Professor Karl Widerquist
Karl@Widerquist.com

Fridays, 3:15 pm to 5:30 or so, April 29 to June 3, 2022
any anytime online

The University of Freiburg

This seminar is based largley on my book, A Critical Discussion of Basic Income Experiments. It attended mostly by masters students in economics at the University of Freiburg, but everyone is invited to follow long online. I’ll try to post all videos of each session on YouTube within a day, and I’ll they’ll remain there as long as YouTube will keep them. I’ll post links to the videos on this page as soon as I post them.

Closely related to this seminar is the FRIBIS (Freiburg Institute of Basic Income Studides) UBI Workshop which will take place most Tuesdays in May and June 2022. Most of the presentations this spring will be related to UBI experimetns. I recommend everyone attending or watching the seminar also watch the workshop. Each Workshop session will be broadcast live on YouTube and available for streaming afterwords.

The seminar is primarily a course not in economics, but in the philosophy of economics. The “philosophy of science” is the study of the methodology of science and implications, use, and merit of scientific findings. The most important learning objectives of this course are therefore less about the particulars of the various experiments that have been or are being conducted around the world and more about gaining a critical understanding of what experiments can measure, how they affect the debate, and how they can be misunderstood or misused.

Learning objectives

• Critical understanding of what aspects of Universal Basic Income (UBI) and Guaranteed Income (GI) can and importantly cannot be tested in a field experiment
• Improved understanding of how UBI experiments affect the UBI debate
• Critical understanding how the findings of UBI and GI experiments have been and can be used or misused
• Good knowledge of the UBI and GI field experiments that have been conducted on from 1968 to the present
• Broader understanding of microeconomics and of social science experiments in general

Content

This lecture-seminar will be based on my research on UBI experiments and on the broad range of research on UBI experiments. It will begin with a discussion of the politics and economics of the 1970s Negative Income Tax experiments in the United States and Canada, followed by several lectures and discussions based on my book A Critical Discussion of Basic Income Experiments, and concluding with student reports involving critical analysis of recent or ongoing UBI experiments around the world.

Primary Reading (see below for a list of additional reading)

• Karl Widerquist, 2018. A Critical Analysis of Basic Income Experiments for Researchers, Policymakers, and Citizens, New York: Palgrave Macmillan
• Roberto Merrill (editor), 2021, Special Issue on Basic Income Experiments, Ethical Perspectives 28 (1), March, pages 1-115
• Karl Widerquist, 2005. “A Failure to Communicate: What (if Anything) Can We Learn From the Negative Income Tax Experiments?” the Journal of Socio-Economics 34 (1): 49-81
• Karl Widerquist, 2019. “Three Waves of Basic Income Support,” the Palgrave International Handbook of Basic Income. Malcolm Torry (editor). New York: Palgrave-Macmillan
• Karl Widerquist, 2020. “The Fall and Rise of the Basic Income Movement: My personal reflections after following it for 40 years,” The Indepentarian (blog), Widerquist.com, February 7

Calendar:

Links to videos will appear here as soon as possible:

Week 1 (April 29), Video 1: The place of experiments in the history of UBI and the critical approach this course will take.

• A Critical Analysis, chapters 1-2
• “Three Waves of Basic Income Support”
• “The Fall and Rise of the Basic Income Movement”

Week 2 (May 6), Video 2: UBI tests, testing difficulties, and experimental findings (part 1)

• A Critical Analysis, chapters 3-5
• “A Failure to Communicate”
• A Critical Analysis, chapters 6-8

Week 3 (May 13): UBI Experiments Video 3, 2022 May 13: Experiments 1968-2020 Part 2 and their vulnerability to spin, misuse, & misunderstanding

• A Critical Analysis, chapters 9-11

Week 4 (May 20): What can we get from experiments?

• Part A: A Critical Analysis, chapters, 11-15
• Part B: A Critical Analysis, chapters 16-17

Week 5 (May 27): Making the best of what we can get

• UBI Experiments Seminar Week 5, Part A? Why have experiments & how to avoid spin & misunderstanding
• UBI Experiments Seminar Week 5, part B: Catarina Neves presents the Special Issue on UBI experiments

Week 6 (June 3): Contemporary experiments

• Student presentations on their preliminary research

Spring UBI speaker series May 10-31

Closely connected with the class, I will be hosting this spring’s FRIBIS UBI Workshop. Many of the presentations will be about UBI experiments. The follow speakers are confirmed so far.

Tuesdays 16:00 (s.t.) – 18:15

May 10

4pm-4:55: Video: Simon März, “An extensive Universal Basic Income pilot study in Germany. A critical analysis of the proposed implementation of a UBI pilot study; further fields of research into its financialization and its changes for the UBI field experiment research”

5:05-6:30: Video: Jurgen De Wispelaere & Simon Birnbaum, “Exit strategy or exit trap? Basic income and the ‘power to say no’ in the age of precarious employment,” with response by Karl Widerquist

May 17

4pm-4:55: Michael Bohmeyer, “First pilot project in Germany” and 5:05-6:15 or so: Amy Castro and Stacia West, Video of the whole discussion

May 24

No seminar

May 31

4pm-4:55: Paul Niehaus, “Universal Basic Income: experimental evidence from Kenya” The written version is not yet available, but an earlier paper is closely related, “Effects of a Universal Basic Income during the pandemic”

5:05-6:15 or so: Jurgen De Wispelaere & Joe Chrisp, title to be announced

Later dates

To be confirmed

Additional reading

Anderson, G.M., Block, W., 1993. Economic Response to a Guaranteed Annual Income: Experience from Canada and the United States: Comment. Journal of Labor Economics 11 (1), S348–S363.

Ashenfelter, O., 1978. The Labor Supply Response of Wage Earners, in: Palmer, J.L., Pechman, J.A. (eds.), Welfare in Rural Areas. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

Ashenfelter, O., 1983. Determining Participation in Income-tested Social Programs. Journal of the American Statistical Association 78, applications section: 517–525.

Ashenfelter, O., Plant, W.M., 1990. Nonparametric Estimates of the Labor-Supply Effects of Negative Income Tax Programs. Journal of Labor Economics 8, no 1. pt. 2: S396–S415.

AuClaire, P.A., 1977. Informing Social Policy: The Limits of Experimentation. Sociological Practice 2 (1): 24–37.

Bawden, D.L., Harrar, W.S. (eds.), 1983 Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment, vol. 1. Design and Results. SRI International, Menlo Park, CA, p. 257-387.

Boekmann, M., 1976. Policy Implications of the New Jersey Income Maintenance Experiment. Policy Sciences 7: 53–76 (March).

Boumol, W., 1974. An Overview of the Results on Consumption, Health, and Social Behavior. Journal of Human Resources 9 (2): 253–264.

Burke, V.J., Burke, V., 1979. Nixon’s Good Deed: Welfare Reform. New York: Columbia University Press.

Burtless, G. 1995. The Case for Randomized Field Trail in Economic and Policy Research. Journal of Economic Perspectives 9, 63–84.

Burtless, G., Greenberg, D., 1982. Inferences Concerning Labor Supply Behavior Based on Limited Duration Experiments. American Economic Review 72, 488–97.

Burtless, G., Hausman, J.A., 1978. The Effect of Taxation on Labor Supply: Evaluating the Gary Negative Income Tax Experiments. The Journal of Political Economy 86 (6): 1103–1130.

Cain, G.C., Wissoker, D., 1990a. A Reanalysis of Marital Stability in SIME/DIME. American Journal of Sociology 95 (5), 1235–1269.

Cain, G.C., Wissoker, D., 1990b. Response to Hannan and Tuma. American Journal of Sociology 95 (5), 1299–1314.

Christopherson, G., 1983. The Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment, vol. 2. Administration. Princeton, NJ.: Mathematica Policy Research.

Danzinger, S., Haveman, R, Plotnick, R., 1981. How income transfer programs affect work, savings and the income distribution: a critical review. Journal of Economic Literature 19, 975–1028.

Galligan, R.J., Bahr, S.J., 1978. Economic Well-Being and Marital Stability: Implications for Income Maintenance Programs. Journal of Marriage and the Family (May), 283–290.

Garfinkel, I. (ed.) 1982. Income-Tested Transfer Programs: The Case For and Against, New York: Academic Press.

Greenberg, D.H., Linksz, D., Mandell, M., 2003. Social Experimentation and Public Policy Making. Urban Institute Press

Groeneveld, L., Tuma, N., Hannan, M., 1980. The Effects of Negative Income Tax Programs on Marital Dissolution. Journal of Human Resources 15, 654–674.

Hannan, M., Tuma, N., 1990. A Reassessment of the Effects of Income Maintenance on Marital Dissolution in the Seattle-Denver Experiment. American Journal of Sociology 95, 1270–98.

Hannan, M., Tuma, N., Groenveld, L., 1977. Income and Marital Events: Evidence from an Income-Maintenance Experiment. American Journal of Sociology 82, (6), 1186–1211.

Hausman, J.A., Wise, D.A. (eds.), 1985. Social Experimentation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Havenman, R.H., Watts, H.W., 1976. Social Experimentation as Policy Research: A Review of Negative Income Tax Experiments. Evaluation Studies 1, 406–431.

Heckman, J.J., Smith, J.A., 1995. Assessing the Case for Social Experiments, Journal of Economic Perspectives 9 (2), 85–110.

Hollister, R., 1974. The Labor-Supply Response of the Family. Journal of Human Resources 9 (2), 223-252.

Hum, D., Simpson, W., 1991. Income Maintenance, Work Effort, and the Canadian Experiment. Ottawa: Economic Council of Canada.

Hum, D., Simpson, W., 1993. Economic Response to a Guaranteed Annual Income: Experience from Canada and the United States. Journal of Labor Economics 11 (1, part 2), S263-S296.

Kaluzny, R.L., 1979. Changes in the Consumption of Housing Services: The Gary Experiment. Journal of Human Resources 14 (4), 496–506.

Keeley, M.C., 1978. The Estimation of Labor Supply Models Using Experimental Data. American Economic Review 68, 873–887.

Keeley, M.C., Robins, P., Spiegelman, R., West, R., 1978. The Labor Supply Effects and Costs of Alternative Negative Income Tax Programs. Journal of Human Resources 13, (1), 3–36.

Kehrer, K.C., 1979. Introduction (to the JHR special issue on The Gary Income Maintenance Experiment). Journal of Human Resources 14 (4), 431–433.

Kershaw, D.N., Fair, J., 1976. The New Jersey Income-Maintenance Experiment Volume I: Operations, Surveys, and Administration. New York: Academic Press.

Kessleman, J.R., 1976. Tax Effects on Job Search, Training, and Work Effort. Journal of Public Economics 6, 255–272.

Levine, R., Watts, H., Hollister, R., Williams, W., O’Connor, A., Widerquist, K., 2004. Looking Back at the Negative Income Tax Experiments from 30 Years on. In: Lewis, M., Pressman, S., Widerquist, K. (eds.), The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee. New York: Ashgate.

Moffitt, R.A., 1979a. The Labor Supply Response in the Gary Experiment. Journal of Human Resources 14 (4), 477–487.

Moffitt, R.A., 1979b. The Labor Market Replacement Effect of a Negative Income Tax. Industrial and Labor Relations Review 33 (1), 85–94.

Moffitt, R.A., Kehrer, K., 1981. The effect of tax and transfer programs on labor supply: the evidence from the income maintenance experiments. Research in Labor Economics 4, 103–150.

Morrill, W.A., 1974. Introduction (to JHR symposium—The Graduated Work Incentives Experiment). Journal of Human Resources 9 (2), 156-157.

Moynihan, D.P. 1973. The Politics of a Guaranteed Income: The Nixon Administration and the Family Assistance Plan. New York: Random House.

Munnell A.H. (ed.), 1986 Lessons from the Income Maintenance Experiments. Boston: Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

O’Connor, A., 2001. Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth Century U.S. History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Office of Income Security Policy, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 1983. Overview of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment Final Report, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Palmer, J., Pechman, J.A. (eds.), 1978. Welfare in Rural Areas: The North Carolina-Iowa Income Maintenance Experiment. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

Pechman, J.A., Timpane, P.M. (eds.), 1975 Work Incentives and Income Guarantees: the New Jersey negative income tax experiment. Washington, D.C.: Brookings institution, pp. 115-147.

Rees, A., 1974. An Overview of the Labor-Supply Results. Journal of Human Resources 9 (2), 158–180.

Robins, P.K., 1985. A Comparison of the Labor Supply Findings from the Four Negative Income Tax Experiments. Journal of Human Resources 20 (4), 567–582.

Robins, P.K., Brandon, N., Yeager, K.E., 1980. Effects of SIME/DIME on Changes in Employment Status. The Journal of Human Resources 15 (4), 545–573.

Robins, P.K., Spiegelman, R.G., Weiner, S., Bell, J.G. (eds.), 1980 A Guaranteed Annual Income: Evidence from a Social Experiment. New York: Academic Press.

Rossi, P.H., Lyle, K.C., 1976. Reforming Public Welfare: A Critique of the Negative Income Tax Experiments. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Spiegelman, R.G., Yaeger, K.E., 1980. Overview (of the special issue The Seattle and Denver Income Maintenance Experiments). The Journal of Human Resources 15 (4), 463–479.

Tuma, N.B., Robins, P.K., 1980. A Dynamic Model of Employment Behavior: An Application to the Seattle and Denver Income Maintenance Experiments. Econometrica 48 (4), 1031–1052

Watts, H.W., Avery, R., Elesh, D., Horner, D., Lefcowitz, M.J., Mamer, J., Poirier, D.J., Spillerman, S., Wright, S., 1974. The Labor-Supply Response of Husbands. Journal of Human Resources 9 (2), 181-200.

Watts, H.W., Rees A. (eds.), 1977 The New Jersey Income-Maintenance Experiment Volume II: Labor-Supply Responses. New York: Academic Press, pp. 383–392.

Watts, H.W., Rees A. (eds.), 1977 The New Jersey Income-Maintenance Experiment Volume III: The Impact on Expenditures, Health, and Social Behavior, and the Quality of the Evidence. New York: Academic Press

Williams, W., 1972. The Struggle for a Negative Income Tax, Seattle, Washington: University of Washington, Institute of Government Research.

Colini, Laura. “The B-Mincome Project Journal N°1.” 23. Barcelona: The City of Barcelona, 2017.

Teele, Dawn Langan, 2014, Field Experiments and Their Critics: Essays on the Uses and Abuses of Experimentation in the Social Sciences, edited by 141-84. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Deaton, Angus, and Nancy Cartwright. “Understanding and Misunderstanding Randomized Controlled Trials.” In NBER Working Paper Series, edited by National Bureau of Economic Research. Cambirdge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2016.

Forget, Evelyn L. “The Town with No Poverty: The Health Effects of a Canadian Guaranteed Annual Income Field Experiment.” Canadian Public Policy 37, no. 3 (2011): 283-305.

Groot, Loek F M, and Timo Verlaat. “The Rationale Behind the Utrecht Experiment.” 2016.

Haarmann, Claudia, Dirk Haarmann, Herbert Jauch, Hilma Shindondola-Mote, Nicoli Nattrass, Ingrid van Niekerk, and Michael Samson. Making the Difference: The Big in Namibia: Basic Income Grant Pilot Project Assessment Report.  Windhoek: Basic Income Grant Coalition, 2009.

Kangas, Olli, Signe Jauhiainen, Miska Simanainen and Minna Ylikanno (eds.), 2021. Experimenting with Unconditional Basic Income: Lessons from the Finnish BI Experiment 2017-2018. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing

McCambridge, Jim, John Witton, and Diana R. Elbourne. “Systematic Review of the Hawthorne Effect: New Concepts Are Needed to Study Research Participation Effects.” Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 67, no. 3 (2014/03/01 2014): 267-77.

McFarland, Kate. “Overview of Current Basic Income Related Experiments.” Basic Income News, October 19, 2017 2017.

Merrill, R., Neves, C. and Laín, B., 2021. Basic Income Experiments: A Critical Examination of Their Goals, Contexts, and Methods. Springer Nature.

Ministry-of-Community-and-Social-Services. “Ontario’s Basic Income Pilot: Studying the Impact of a Basic Income “, edited by Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services. Toronto: Queen’s Printer for Ontario, 2018.

SEED. “A Guaranteed Income Demonstration.” Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, https://www.stocktondemonstration.org/.

Standing, Guy. “Basic Income Pilot Schemes: Seventeen Design and Evaluation Imperatives.” In Wege Zum Grundeinkommen [Pathways to Basic Income], edited by D. Jacobi and W. Strengmann-Kuhn, 133-52. Berlin: Bildungswerk Berlin, 2012.

Standing, Guy. “Unconditional Basic Income: Two Pilots in Madhya Pradesh.” In Conference on Unconditional Cash Transfers: Findings of two pilot studies, 1-7. New Delhi: Sewa, 2013.

Standing, Guy, 2021. “Basic Income Pilots: Uses, Limitations and Design Principles,” Basic Income Studies 16 (1), 75-99

Torry, Malcolm (editor), 2019. The Palgrave International Handbook of Basic Income. Palgrave Macmillan, chapters 15-21

Widerquist, Karl. “The Bottom Line in a Basic Income Experiment.” Basic Income Studies 1, no. 2 (2006): 1-5.

Widerquist, Karl, Jose Noguera, Yannick Vanderborght, and Jurgen De Wispelaere. Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research.  Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.

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