https://macropaperwarehouse.com/authors/joshua-e-blumenstock/Joshua E BlumenstockHugo -- gohugo.ioen-ushttps://macropaperwarehouse.com/papers/what-do-policies-value/https://macropaperwarehouse.com/papers/what-do-policies-value/<p>This paper asks a fundamental question about policy design: when a program prioritizes one group over another, is that because the group benefits more from the intervention, or because the policy assigns them higher intrinsic welfare weight? Björkegren, Blumenstock, and Knight develop a two-stage method to decompose observed allocation decisions into their underlying components: (i) welfare weights assigned to different types of people, (ii) heterogeneous treatment effects of the intervention, and (iii) relative weights on different outcomes. The key insight is that the same allocation rule can be consistent with very different value systems depending on how much each group actually benefits.</p>