Aug

9

Controversial views

August 9, 2008 | 6 Comments | Joshua Gans

I just thought I’d link to some peculiar views — and a seeming defense of government interference in the medical system — at Hoyden About Town. It is about Andrew Leigh’s and my research on the baby bonus. We had revised our paper for final acceptance at the Journal of Public Economics (something that has been on my website for at least a month now). Not surprisingly, that process made our position — that toying with incentives has unknown risks — clearer. I emphasise the word “unknown” as the government never provided enough data to test whether the risks were real or not. I really didn’t think that conclusion was controversial regardless of our media’s ability to inflate concerns.


Comments

6 Responses to “Controversial views”

  1. tigtog on August 9th, 2008 9:06 am

    a seeming defense of government interference in the medical system

    I’m totally confused as to where there’s any defence of govt interference in the medical system in Lauredhel’s post. Disagreement about the paper’s interpretations of some data regarding delayed elective surgical birth interventions says nothing at all about her position on the purely economic effects of the govt incentives scheme.

  2. lauredhel on August 9th, 2008 1:38 pm

    Joshua, if you could be a lot more specific about what you find “peculiar”, I’d find your response easier to answer.

    I’ve tried to be specific about my critique in my linked post and previous ones (linked from my post), but I’m happy to elaborate if something is not clear.

    In particular response to your assertion that I seem to want more government interference in “the medical system”: my overarching wish is for far less interference in birthing (by both governments and medical practitioners), not for more.

    Lastly, your stated position was NOT that the introduction effect had “unknown risks” – it was that it “could only have adverse health effects for babies and parents”. That was the controversial position, that was the position I critiqued over and over and over, and the position that Leigh (not you, I think) inexpertly attempted to defend over and over and over. It hasn’t been “made clearer” by your revision process, it’s been changed.

  3. Joshua Gans on August 9th, 2008 6:12 pm

    You know, given how much was written about this, especially on this blog, the position was pretty clear.

    But your argument seems to me that successive Health Ministers were OK not to worry about creating incentives to delay births because (a) planned births occur too early and (b) no one would risk their baby’s health.

    I don’t know about (a) but am sceptical given common practice. On (b), it is hard to tell for Australia except that the amount of movement is a worry. But consider Russia and tell me whether you like what happened there: http://economics.com.au/?p=1634

  4. lauredhel on August 9th, 2008 6:29 pm

    Can you elaborate on your statement at (a)? What “common practices” are you talking about, exactly? Have you read all of the references I’ve offered before on this subject? What’s the evidence and experience base from which you’re drawing your conclusions?

    All you seem to have so far is “We worried about this, and it turned out to be not a problem”. Where’s the story here?

  5. Kevin Cox on August 10th, 2008 7:26 am

    Laurelhel,

    As an independent observer I too find your arguments “peculiar”. You say “my overarching wish is for far less interference in birthing”

    Gans and Leigh appear to be saying that a spike in births occured. This was almost certainly because of the baby bonus and the mechanism to cause the spike was likely to be an interference in birthing which is what you are concerned about.

    Surely you should be supporting their work? That is what I find “peculiar” about your posts. What is it that I am missing?

  6. lauredhel on August 10th, 2008 11:53 am

    Kevin, they didn’t find an overall increase in births, as far as I can see. They found a dip before the date, and a cutoff after. If you read the full paper, you’ll see that what actually happened was a few non-urgent (and possibly non-medically-indicated altogether) birth interventions were scheduled later rather than earlier.

    To understand the rest of what I’m saying, I suggest reading my series of posts on this, and my comments at Andrew Leigh’s blog (all linked from my most recent post).

    Joshua has continued to mischaracterise my critique, which is quite specific and focussed on the medical arguments made, as me being “in favour of reckless government interference in birth”. Nothing could be further from the truth. Read for yourself.