The Paul Douglas Institute

There has been a general death of empirical study into the proclivity of the elderly to believe or proliferate ‘fake news.’ The scholarly effort to investigate the impact of ‘fake news’ on old adults internationally has also been minimal. However, from the existing research, there is a general consensus that old adults are major targets of misinformation, and play a major role in sharing it via social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. When such a politically powerful, yet vulnerable constituency has been consistently the unwitting target of misinformation campaigns, it is worth wondering first, why old adults are more susceptible to believing ‘fake news,’ and second, why they share it at disproportionate rates.

These playbooks cover data science policy challenges. These will summarize the current landscapes and provide policy recommendations.

Renewable energy (RE) investment is a necessary step towards reducing carbon emissions worldwide while meeting growing energy demand. There are many policies that seek to support a growth in RE capacity, with varying degrees of both political and economic success. Given the complex nature of energy markets and transmission, any concentrated effort of both public and private entities to make the green transition will result in inevitable trade-offs. Thus, in this paper, we first qualitatively analyze the political realities of RE investment and policy status in the United States, subsequently proposing an econometric analysis of the effectiveness of a specific support policy—tax incentives—in the United States using panel data and a time-series regression framework. The results—which we stress should be considered a preliminary analysis that seeks to raise further research topics—show that there are significant relationships between RE investment growth and the implementation of tax incentives. Such results suggest that, with support policies, the United States may be able to reach a double objective: increasing energy capacity and investment while also reducing carbon emissions and reaching a greener future. Our research also highlights potential future research areas and statistical analyses that may provide deeper and greater insight into the effectiveness of tax incentives on RE investment growth.

Small businesses are an integral component of their community – a role that has become increasingly impacted by external forces from the pandemic to gentrification of neighborhoods. Literature examining Chicago’s Hyde Park is virtually non-existent. This student project seeks to illuminate the role of small businesses in our community through a research paper and film. Interweaving the voices of small business owners with student survey responses, we provide an introduction into the small business community of Hyde Park and their nuanced relationship with the University of Chicago.

“Truth-In-Sentencing” (TIS) refers to a broad set of laws first enacted in the United States in 1984 in the state of Washington.1 Subsequently in 1998, truth-in-sentencing laws were adopted in Illinois. These laws increased the minimum amount of time that incarcerated people must serve before they can be considered for release. Initially, the goal of these laws was to create greater transparency in sentencing as people would be required to serve the exact amount or close to the number of years they received on paper. It was also believed that judges would proportionately balance out the longer prison stay mandated by TIS by giving out shorter sentences in the first place. This did not turn out to be true, as the decrease in sentence length was insignificant so that prisoners stayed in prison longer for the same crimes

Despite progress towards fair housing in Chicago over the past 50 years, housing discrimination
remains a challenge across the city. Additionally, since the 2015 HUD rule Affirmatively Furthering
Fair Housing, the goals of fair housing programs are broader and more ambitious. In order to limit
ongoing discrimination and meet higher federal standards, the City of Chicago should consider the
following courses of action: Strengthening housing protected classes in line with other major US cities by explicitly protecting Housing Choice Voucher (Section 8) holders, adding a separate and explicit reasonable accommodations provision, adding protections against discrimination based on alienage or citizenship, and expanding terminology around and creating examples of “gender identity discrimination”. Addressing discriminatory homeseeking by prohibiting agents from accepting the instructions of a client who asks for assistance in a search that avoids a protected class, broadening the category of advertising materials which must not contain discriminatory content, and including online postings. Protecting against changes in federal fair housing policy by incorporating Obama-era disparate impact burden-sharing standards in local law, seeking local-level accountability for housing-related algorithm use.

This report compares California’s regulations for ADS testing with a safety driver to five other states’ regulations. It analyzes self-reported disengagement and mileage totals for ADS equipped vehicles testing in California between 2014 and 2018 and collisions involving ADS equipped vehicles which occurred on or before April 14, 2019. Rear-end collisions made up 72% of reported collisions in autonomous mode. Approximately 78% of collisions resulted in minor damage. All reported collisions occurred within the Bay Area. Most Cruise collisions occurred in downtown San Francisco and most Waymo collisions occurred around Mountain View. Approximately 97% of collisions occurred on an urban street. Large numbers of a sample of 2018 disengagements listed issues with the ADS technology in the disengagement cause description. Software, planning, and perception discrepancy were each reported in disengagement causes significantly more than other words or phrases. Most of the disengagement cause descriptions which mentioned an object did not describe what the object was. External factors such as traffic lights or lane markings occurred much less frequently. There are significant differences in the requirements that companies must meet to test ADS with a safety driver from state to state. While the permitting process in California is similar to other states, test driver certification is generally more comprehensive. Of the six states compared in this report, disengagement reporting is unique to California, and only California and Pennsylvania require that entities simulate road testing conditions in a controlled environment.

This paper will provide a legal definition of eviction, a data-driven analysis of the impact of eviction in Chicago, and case-studies of big time landlords in various cities. Ultimately, it is stories of those facing eviction that offer a true definition. Eviction is the names, and the faces, and the stories of everyday Americans who lose their homes to profit driven, often faceless and corporate, landlords. Krystal’s story is the reality for millions of Americans, but this does not have to be the case. In our analysis, we explore the use of just cause ordinances and find that the current administration of Chicago recognizes the urgent need to change current eviction practices and would ultimately support the adoption of a Just Cause Ordinance.

This brief is a summary of a larger report, currently under review, that proposes design components of an International Green New Deal. It discusses the impact of COVID-19 on international climate policy, proposes 5 key policy objectives, and delineates an implementation timeline for U.S. international policy from 2020 onwards.

The underlying report 1) presents a rather expansive review of international climate policy literature, with a focus on using the most up-to-date emissions data and climate projections throughout; there are 200+ unique references; 2) shares a new, more granular dataset on global carbon pricing as a rough proxy for global climate progress. For building the dataset, all emissions pricing initiatives reported in the World Bank Carbon Dashboard6 were individually analyzed, using direct government data where available. The data reveals we are greatly underpricing CO2, but even more substantially underpricing methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), which are 728-86x and 264-298x as powerful as CO2, respectively.

This study will add to our previous understanding by synthesizing accounts of how proponents of affordable housing respond to community intransigence. It will provide a framework for understanding how these activists counter opposition narratives based on concerns about property values and crime. It will further provide a blueprint for activists using existing community institutions to combat anti-integration sentiment.

This paper examines data on Illinois referenda in the context of findings from prior research on tools of direct democracy. We review existing literature on referenda and initiatives to conclude that their use drives more democratically-aligned policy outcomes and a more engaged populace, and that factors including policy topic, wording, voter turnout, and campaign spending can all significantly affect referendum outcomes, possibly undermining the referendum’s efficacy as a policy tool. We analyze data on Illinois referenda since 1980 to assess the impact of policy topic, election type, and election turnout. We find that Presidential elections and higher voter turnout both significantly negatively impact pro-referendum vote share, and that passage rate varies significantly with policy topic area.

In Illinois, 50% of the population is estimated to have an arrest or conviction record. That’s nearly 5 million people who face barriers to finding stable housing, which has proven to be foundational for employment success, family stability, and overall well-being. This report recommends a number of policies and practices—ranging from small changes to the more robust—for housing providers to use to increase housing opportunities for people with criminal records. This brief and set of recommendations was produced out of a diverse partnership, with each partner sharing deep expertise, including Cabrini Green Legal Aid:, Heartland Housing, Inc., Interstate Realty Management, LUCHA, Mercy Housing Lakefront, Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law and The Paul Douglas Institute at University of Chicago. The work was generously supported and catalyzed by The Chicago Community Trust’s Housing + Criminal Records Initiative. See the Heartland Alliance announcement for more.

In Cook County, judges are elected through partisan primary and general elections and are subject to voters’ scrutiny in retention elections at the end of their terms. This paper examines three different attributes of judges – length of tenure, gender, and quality of bar evaluations – and their relationships with the judges’ affirmative percentage votes received in retention elections. We find statistically significant relationships between each attribute and a judge’s retention vote percentage, but only the effects of bar evaluations are substantial: judges who are typically rated “qualified” earn on average 10.6% more of the vote than those who are typically rated “unqualified”.

Recent research has highlighted the long-term consequences to tenants of receiving an eviction filing — even a filing that does not lead to an eviction. We examine census block group-level data to (a) determine which populations in Illinois are most affected by eviction filings that do not result in evictions, and (b) study the relationship between a census block group’s racial makeup and that its evictions per filing (EPF) rate — a measure of the likelihood that a given filing will result in a legal eviction. We estimate that while African Americans in Illinois from 2000 to 2016 are overall more likely to experience eviction filings and eviction judgments, they also experience the lowest EPF rate of any racial group, suggesting that they are the population most likely to have an unjustly marred eviction record. Specifically, we find that controlling for income and other factors, a 10 point increase in a census block group’s percentage of African-American residents is associated with a 4.4 percent decrease in that block group’s EPF rate.

We simulate the effects of a $500 per month Universal Basic Income (UBI) on the income distribution of Chicago. We generate a representative distribution of 10,000 Chicago incomes, then simulate the UBI transfer, a progressive income tax scheme to fund it, and the resulting decreases in labor supply. We find that our proposal leaves the poorest 78.8% of Chicago wealthier than before, and the poorest third will each see their incomes increase by at least 15%. We compare the UBI to three popularly-proposed alternative welfare policies. Finally, we combine observations about social conditions in Chicago with existing evidence from past UBI experiments to make qualitative predictions about the possible effects of UBI on quality-of-life outcomes such as mental health, nutrition, gender equality, hospitalization, and education.

This report assesses the potential impacts of a 100% renewable energy transition for the City of Chicago. We examine Chicago’s current electrical demand and supply, project Chicago’s electricity demand through 2035, and then test scenarios for a full transition to renewable electricity. We then model aggregate job creation, economic output, and emissions reduction potential. In addition to explaining the methodology behind “A 100% Renewable Chicago: By the Numbers” infographic, this paper provides background and context on the mechanisms through which Chicago sources energy to serve as a resource for local advocates, community stakeholders, and policymakers.

Under “e-governance,” governments take a holistic and integrative approach to providing online services that fosters transparency, efficiency, and collaboration for the public. We compile the online services offered by the Chicago and Cook County and classify them by end-service, orientation, and outcome to find that the City maintains a more balanced portfolio of services than the County. Through interviews with experts, we find that navigability and scale are the two leading challenges to efficient procurement policies in the City and the County. In accordance with our findings, we recommend (1) aligning long-term goals with the potential that technology offers, (2) improving procurement with emphasis on efficiency and communication, (3) upgrading technology infrastructure including an update to the STAR, and (4) reducing redundancies through restructuring individual governments and upgrading City-County collaboration.

We review the body of research on food deserts: how they form, what policies have been proposed to combat them, and how effective those policies have been. All major policy responses to food deserts have maintained an approach focused on the supply side as the root of the problem, most often subsidizing the establishment of new grocery stores. We seek to highlight the main emerging trend in the literature, which increasingly questions both the theory and success of the supply-side approach, and explores how considering the demand side and implementing locally specific policies can more holistically address nutritional inequalities.

Small donor matching programs are an increasingly popular campaign finance reform policy tool that aims to increase diversity and elevate underrepresented voices among donors, voters, and candidates. We compare the characteristics of long-standing donor matching laws with those of five new programs introduced since 2015. We also review the existing literature on small donor matching programs in New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA to argue that they generally achieve their goals of fostering diversity and representation. We draw from our research to offer recommendations for Illinois’s small donor matching bill, S.B. 1424.

This report analyzes the flow of donations from organizations with 501(c)(4), 501(c)(5), and 501(c)(6) status to state-level political committees in Illinois. We identify $13 million donated from these groups to political committees between 2011 and 2017 – a lower bound, as our dataset is non-exhaustive. Of that, $8 million came from unions and the majority of the rest came from trade associations. We also find over $875,000 from out-of-state organizations, most of it from Washington, D.C. In response to these substantial cash flows, we recommend that 501(c)(4), (c)(5), and (c)(6) organizations be subject to donor disclosure requirements, and that Illinois’s “self-funding” provision be abolished.