Group Assignment

Overview

For the group assignment, you will conduct a semester-long research project with your groups. Your group will choose one of the clients below (see Section 6) to advise on the client’s issue outlined in the prompt. For your client’s policy issue, you will: i) describe the background on the policy issue, including any research evidence on the factors that impact said issue; ii) provide your own data analysis that helps describe either the problem itself or a simulation/analysis comparing the alternative policy proposals you are considering (draw on what you learned in 501, 503, 504, and 505 here); iii) describe the details, strengths, and weaknesses of the status quo situation, your client’s current policy proposal, and an original alternative proposal you develop or adopt for consideration from existing ideas (i.e., from think tanks, scholars, GAO recommendations, other states/localities, other elected officials, etc.); iv) analyze the three proposals (including the status quo) regarding their likely impacts on the problem they are trying to solve, their costs, and the political implications of each (i.e., the key stakeholders in support or opposition of each and the likely political impacts of each stakeholder’s view; here, you’ll want to draw on what you learned in 500 and parts of 506).

For this assignment, you will prepare a report of no more than 20 pages (page limit does not include tables, figures, or references page). The report and a video presentation summarizing the report will be due by December 11th, 2024.

Note

Remember, after doing your research and analysis, it is entirely possible to recommend the status quo, the client’s original proposal (as is or modified), or the additional alternative you consider (as is or modified) based on your assessment. The key will be basing that argument on a good read of existing knowledge, good evidence created yourselves, and sound reasoning and analysis.

Details

In the following, I lay out the sections that should be included in your 20 page (or less) report plus a one-page executive summary, in order, with details on expectations for each section. Overall, the format should use APA citation formatting (for both in-text citations and references list), 12-point Times New Roman font, and single-spaced. The first page should be a cover sheet with a title and all group member names clearly printed.

Executive Summary

This section does not count toward your page count. The report must include a 1-page, single-spaced summary of the full report. The summary should lay out the problem, guiding principles for the solution, the three alternative approaches considered, and finally, the final recommendation. Be clear and concise.

Note

Many students find summarizing their extended research in a limited space challenging, but such summarizing is an important skill to build. A big part of being prepared in a professional role is doing all the work to get to your answer, knowing how you got to your answer well enough to answer clarifying questions, and identifying for yourself and others what is truly important for making a particular decision. Remember that in this context, there’s a full report detailing your process and thinking that will follow the summary; it’s okay for the summary to leave details out to get to the bottom-line points.

Introduction

A 1-2 page introduction that should resemble the executive summary, but with added details on how you approached the problem and how the remainder of the report is structured. A good introduction should provide readers a clear understanding of how you are defining the problem, how you are proposing to resolve the problem, how you are weighing solutions, and the process by which you analyzed your options (e.g., what data did you use? what criteria were policies judged against?). Note that professional reports are not mystery novels - readers should know your final conclusion by the end of the introduction.

Background and Related Research

A 4-6 page summary of research that informs your decision-making. Your research should center on what the evidence says about the policy problem your client is tackling (e.g., the effects of congestion and current congestion rates; housing supply and housing affordability nationally; or current land-use and economic activity in a downtown area), the evidence regarding the status quo and the two policy alternatives you are weighing (your client’s and the additional alternative), what has been successful in similar cases in other areas/cities/states/countries, and any evidence that describes the size and direction of effects of these policies to anchor your own projections later in the report. Do not quote articles or materials directly. Instead, summarize the literature in your own words with citations to works appropriately placed throughout the text.

This section should close with a table or figure that describes the problem as it stands now or in recent years using data you download and analyze yourself, and your should write a clear description of the problem using insights from the table and data. Note that you should also describe the data - what data did you use? what years? where did you get it from? what variables did you include? - in this last part of this section.

Tip - Data

The Current Population Survey, American Community Survey, and other similar data from Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics will likely be good sources. For local or state government issues, you may have to look around city or state government sites or identify only data from the relevant cities or states in the national datasets listed above. These data can be found on the Census website or, more readily for your needs, on IPUMS (for instance, the IPUMS CPS can be found here but a Google search for “IPUMS ACS” or “IPUMS NHIS” will bring up the IPUMS repository of those government datasets as well). This analysis can be as simple or as sophisticated as you like - I just would like to see you apply the analytic skills learned in your data analysis classes in the program.

Tip - Research Basics

A good approach to doing the background research is to create a list of broad, general search terms that inform the basic themes of what you are doing. For example, if researching a new effort to assign bonuses to good teachers, I would include: “teacher effectiveness,” “teacher pay,” “teacher pay for performance,” “teacher effects,” and maybe “teacher collective bargaining agreements” as reasonable potential starting terms. Once you have your list, use it to search in premier academic journals on the topics (JPAM, PAR, JPART, AER, APSR and JHR are good outlets for this example) and in GAO, CRS, and CBO reports to cast a wide net of potential information. I also recommend searching think tanks like Brookings Institute, Urban Institute, Niskanen Center, NBER Working Papers, and CBPP. I recommend searching directly at the journal’s websites or, in GoogleScholar, type the search term then add source:“Journal Title” to the search. I recommend using year filters in Google Scholar to get both older and newer research on the subject. Read the abstracts and executive summaries to think about even a loose fit with what you are doing to narrow the number of papers to what’s most relevant. Now you have a collection of literature to draw on for informing your background section.

Policy/Program Alternatives Considered

This section will include subsections for each of the three alternative proposals (the status quo, their proposed solution, an alternative you introduce for consideration) for advising your client on a solution for the problem you chose to help solve. Each proposal should be 3-4 pages and should include 1) an overview and justification of the status quo situation or policy proposal, 2) a short overview of the proposal’s costs (both direct and indirect, such as opportunity costs or negative externalities) and benefits, 3) a stakeholder analysis of 3-4 main stakeholders impacted by the proposed policy, and 4) the political costs and benefits of the proposal based on your stakeholder analysis. You may use no more than 3 tables, in text, in each proposal subsection. Tables should fit on one page, include a title above them, and be discussed in the text to aid reader understanding and complement the proposal narrative.

Tip - Costs, Benefits, and Politics

When discussing costs and benefits, use your research to create grounded and defensible estimates. If, for instance, one externality is pollution, do not simply list pollution as an externality; instead, be specific about the kind of pollution, the health care costs related to exposure to that pollution, the estimate number of people subject to exposure-related health issues, and the estimated economic cost of that exposure. Treat benefits similarly - look at the same proposed policy in other places and any research documenting benefits, then estimate the benefits of your proposal using population or scale differences in your client’s context. Finally, when doing your stakeholder analysis, be sure to quantify some of the political angles - how many voters will be affected positively versus negatively? Which stakeholders have power and what kind of power, financial resources, and commitment to the issue do they have?

Analysis of the Trade-offs and Recommendation

The final section will be a 3-5 page analysis of the three plans in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, equity, and political impact of each plan leading to your final recommendation. As with the background and related research section, this section should include some research on how to define and measure these dimensions of each plan and anchor your recommendation in how each plan compares on these four dimensions. In the introduction, the nature and history of the problem you are tackling and your goals in solving it should have been articulated clearly and will help you gauge each proposed alternative proposals against those goals and priorities.

Roles and Responsibilities

As with any team project, it is helpful to have clear roles and responsibilities in completing the project. Below is a table of roles and responsibilities that each group will need to assign. I highly recommend groups assigning the editing role to who they believe to be a strong writer in the group.

Role	Responsibility
Introduction, Executive Summary, and Editor	Write the Executive Summary and Introduction. Suggest edits and revisions to other sections strictly for flow and cohesion. Edit and provide one of the three proposed plans.
Background and Related Research	Write the background and related research section. Edit and provide one of the three proposed plans (if relevant).
Analysis and Recommendation	Write the analysis and recommendation section. Edit and provide one of the three proposed plans (if relevant).
One Proposed Plan	Edit and provide on of the three proposed plans. Aid with finding and organizing background research for the background and analysis sections.

Teams should plan to meet to assign roles, sign the group role contract, and submit the signed contract on Brightspace by midnight on March 8th.

Presentation

As groups, you will prepare a 15-minute presentation of your final report. The presentation should be delivered via an unedited recording of a Zoom call with a shared screen for presenting slides. A good presentation should be polished, on time, and should provide a clear overview of 1) the nature of the problem you are facing and the priorities you carried into resolving it (guided by your research), 2) the three alternatives you considered, and 3) your analysis of their trade-offs and final recommendation.

You will turn in:

1. A .MP4 file of the recording (I recommend making a practice video to make sure you know how to download and save the recording as an .MP4)
2. A .PDF of your slides.

Reminder on good presentation basics:

- Introduce yourselves briefly at the beginning and give a brief purpose statement of the presentation.
- Make sure your slides are not overly wordy and provide complementary information that does not distract from your own words as you present
- Keep on time
- Practice a few times before the final run
- Make sure you have polished transitions between slides as a speaker and between speakers
- Remember you are summarizing in a presentation: not every detail or thought from the final paper needs to be in it

Peer Evaluation

Peer evaluations are due December 4th by Midnight. Instructions are provided on Brightspace.

Clients and Policy Problems

You will have 3 options to choose from as a group. On the first day of class (August 26th), you will find a brief survey in Brightspace that will ask about your general availability for group collaboration and your client/policy problem preference to work on for the semester. I will do my best to assemble groups based on both availability and client preference, but, of course, I cannot guarantee that everyone will have perfect alignment. Below, I provide a description of your three options for clients/policy issues and some basic background materials to get you started (all of these problems have a great deal of literature for review and related issues to research).

Making the City Move

The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) 2020-2024 capital projects of needed infrastructure maintenance, upgrades, and accessibility improvements throughout the subway system in NYC is budgeted at $54.8 billion. Approximately $15 billion of the capital project budget was funded through both direct and indirect funds raised by the introduction of congestion pricing - a toll on drivers - in New York City’s central business district. Prior to implementation of the congestion pricing program, Governor Hochul paused implementation, creating a $15 billion shortfall in MTA’s capital projects budget. The governor has promised to ensure the shortfall is covered, possibly even using congestion pricing in some form.

Your team is to advise the governor on how to cover the budgetary shortfall for the MTA’s capital projects fund. Since congestion pricing has been signed into law, you will need to devise two alternative funding paths relative to the status quo legislation of implementing congestion pricing, compare the three approaches, and make a recommendation based on your analysis to the governor.

Status quo: Implement the congestion pricing program in the authorizing legislation.

Background materials

Current budget overview: MTA; Comptroller statement and report on budget shortfall direct impact and impact on the MTA cost of debt. Environmental assessment of the congestion pricing plan.

Housing and Affordability

In many places throughout the country, housing affordability has become a pressing issue. Both presidential candidates have noted housing affordability as a top problem to tackle. Your group will choose either presidential candidate as a client and craft a federal policy proposal to increase housing supply for their coming administration to implement. Note that you will be summarizing the status quo of policies shaping housing supply, focuing on federal policies, will also analyze the alternative for the client you choose, and will add a policy alternative of your own.

Background materials

To get an introduction to the problem, start with this report documenting the housing supply problem in the US. The GAO has covered the problem as well in a brief blog post and the left-leaning Center for American Progress has also provided a report on the problem.

Status Quo: Our current local, state, and federal system for approving and financing housing supply.

Kamala Harris policy alternative: See her campaign press release for her starting policy proposal.

Donald Trump policy alternative: See his executive order from his previous administration.

Revitalizing an Old Downtown

The Greyhound bus station in downtown Albany has reached its end of life and the city is in the process of considering redevelopment proposals. Recently, a group of developers proposed replacing the current station and surrounding parking lots with a complex of hotels, businesses, and apartments anchored by a Major League Soccer stadium. For this project, both MLS and the NWLS have announced support for establishing teams if a stadium is built.¹ A task force has been created that includes the Mayor of Albany, representatives from Empire State Development, representatives of the Capitalize Albany Foundation, and the Albany County government to discuss plans and funding for redeveloping the downtown site, including the currently proposed soccer stadium-based use.

The task force has hired you to prepare a report comparing alternatives for re-developing the 8-acre site downtown, currently owned by the Capitalize Albany Foundation on behalf of the city. One of the proposals under consideration is the proposed MLS stadium and surrounding hotel, business, and housing units. You are to describe the status quo land-use and develop an additional policy alternative to consider for the site. Analyze the the plans and make a recommendation to the task force.

Background materials

To get a sense of the proposed stadium development, read these three articles. As a starting point for your research, you can find a review of research on stadium projects here.

Footnotes

1. From here forward, the scenario is a fictionalized status of the proposal. In reality, the proposal is still seeking support from MLS and potential state support.