Insights into Regulation
Securonomics: slogan and substance
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
April 30, 2024
Documents
Insights into Regulation
UK Defence Policy – ‘seeing’ the whole terrain
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
March 18, 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.
January 22, 2024
Insights into Regulation
Plans versus Strategies: what can we learn from the Robin Redbreast?
‘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
October 15, 2023
Letters and Notes
The slow-moving disaster of English land use rules
Prof. John Muellbauer has recently shown that the regulatory wedge in the UK between house prices and the construction cost of new homes is currently at the highest level of the period covered by his data, and the highest in the G7.
September 4, 2023
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.
August 8, 2023
Essays in Regulation
To ‘see’, or not to ‘see’: that is the question. Moving on from a half-brained system of economic governance
Why do similar mistakes appear to be repeated over and over again in the conduct of economic policy? Why does there appear to be so little error-learning/learning-from-experience in this domain of human activity? Why does knowledge and the application of knowledge in these matters appear not to progress cumulatively in the manner of the physical sciences?
In this major Essay in Regulation, Harold Hutchinson and George Yarrow seek to outline some answers, building on insights from brain science. The first picture in the Essay, from the clinical work of Dr Iain McGilchrist, suffices to signal a ‘now for something completely different’ moment.
July 6, 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.
June 6, 2023
Insights into Regulation
Technology Tussles: The Trilemma Strikes Back!
We have written before about the need for effortful and holistic thinking in the context of global decarbonisation, and about the perils of disconnecting local actions from global outcomes by retreat into a ‘net-zero in one country’ mindset. In this RPI Insights blog we highlight the dangers of partial thinking associated with indulgence of the false prophet of universal technology solution(s), blindness to potential ‘concentration risk’ and the resulting creation of systemic vulnerabilities, inadequate thinking around the physical resilience of energy infrastructure in the face of a changing climate, and reluctance to acknowledge either the regional realpolitik of the energy transition or the implicit policy tensions, uncertainties, and trade-offs around how it unfolds.
May 10, 2023
Insights into Regulation
Policy myopia – open your eyes (plural) and see
In a recent blog, the Insight Team highlighted the dangers of poorly constructed policies in terms of the increased distractions imposed on managers at the expense of a focus on business investment and innovation. In this follow-up, we consider recent financial market turbulence as another example of policy gone wrong. We argue that help in assessing and learning from it might lie in an appreciation of both history and the present – from the work of Adam Smith to recent developments in modern neuroscience, in particular the insights of Iain McGilchrist.
March 23, 2023
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