Conducting my First Cost-Benefit Analysis

As my internship with Scioto Analysis concludes, I have reflected on this opportunity and the insights I gained from analyzing the Moving to Opportunity program. 

I am someone who loves to learn. As a graduate of the spring 2025 class at the University of Washington, Scioto Analysis has given me the opportunity to continue to develop my skills in policy research in a professional setting. To apply my educational background under the guidance of policy analysts with years of experience was deeply rewarding and will undoubtedly serve me well as I grow as an emerging professional.

I want to give special thanks to Scioto Analysis Principal Rob Moore for guiding me through the summer internship. His expertise was invaluable to completing my Cost-Benefit Analysis. From understanding the basics of social valuations, to developing the impact list, and handling the technical aspects of creating economic models, his support during our weekly meetings helped my understanding of policy analysis tremendously. 

The Moving to Opportunity Cost-Benefit Analysis was such a fulfilling project to work on; current iterations of the program have proven beneficial for low-income families in the short term and have shown strong promise for improving long-term outcomes for younger children. Expanding this program to 1,000 families is an exciting prospect with serious potential for improving the lives of the next generation of Ohioans. Every dollar of value created through this program represents the potential for a material improvement in the life of a child.

Developing and refining the list of impacts included in this analysis was the most rigorous yet satisfying portion of this project. This process involved theorizing a range of potential impacts, working with Rob to determine which effects would be included, analyzed qualitatively or quantitatively, and how they would be calculated, and how they would influence our model. Through this internship I was able to hone my skills in research and problem solving and built a complex model with many interdependent components. I consulted over 20 different sources while analyzing these impacts, with the National Institute of Health and the United States Census Bureau standing out as particularly valuable resources.

Much of my analysis draws from insights included in The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment by economists Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, and Lawrence F. Katz. Their follow-up study on the 1994 experiment provides valuable information on how the program has affected outcomes for children who moved at a young age and theorizes how the change in neighborhood conditions may continue to benefit their life trajectory as they grow into adulthood. Their study served as a blueprint for similar economic mobility programs like Families Flourish, which currently serves nearly 100 single mother households in Ohio and consistently receives positive participant feedback.

I am proud of the work that I’ve completed with Scioto Analysis and am thankful for the kindness and guidance the team has provided me. I plan to continue to closely follow Moving to Opportunity-styled programs like Families Flourish and the growing body of research evaluating their effects on children and families.

How can Ohio protect children from measles and polio?

Parents are increasingly putting their children in danger in Ohio schools.

According to the Ohio Department of Health, about 1 in 7 Ohio five-year-olds entered Kindergarten this year unvaccinated. This is up from about 1 in 10 in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

One in ten is not a great baseline. According to the World Health Organization, that number needs to be closer to 1 in 20 for “herd immunity” to stop measles from spreading. This is certainly part of the reason Ohio has seen 35 measles cases this year.

The speed vaccination rates are falling in Ohio puts children at risk for even more diseases, though. If Ohio creeps closer to 1 in 5 children unvaccinated, children will approach the point where they are no longer herd immune to polio.

What can we do about this?

Certainly we are living in an age of misinformation where trust in institutions like the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and even the Ohio Department of Health have declined.

This has led to parents making decisions that the best medical science tells us is putting their children at risk for lifelong conditions or even death.

Are there public policy solutions to this problem?

If policymakers are interested in improving vaccination rates and saving lives in the progress, they have options.

First, they can tighten nonmedical exemptions.

A parent who leaves a gun unattended or a toddler next to a swimming pool in Ohio can be found negligent for endangering their child.

A parent who refuses to put their child in a car seat or leaves their child in a hot car can be found negligent for endangering their child.

But if a parent refuses to vaccinate their child, exposing them to life-threatening illnesses, they are protected by current Ohio law.

Eliminating “reasons of conscience” that allow parents to opt out of vaccination requirements for whatever reason they see fit can help protect children and their peers. 

If policymakers are too squeamish to protect children in this way, they can instead help educate parents by requiring in-person vaccine education sessions, which has had some positive effect in helping parents make better decisions for their children in Michigan.

Second, the state can use its immunization information system to improve compliance with vaccination requirements.

The state has a database that tracks immunizations across the state. The state can use this system to send auto-reminders like text messages, phone calls, or letters to families who are not up to date.

The state can then publish schools that have low compliance rates by the Oct. 15 deadline so the public knows which schools are struggling to keep their children safe.

These are just two examples of what the state can do to increase immunization rates and protect children from lifechanging illnesses like measles and polio.

Ohio has made so much progress in eradicating deadly diseases and immunization is a huge piece of the puzzle for how this has come to be.

If policymakers can find ways to protect more children, they should do it.

This commentary first appeared in the Ohio Capital Journal.

Investing in kids pays off

Earlier this week, Scioto Analysis released a cost-benefit analysis that looked at the impacts the Moving To Opportunity program would have if expanded in Ohio. In this study, we found that the benefits of expanding this program would be about three times the cost, with most of the benefit accruing to program participants who would be expected to have higher future earnings. 

The way Moving to Opportunity works is that low-income families are given housing assistance that is conditional on them finding a place to live in a low-poverty neighborhood. In the original experiment conducted by economists from MIT and Harvard, program participants were also given counseling to help them with their transition. 

The findings from the original study and our own are pretty dramatic. Children who grow up in wealthier neighborhoods tend to have better outcomes, even if they do not themselves come from a wealthy family. 

In health policy research, this concept is referred to as the social determinants of health. In short, they are the environmental conditions that impact health outcomes. The idea is that two physically identical people may have different outcomes if they have different social characteristics (say one is more educated than the other). With Moving to Opportunity, we see how these environmental characteristics can impact a wide range of other outcomes as well.

Like all public policies, Moving to Opportunity is not a silver bullet. The design of the program is important in determining its success. As the original study notes, positive effects are limited to families with children under the age of 13. Adolescents who moved as part of the program ended up with slightly worse outcomes compared to the control group. The researchers speculate that this may be because these children were older, they received less exposure to the environment with better outcomes, and the negative disruption associated with moving ended up being a stronger effect. 

This is an important caveat because it highlights the role that environment plays in early development. This is why policies that target very young children such as a Child Tax Credit can have such a massive return on investment. 

I think the biggest takeaway I have from this study is that economic segregation is a costly part of our society. We know that poverty is bad and impacts everyone in our society, but this is a reminder that we amplify that problem when high-income households try to isolate themselves from low-income households.

This is a case of short-term vs. long-term thinking. A single family home might be less valuable if it is across the street from an affordable housing development, but in the long-run, having single-family homes next to those apartments might lead to there being less poverty and crime for everyone. 

Overall, the Moving to Opportunity program provides a compelling example of how addressing economic segregation can create significant social benefits. While not a perfect solution, its impact on young children is clear. Research keeps showing us time and time again that investments made to help families with young children get off to a strong start are worth it.

Scioto Analysis releases cost-benefit analysis of Moving to Opportunity programs

This morning, Scioto Analysis released a cost-benefit analysis on an economic mobility program to help low-income families move to neighborhoods with more economic opportunity. The program is modeled after Moving to Opportunity, a 1994 experiment by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Families Flourish, a non-profit organization based in Columbus, Ohio. Based on evaluations of these programs, analysts estimate that a program expanded to 1,000 families would create $320 million in value through reduced crime, increased lifelong earnings, reduced welfare spending, and other impacts. 

Studies have shown that neighborhoods with lower rates of poverty produce better outcomes in health, economic standing, and education for children who live in them. The original Moving to Opportunity program enrolled 4,600 low-income families and moved roughly half of them to lower-poverty neighborhoods through subsidized housing vouchers. Children who moved before the age of 13 experienced the greatest benefit from the program. Through our analysis, analysts estimate that a Moving to Opportunity-styled program for 1,000 families in Ohio would result in:

• $140 million in increased lifelong earnings

• $9.5 million in reduced crime

• $450,000 in reduced welfare spending

Per family, the program is expected to cost $40,000 per child in discounted present dollars. Analysts conducted a Monte Carlo analysis with 10,000 simulations of the program. From this, they estimate the program will generate $5 to $7 in benefits for every $1 in costs. Net social benefits are expected between $250,000 and $310,000 per child. Analysts expect this program to be largely beneficial for low-income Ohioans, providing long-term benefits in income, crime, and health.

Minimum wages can improve public safety

Earlier this week, This Land Research released a study conducted by Scioto Analysis looking at the impact that raising the minimum wage in Oklahoma would have on crime rates. Crime and public policy  is one of my favorite applications of economic theory, and I think it is extremely important to understand the incentives behind crime if we want to address its root causes. 

In the study, we found that higher minimum wages would lead to reduced crime rates in Oklahoma. The main reason for this is that the effect of increased wages outweighed the effect of reduced employment in the majority of scenarios we simulated. 

When we look at what types of crimes would be prevented by a higher minimum wage, we find the largest impact would be for young adults committing larceny. Intuitively, this makes a lot of sense. Larceny is non-violent and very often financially motivated, so if people have better outcomes in the labor market they might prefer to work in the legal market rather than steal. 

However, when we look at the monetized value of the crime reductions, the vast majority of the social benefit came from a reduction in homicides.

A 2020 study found that there was a connection between higher state minimum wages and reductions in the number of firearm homicides. We used this insight to determine what a similar effect might mean for the number of homicides in Oklahoma, and we calculated it would lead to 55 fewer homicides on average.

Despite making up less than 1% of the total number of the avoided crimes, these 55 fewer homicides were responsible for almost 90% of the total social value of crime reductions due to the higher minimum wage. Conversely, the prevented larcenies accounted for nearly 70% of the total avoided crimes, but only 2% of the total social benefit. 

I think there are two major takeaways from this particular finding, one for policy analysts and one for policymakers.

For analysts, this demonstrates the importance of looking for costly connections between a policy and an outcome, even if the connection between the two is small in magnitude. This doesn’t mean it is appropriate to shoehorn in a mortality impact where it doesn’t belong, but if there is empirical evidence to suggest a connection between the policy you are studying and some very important outcome, it is often worth exploring. 

For policymakers, this shows how certain policies can have effects on things they are not designed to change. The purpose of this study was to highlight the connection between minimum wages and public safety, but most people who participate in the discussion about minimum wages are solely focused on the labor market impacts. Minimum wage policies are not implemented as crime reduction policies, it just so happens that they have a spillover effect.

We can learn a lot about policies when we focus on the social impacts. The total volume of homicides prevented is not close to the total number of other crimes, but because we know how much more severe a homicide is we see that preventing even a handful can lead to major benefits for everyone.

New Report Finds Raising Minimum Wage to $15 Would Deliver Major Public Safety Benefits in Oklahoma

A new report “Public Safety and the Minimum Wage” released today by This Land Research and Communications Collaborative highlights the connection between wages and public safety in Oklahoma. The analysis, conducted by Scioto Analysis, shows that raising the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2029 could reduce crime, incarceration, and corrections spending—while delivering hundreds of millions of dollars in social benefits to Oklahoma families and communities.

In this analysis, we estimate a $15 minimum wage in Oklahoma will lead to the following:

• Nearly 7,000 fewer crimes each year — including an estimated 55 fewer homicides annually and over 4,900 fewer incidents of larceny. 

• $840 million in avoided social costs each year, with the majority of savings driven by reductions in violent crime. 

• The public safety impact of a $15 minimum wage would be equivalent to hiring nearly 1,000 additional police officers—without the additional $58 million in costs to taxpayers. 

• Oklahoma’s incarcerated population could decline by 370 individuals annually, reducing corrections spending by an estimated $5.7 million each year. 

• Recidivism rates are projected to fall by six percentage points, helping more Oklahomans successfully reenter society and stay out of prison. 

“These findings make clear that wages are not only an economic issue, but a public safety issue,” Rob Moore, Principal for Scioto Analysis, said. “When wages rise, workers are less likely to be pushed toward crime and more likely to build human capital in the legal workforce. This new analysis shows raising the minimum wage isn’t just about higher wages, it’s about building better, safer communities, while saving taxpayers millions of dollars.” 

While Oklahoma has made great strides in reducing the number of people in prison, it still has one of the highest incarceration rates in the nation, with 1 in 178 residents behind bars. The report underscores that higher wages could help reduce that number even further and reduce the burden on law enforcement and Oklahoma’s corrections system.

What are “sticky prices?”

In a recent blog post, I talked about different types of market failures and how they can change the way we see markets operate in practice. In this post, I covered externalities, information asymmetries, public goods, and monopolies. 

Of course, this is not an exhaustive list of every possible type of market failure. These are just the ones that we most frequently run into with our work. 

I wanted to talk today about another aspect of markets that don’t quite qualify as market failures but do play a big role in real world markets deviating from our simple economic models: “stickiness.”

When we talk about stickiness in markets, we refer to the fact that in many cases, prices don’t respond right away to changing market conditions. The best example of this is in the labor market. Many employees work under contracts that specify what their wages will be for some fixed duration. 

It sounds crazy on its surface, but if every person was a totally rational economic actor and had perfect information, it might increase efficiency to allow people to negotiate their wages every single day. The reason this is crazy is because nobody is a perfectly reasonable economic actor, perfect information rarely exists, and there are significant transaction costs to renegotiation of contracts. Imagine the first hour of every work day being taken up by wage negotiations. Not only would it waste time, it would be mentally exhausting.
Instead, both employers and employees agree that signing contracts and having some certainty about the future is a better system. The reasons I wouldn’t classify this as a market failure are 1) I suspect that nobody would be better off without these types of contracts and 2) it does not lead to an inefficient allocation of resources. 

At any single point in time, participants in the labor market can negotiate the price of labor and choose an efficient rate that takes into consideration some basic ideas about what both parties expect the economy to look like in the future. If the economy is generally stable, then a fair price today should largely be a fair price into the future. 

Another key point about sticky markets is that they do eventually respond to changes in broader economic conditions, just not right away. This can create issues in the short run that public policy might need to address. Take the recent high inflation as an example. 

There is mixed evidence about how well wages have kept up with inflation in recent years, but in general they have been able to keep pace overall. Still, we all remember how challenging it was for so many people in the early days of that high inflation. 

Many people struggled with paying for basic needs because their wages were still stuck behind. Eventually they may have caught up, but by that point, the damage had been done for a lot of people. 

While sticky wages can be a rational choice for businesses and employees, they do create problems that public policy can help address. A classic example is rising unemployment during an economic downturn. Because wages are sticky, companies are unable to reduce wages when they lose revenue. Instead, they have to lay off a portion of their employees. 

Unemployment insurance is a direct response to this problem. By requiring companies to contribute to a shared fund, the government can provide a safety net for workers who lose their jobs due to these rigidities. This helps to stabilize the economy and reduce the harm caused by sticky prices.

Another market that is affected by sticky prices is housing. For many people, rents and mortgages make up the majority of their housing costs and those almost always come with long-term fixed payment schedules. 

There are some variable housing costs like utilities that can fluctuate more regularly, but for most people participating in the housing market the price they pay is largely fixed. Again, this isn’t the same as a market failure because people participating in the market can account for future uncertainty and make efficient decisions in the short term. It does, however, constitute a departure from our classical economic models.

While we often focus on traditional market failures like externalities and monopolies, it's also important to understand other deviations from our simplified economic models. While sticky prices don’t cause the same type of inefficiency as a true market failure, it can still lead to short-term challenges that policymakers may need to address.

Will state national guard deployment reduce crime in D.C.?

Just over two weeks ago, the Trump Administration declared a “crime emergency” in Washington, D.C. in response to a former DOGE staffer getting injured in an attempted carjacking. As rationale for the emergency, the Trump Administration has described crime in D.C. as “out of control” and has named the District itself as, “by some measures, among the top 20 percent most dangerous cities in the world.” In January of this year, the Metropolitan Police Department announced that crime in D.C. reached the lowest it had been in 30 years. 

The Trump Administration has since taken control of the Metropolitan Police Department and deployed the District of Columbia’s National Guard in an effort to reduce crime in the city. Earlier this week, President Trump signed an additional executive order with guidance to staff the National Park Service with more police officers, hire additional attorneys to prosecute violent crime, and increase law enforcement training and resources, all to help crack down on crime in the District of Columbia.

The 1973 Home Rule Act gives the president the ability to invoke this kind of power by granting presidential control over the national guard in the District of Columbia and allowing presidential use of the local police during emergencies. These emergencies are permitted to last for up to 30 days without legislative authorization. 

The Home Rule Act has been invoked by presidents in the past, but never for reasons as broad and sweeping as crime. Prior to the current deployment in the District of Columbia, the most recent instance a president bypassed a governor to deploy state troops was to protect civil rights advocates in the 1960s. The use of the Home Rule Act and the deployment of the National Guard to fight everyday is unprecedented and is sure to face legal challenges and political pressure. 

Research from Brown University finds that in the past, military policing has done very little to actually reduce crime. The study focuses on Bogotá, Colombia, one of the cities President Trump has compared crime rates in the District of Columbia to. The study finds that military forces seldom decrease crime more than traditional police forces, and in many cases, crime rates end up higher than before once military forces leave. 

This data corroborates the concerns lawmakers in the District of Columbia have voiced. The National Guard does not receive the same type of training that local police officers receive on when and when not to use lethal force. Typically, the National Guard is used for more specific use cases, such as engaging in crowd control for protests, helping in the aftermath of a natural disaster, or controlling civil unrest. And, when it comes to handling crime, the National Guard acts more in-line with the military strategy of neutralizing dangerous threats than the police strategy of solving crime. In conjunction with recent reports of the National Guard carrying firearms, safety concerns in the District of Columbia are not without reason.

This poses the question: is deploying the National Guard an efficient use of resources to stop crime?

As of August 20th, six states have promised to send their National Guard troops to the District of Columbia: Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia. These troops will add more than 1,100 new soldiers to patrol the streets in the District of Columbia. 

Using FBI crime data, violent crime rates from these states compared to Washington, D.C. are shown in the chart below. 

Out of the six states that have promised to deploy the National Guard to the District of Columbia, the rate of violent crime per capita in Washington, D.C. is only higher than two, West Virginia and Mississippi, both of which have fewer urban areas than the other states. Even if deploying the National Guard is an effective way to reduce crime, why aren’t states with crime rates higher than the District of Columbia deploying the National Guard in their own cities? In this case, it seems subnational policymakers have deferred local interests to federal interests.

Once troops are sent from the states, Washington, D.C. will have upwards of 2,100 troops deployed. More than half of these troops will be from states, and the total cost of these troops could exceed $1,000,000 per day, meaning that states could be collectively paying upwards of $500,000 per day to keep troops in the District of Columbia. At Scioto Analysis, we focus on state and local policymaking, and the question persists– is deploying troops to the District of Columbia a good use of state resources?

So far, the Trump administration has cited robberies down 46%, carjacking down 83%, and violent crime down 22% in the District of Columbia due to the executive orders. While the source of this data remains unknown, if these figures are accurate, it remains unclear if crime will continue to fall once the National Guard leaves, or if it will rise to levels at or higher than before the National Guard was involved, as historical precedence suggests it may.

Historically, effective strategies to reduce crime in the long-run focus on institutional change and local based efforts such as vocational training, extra police patrol, rehabilitation programs, incarceration for repeat offenders, and quality education for high-risk youth, while ineffective strategies include community mobilization against crime, high supervision based programs, and arrests for minor offenses. Policymakers may have more work to do if they wish to make further progress on crime in major U.S. cities.

Do markets stop at man?

Often when we talk about markets, we treat them like technology.

A history of the economy is often told like this: first, hunter-gatherers took food from nature and shared it among their tribes. Then, tribes began to trade with each other through barter systems. Agriculture brought stockpiling of resources and trade of those stocks. Then eventually cultures developed currencies, easing trade and creating markets like what we see today.

But what if there is something older than this? What if there are “deep markets” that go beyond not just history and prehistory, but beyond mankind? What if economics is not just a human phenomenon, but a biological phenomenon?

In this week’s Planet Money newsletter, economics journalist Alex Mayyasi covered research by Evolutionary Biologist Toby Kiers, who studies “markets” in sugar and nitrogen between soybeans and microbes.

Her theory: that the two were not leeching off each other, but rather were engaging in a free exchange. That meant they could withhold their side of the bargain if the other side was not held up.

So she put the theory to the test. She surrounded the microbes with air that did not include the nitrogen they provided to the soybeans. Kiers observed that when the soybeans were not provided the nitrogen, they did not provide sugars to the microbes. No payment, no product.

She found this played out in trades between plants and fungi, too. Plants in full sun were able to produce more sugars to trade than plants in full shade. The fungi gave more of their phosphorus and nitrogen to plants that provided them with more fats and sugars. The relationship was not parasitic–it was voluntary and reacted to shocks in supply.

With tools developed to track “nanoparticles,” Kiers teamed up with chemist Matthew Whiteside and biophysicist Tom Shimizu to follow these trading patterns. With these tools, they found that fungi save their phosphorus and nitrogen for times when sugars and fats from plants are more plentiful. This implies a “price” for trading that changes based on supply of resources.

According to Mayyasi, primatologist Ronald Noë has been documenting a phenomenon he calls “biological market theory,” that he first developed by observing monkeys trade food and grooming sessions like commodities. He notes changes in the “price” of mating as dictated by food offered during times with more or less balanced sex availability, cleaner fish who take advantage of larger fish when competition decreases, and comparative advantage developing between plant species in evolution as examples of markets developing in biological settings.

But how could this be? Don’t we know that human beings make decisions based on rational thought, weighing their strength of desire for a product against their personal resources?

Wait, do they do that?

Or do we make purchases on autopilot? Do we think through every single purchase we make or do we sometimes buy things bounded by general large bounds for reasonability. If I go to a food stand at a soccer game, I want to buy a hot dog. I will pretty much pay what they ask me for it unless it is extremely expensive. But really I’m just going to go up and give them my money and take what they give me. Their price is constrained not by my choice, but by the hundreds of people all making hunch decisions about what would be too much and walking away if it is too much to pay.

In Mayyasi’s words, “brains are overrated.” We’re not that far off from fungi: we want things and we have resources to trade for them. The mechanism by which fungi and plants make these decisions to trade is mysterious, but so is the neurological process that governs our economic decision making. From an objective, behavioralist standpoint, the two do not seem that different from one another.

This matters to me as a public policy analyst. When conducting cost-benefit analysis, our goal is to estimate how a public policy will change the economy, including how much resources will grow overall and how they will be distributed throughout the economy. When the welfare of non-human animals is raised, the first thought that comes to mind is this: non-human animals don’t take part in markets! How could you value the impacts of a public policy on their markets if they don’t exist?

But they do, and this market behavior stretches beyond non-human animals into plant and even fungal populations. We observe it happening, with populations exhibiting economic behavior that conforms to models eerily similar to that we see among human populations in markets much more familiar to us.

What does this mean for the public policy analyst?

First, it means that we are likely missing key stakeholders when we are conducting cost-benefit analyses. If changes to air quality can disrupt markets in trade between plants and fungi, what other changes to ecosystems come about from changes in public policy?

Second, this means analysts have a tall task ahead of them when it comes to monetizing these impacts. If fungi reproduce at lower rates when nitrogen content in the air reduces in quantity, what does this translate into in dollar terms? Our traditional approach to valuing an impact like this would be to find out how much this impacts human welfare, which is one way to value this. But is it worth valuing fungi in and of themselves? Surely the fungi are valuing their own reproduction since they are optimizing toward reproduction. How do we measure this against other goods in society like health and consumer goods that human beings establish a willingness to pay for through market activities?

I do not have all the answers to these questions. I do know, though, that there is work to be done. The more research uncovers truths about how life interacts with each other, the more certain I become that the line we draw between man and other life on earth is arbitrary and convenient more than scientific and indisputable. Science will keep pushing us to consider the larger impacts of our public policies. It is up to us to listen and to do the hard work of incorporating these broader impacts into our models.

Ohio economists believe BLS turmoil will hurt Ohio economy

In a survey released this morning by Scioto Analysis, 10 of 14 economists agreed that reduced trust in Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates will hurt economic development in Ohio. This comes after the firing of Commissioner Erika McEntarfer and subsequent appointment of E.J. Antoni from the Bureau of Labor Statistics has raised concern about the independence and reliability of Federal employment statistics.

As Curtis Reynolds from Kent State wrote “One of the hidden backbones of the US economy is the quality of economic data.  That provides investors - both in the US and from other countries - with reliable data for making decisions.  A belief that the quality of the data has decreased or is now being manipulated/manufactured for political gain will undermine confidence in the entire US economy.”

One economist who disagreed was David Brasington from the University of Cincinnati, citing challenges the Bureau of Labor Statistics has had recently in their survey response rates “I disagree with the premise.  If the new director makes the BLS use more updated models, trust in the numbers could increase.  Current BLS surveys have 45% completion rate compared to 95% in the past.”

Additionally, 10 of 14 economists agreed that reduced trust in Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates will increase the importance of state-level economic data. This does come with additional challenges of state’s having potentially differing methods, as Kathryn Wilson notes “Yes, but relying more on state-level data is a costly and an uneven substitute. If states vary in their ability or willingness to invest in high-quality data collection, the result will be inconsistent and less useful than national statistics. The costs of duplicating efforts at the state level would be significant, and there’s the added risk that state-level data could become further politicized along partisan lines.”

The Ohio Economic Experts Panel is a panel of over 30 Ohio Economists from over 30 Ohio higher educational institutions conducted by Scioto Analysis. The goal of the Ohio Economic Experts Panel is to promote better policy outcomes by providing policymakers, policy influencers, and the public with the informed opinions of Ohio’s leading economists. Individual responses to all surveys can be found here.