A series of short blogs in which members of the Regulatory Policy Institute Research Group highlight a particular insight, idea or perspective that is salient to some or other aspect of regulatory policy.
Scaling geologic time to (say) one year, homo sapiens has existed for less than an hour. In that twinkling of an eye, we have developed some capacity for foresight - an enormous evolutionary leap in one of nature’s creatures.
“Change” was the slogan of the British Labour Party in the recent General Election. It certainly didn’t do serious damage to electoral prospects; but it is a curious slogan nonetheless.…
Entrepreneurship is something of a ‘ghost in the machine’ so far as most economic theorising is concerned. It’s widely mentioned and tends to be encouraged by politicians, but detailed analysis of the concept is largely missing from standard economics. So, we ask: what is its nature, why is it important, and what (very briefly) might be done to encourage it?
A quick web-search for the meaning of the word elegant yields the following (from Oxford languages): Adjective : (1) graceful and stylish in appearance or manner; (2) (of a scientific…
Alongside the Prisoners Dilemma, study of the Ultimatum Game (UG) and its variants is a rich source of experimental observations on human attitudes and conduct which are, or at least…
Slogans can provide politicians with useful ways of signalling policy objectives. The “tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime” slogan used by New Labour is a case…
The human brain has evolved over eons into a hemispheric structure, allowing a lateralisation of attention to our surroundings. The right-hemisphere (RH) ‘presences’ the world like a radar; a broad,…
The Tao Te Ching is an ancient classic of Chinese Daoism whose authorship is conventionally attributed to a certain Lao Tzu. It contains advice on how to be a Sage, a person with sagacity. Significant sections are clearly directed at leaders in governance.
‘No battle plan survives contact with the enemy’ was a sentiment expressed by Field Marshall von Moltke (the Elder), who knew a thing or two about military strategy. A transposition…
As set out in To ‘see’, or not to ‘see’: that is the question. Moving on from a half-brained system of economic governance - (rpiresearchgroup.org), the half-brained governance thesis (“H-BGT”) is suggestive of a wide range of relevancies to areas of public policy where development thinking seems to be struggling. One such is the question of whether regulatory and competition policy decisions by designated agencies should be subject to review on their merits, as administrative decisions, not just on their conformity with acceptable procedures.