Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This paper investigates direct and indirect effects of federal stimuli programs on metropolitan area economic growth and recovery particularly in “green” energy and environmental sectors of the economy. In uncertain environments such as the Great Recession, on the one hand, federal stimuli programs are regarded as popular policy tools to mitigate the gaps between fragmented local capacities and desired policy outcomes. On the other hand, the stimuli programs trigger the changes in Institutional Collective Action (ICA) dilemmas, as actors face different selective benefits and costs in their collaborative networks. The risk hypothesis in network approach (Berardo and Scholz 2010) provides a theoretical framework to explain how the level of relational risks influences the structural patterns in network change. Taking the exogenous risks into account, this study advances the risk hypothesis into comprehensive network-based modeling to predict individual and collective preferential choice in network structure. Employing network factors at both individual and network level, this paper investigates the intervening effects of network structure on policy outcomes. Applying Time-Series-Cross-Section (TSCS) models, this paper tests impact of the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) on the policy performance of green job creation in 19 Florida metropolitan areas between 2000 and 2011, as well as indirect effects of network structure.

Keywords: ICA dilemmas change, federal stimuli programs, structural change in networks, policy outcomes, Time-Series-Cross-Section (TSCS) model