Policy details as a plea for basic income experiments

Abstract

Amy Castro and Stacia West (2022), with whom I have had the opportunity to exchange ideas on these pages, defend the need to continue experimenting with cash transfer policies through new experiments or pilot projects such as the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED) that they personally helped to design and evaluate. I agree with them. As I argued in my first contribution to this debate, I sincerely believe that experiments on unconditional income schemes can provide very useful and valuable information in moving towards the full establishment of an unconditional basic income (UBI). In this regard, we should welcome the recent creation of the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania, which will surely contribute to the systematization of study and the accumulation of a scientific corpus on income policies in general, and on UBI in particular.