Past Learnings
Commercial Society and its Internal Enemies – A Smithian Synopsis
In this new piece in our Past Learnings Series, George Yarrow discusses the publicly perceived “untrustworthiness” of politicians
July 4, 2025
Documents
Insights into Regulation
On tariffs and tanks – M. Bastiat vs. Mr Trump
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.
February 13, 2025
Past Learnings
Fabellia Revisited: A Thought Experiment on the Regulation of Migration Flows
The 6th piece in our series Past Learnings, this piece is an extensive re-working of a paper first published in September 2016, which was likewise a thought experiment on a potential regulatory approach to the control of migration flows
January 21, 2025
Past Learnings
Past Learnings: Simple stories, complex systems and corrupted economics
The RPI’s latest piece in our Past Learnings Series discusses the complexity of economic systems and the common inability of policy-makers to fully account for that complexity when making policy changes.
October 29, 2024
Insights into Regulation
The Costs of Change
“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
October 21, 2024
Materials from Conferences
When is it important to recognise that not every x is a y?
This is a write-up of the session “Statistics in Regulation and Policy“, given at the RPI Annual Competition and Regulation Conference 2024. This may seem
October 11, 2024
Past Learnings
The Division of Labour in Government and its Implications for Productivity Growth
Our 4th paper in our Past Learnings series, this short paper discusses the division of labour within the organisational and institutional structures that we call
August 28, 2024
Past Learnings
The Economists’ Onion
This piece in the Past Learnings Series is based on a hitherto unpublished internal Regulatory Policy Institute Paper dating from 2012.
August 7, 2024
Insights into Regulation
Entrepreneurship as human capital
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?
July 19, 2024
Insights into Regulation
Elegant regulation vs ‘retail politics’
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
June 21, 2024