Larry Orr | Johns Hopkins University (original) (raw)

Papers by Larry Orr

Avebury eBooks, 1996

... At MDRC, James Kemple and John Wallace served as liaisons between the impact anal-ysis and th... more ... At MDRC, James Kemple and John Wallace served as liaisons between the impact anal-ysis and the implementation analysis ... Marion, Ohio Northwest Minnesota Oakland, California Omaha, Nebraska Providence, Rhode Island SDA/PIC Director John Roark Steve Corona Jack ...

Markham Pub. Co eBooks, 1971

Evaluation Review, Mar 24, 2015

For much of the last 40 years, the evaluation profession has been consumed in a battle over inter... more For much of the last 40 years, the evaluation profession has been consumed in a battle over internal validity. Today, that battle has been decided. Random assignment, while still far from universal in practice, is almost universally acknowledged as the preferred method for impact evaluation. It is time for the profession to shift its attention to the remaining major flaws in the &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;standard model&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot; of evaluation: (i) external validity and (ii) the high cost and low hit rate of experimental evaluations as currently practiced. To raise the profession&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;s attention to external validity, the author recommends some simple, easy steps to be taken in every evaluation. The author makes two recommendations to increase the number of interventions found to be effective within existing resources: First, a two-stage evaluation strategy in which a cheap, streamlined Stage 1 evaluation is followed by a more intensive Stage 2 evaluation only for those interventions found to be effective in a Stage 1 trial and, second, use of random assignment to guide the myriad program management decisions that must be made in the course of routine program operations. This article is not intended as a solution to these issues: It is intended to stimulate the evaluation community to take these issues more seriously and to develop innovative solutions.

National Tax Journal, Sep 1, 1968

PUBLIC standing finance agreement theorists as to are the in theolongstanding a reement s to the ... more PUBLIC standing finance agreement theorists as to are the in theolongstanding a reement s to the heoretical considerations involved in determining the incidence of real property taxes. As early as 1871 Fleeming Jenkin set down an analysis of property tax shifting that would still be acceptableat least as a first approximationto most economists today.1 Jenkin argued that ad valorem taxes on land are borne by the landowner in the form of reduced land rent and land values because land, being an indestructible, non-reproducible asset, is perfectly inelastically supplied. On the other hand, he held that taxes on improvements are borne by the consumers of the capital services rendered by the improvements, on the grounds that, in the long run, the stock of improvements is perfectly elastic at a rate of return set by alternative investment opportunities. If imposition of a property tax (or an increase in an existing property tax) temporarily depresses the return to capital below this level, investment in improvements will be discouraged. As a result, the capital stock will gradually contract (or fail to grow as fast as it would have) until net return has risen to its former level and the market price of capital services has risen by the full amount of the tax, resulting in complete forward shifting. It has also been recognized for many years, however, that this analysis is only a first approximation to reality, and that to the extent that its assumptions are unrealistic, its conclusions may be invalid. For one thing, the assumption of a perfectly elastic supply of improve1 ments holds, if at all, only in the long run; the incidence of the tax may be radically different in the "short" or "intermediate" run (which, in the context of urban housing, may be very long in* deed). Moreover, this analysis assumes a property tax levied at a single, uniform rate throughout the entire urban area. If property tax rates vary from site to site as they typically do in American urban areas significant modifications of the theory may be required. Although these qualifications to the conventional theory have been duly noted in many theoretical treatments of property tax incidence,2 when economists are forced to choose among alternative shifting assumptions they almost invariably opt for the simple dichotomy of land taxes falling upon property owners and improvement taxes falling upon occupants. Thus, virtually all of the empirical studies of the distribution of tax payments by income class have adhered to these assumptions.3 * Assistant Professor of Economics, the University of Wisconsin. The author wishes to acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions of Professor Daniel M. Holland and Mr. David Black. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are, however, entirely the author's own.

The American Economic Review, 1976

New Directions for Evaluation, Dec 1, 2016

Most social experiments are conducted in samples of sites that are not formally representative of... more Most social experiments are conducted in samples of sites that are not formally representative of the population of policy interest. These studies may produce impact estimates that are unbiased for the sample but biased for the population from which the sample was selected. Recent research has estimated the bias associated with nonrandom inclusion. Although some research has focused on solutions to the problem at the design stage or the analysis stage, research on ways to address this problem is still sparse. This paper provides four recommendations to help researchers obtain more representative samples in impact studies. The fundamental challenge is that, in most impact studies, sites are not required to participate if selected. Therefore, obtaining a sample that adequately represents the population of policy interest can be difficult, and the resulting impact estimates may suffer from external validity bias. The recommendations in this chapter address this challenge to help researchers obtain more representative samples when obtaining a perfectly representative sample is not possible. The recommendations, which are based on standard survey sampling methods, demonstrate that researchers can take practical steps to obtain impact estimates that are more generalizable from the study sample to the broader population of policy interest-and therefore more relevant for informing policy decisions.

Taylor & Francis eBooks, Feb 16, 2010

A total of 7706 persons are participating in a controlled trial of alternative health-insurance p... more A total of 7706 persons are participating in a controlled trial of alternative health-insurance policies. Interim results indicate that persons fully covered for medical services spend about 50 per cent more than do similar persons with income-related catastrophe insurance. Full coverage leads to more people using services and to more services per user. Both ambulatory services and hospital admissions increase. Once patients are admitted to the hospital, however, expenditures per admission do not differ significantly among the experimental insurance plans. In addition, hospital admissions for children do not vary by plan. The income-related cost sharing in the experimental plans affects expenditure by different income groups similarly, but adults' total expenditure varies more than children's. Sufficient data are not available on whether higher use by persons with free care reflects overuse, or whether lower use by those with income-related catastrophe coverage reflects underuse. Both may well be true.

National Tax Journal, Jun 1, 1972

The main thrust of the Coen-Powell comment is that my contention that tax differentials will give... more The main thrust of the Coen-Powell comment is that my contention that tax differentials will give rise to rent differentials if and only if there is shifting is incorrect in a general equilibrium model. As proof, they present a counter-example and a mathematical treatment of the two-community case. The conclusions of the counterexample, while correct, derives from an exceedingly implausible combination of assumptions. The conclusions of their mathematical model, also correct for two communities, become trivial in the more realistic n-community case.

In 2000, 3.5 million poor people across the United States lived in neighborhoods with poverty con... more In 2000, 3.5 million poor people across the United States lived in neighborhoods with poverty concentrations in excess of 40 percent. A growing social science literature suggests that such concentration has a variety of detrimental effects on the residents of these areas in terms of both their current well-being and their future opportunities. The harmful effects of high-poverty areas are thought to be especially severe for children whose behavior and prospects may be particularly susceptible to a number of neighborhood characteristics, such as peer group influences, school quality, and the availability of supervised after school activities. Less has been written about whether and how other neighborhood environments exert positive influences on behavior and life changes. Ellen and Turner (1997) summarize the literature in this area, citing various theories about the mechanisms by which middle-class (often predominantly white) neighborhoods shape or reshape the lives of their residents. This study reports interim results from a major federal initiative to explore whether living in better neighborhoods can improve the lives of low-income parents and children. That initiative is the Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration, originally mandated by Congress and carried out by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Executive Summary i 1 composition of their eligible populations and in the nature of their housing markets. Despite these differences, the demonstration was implemented with considerable uniformity, particularly with respect to recruitment, informed consent of participants, issuance of vouchers, and the rules governing their use. Through joint training, central oversight, and regular monitoring and data collection, HUD made sure that the procedures developed for MTO were carefully followed. EXHIBIT ES.1 Moving to Opportunity Implementation-Basic Facts • Origin-The MTO demonstration was funded by Congress, with $70 million in Section 8 rental assistance for fiscal year 1992 (carried over to FY93), with additional vouchers allocated by participating housing authorities and with additional funds from the local housing authorities and nonprofit counseling agencies.

The American Economic Review, 1978

Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, 2012

Limit 4 pages single-spaced.

Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness

Recherches économiques de Louvain

Families originally living in public housing were assigned housing vouchers by lottery, encouragi... more Families originally living in public housing were assigned housing vouchers by lottery, encouraging moves to neighborhoods with lower poverty rates. Although we had hypothesized that reading and math test scores would be higher among children in families offered vouchers (with larger effects among younger children), the results show no significant effects on test scores for any age group among over 5000 children ages 6 to 20 in 2002 who were assessed four to seven years after randomization. Program impacts on school environments were considerably smaller than impacts on neighborhoods, suggesting that achievement-related benefits from improved neighborhood environments are alone small.

Food assistance to the needy in this country was initiated in legislation with the interesting ti... more Food assistance to the needy in this country was initiated in legislation with the interesting title "The Potato Control Act of 1935." Nobody thought its primary aim was to help the poor. Rather, it was to dispose of surplus commodities in order to support farm prices-that is, to help the farmers. This initial objective is why the program was made the responsibility of the Department of Agriculture, and why its descendent is still administered by that department today-rather than the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare,as one might expect of a program that aids the poor.

This paper is a~elfate. theoretical analysis of several alternative policies designed to subsidiz... more This paper is a~elfate. theoretical analysis of several alternative policies designed to subsidize the housing con•_• sumption of the poor~'~.The poJ,icies considered are can•• ventional public' hou~;i;118~ca$.'.h.. subsidies granted on the condition that the r¢~~pient Q~tain standard housing; and unconditional cash g:r~~ts. .

IAM to clear PLEASED to some see of that the my undereffort to clear away some of the underbrush ... more IAM to clear PLEASED to some see of that the my undereffort to clear away some of the underbrush in the local tax bramble bush has prompted some further thought and analysis in this important area. I do take exception, however, to some of the comments of Messrs. Oates and Heinberg regarding my estimation technique. O & H raise three principal objections to the method employed in the article: ( 1 ) They suggest that the <ťlikely presence of simultaneous-equation bias [casts] serious doubt" on my regression results. While this is a troublesome possibility which plagues most econometric work, I do not believe that it is a serious problem in the present case. In my original estimation of this rent regression, I used a completely specified multi-equation model and estimated it via two-stage least-squares, the technique recommended by O & H.1 The results were virtually identical to the single-equation leastsquares results presented in my article, where for brevity of exposition I ...