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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

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October 21, 2024
person holding clear glass jar with green plant
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?

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July 19, 2024
Insights into Regulation

Lao Tzu’s advice and UK Post Office governance

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.

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January 22, 2024
abstract close up cobweb connection
Insights into Regulation

The merits of Merits Review

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.

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August 8, 2023
Insights into Regulation

Regulating net migration flows: the wisdom of Econ101? 

Net migration flows (about the regulation of which members of the RPI have been writing since 2017) are again a hot topic in political debate. In this latest blog, the Insights team briefly sketches out a potential, alternative way of looking at the issues: a different ‘gestalt’, based on a tradeable right to residency, which does not need to rely heavily on enforcement by coerced deportations (difficult in practice) or creating ‘hostile social environments’. Rather, it simultaneously seeks to make unlawful immigration more financially expensive and emigration of residents more financially rewarding, in each case relative to the status quo. Even in a bare bones form, it could give government three immediate ‘control variables’: the total number of rights available, the level of financial penalty for unlawful immigration, and the level of the bid-ask spread in the purchase or sale of the relevant right.

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June 6, 2023

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