Ken Conca. 2006. “Invisible Hand, Visible Fist: The Transnational Politics of Water
Marketization.”
ODI. 2005. “Water and the GATS: Mapping the Trade-Development Interface.” ODI Briefing Paper.
InterAmerican Development Bank.
*Antonio Estache, Andres Gomez-Lobo, and Danny Leipziger. 2001. “Utilities Privatization and the
Poor: Lessons and Evidence from Latin America,” World Development 29(7): 1179-1198.
*Lindsay Whitfield. 2006. “The Politics of Urban Water Reform in Ghana.” Review of African
10

Political Economy 109: 43-66.
*Willem Assies. 2003. “David Versus Goliath in Cochabamba.”
Latin American Perspectives. Issue
130, 30(3): May, 14-36.
Recommended:
*Joseph Ayee and Richard Crook. 2003. “Toilet Wars: Urban Sanitation Services and the Politics of
Public-Private Partnerships in Ghana.” IDS Working Paper 213.
Malcolm Harper. 2000. Public Service through Private Delivery: Micro-Privatization for improved delivery. Contains 24 real life cases in a number of social sectors.
Topic 2: Cash Transfers as Social Policy: Conditional and Unconditional
* The Economist “New Thinking about an Old Problem,” September 17, 2005.
*Fernando Reimers, Carol DeShano da Silva and Ernesto Trevino. 2006. “Where is the ‘Education’ in
Conditional Cash Transfers in Education?” UNESCO, Institute for Statistics. Read pp. 5-9. The entire paper will be on Blackboard if you are interested in further reading.
Apr 24 Wk 14 Group Presentations
Topic 3: Open Topic [group must agree]
Topic 4: Open Topic [group must agree]
Individual Research Papers are due Monday April 30.
11