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
Past Learnings
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
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This piece in the Past Learnings Series is based on a hitherto unpublished internal Regulatory Policy Institute Paper dating from 2012.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
Past Learnings
Why competition? 250 years of learning and forgetting in Political Economy
The notion that promoting competition is a Good Thing has become a consistent theme in economic policymaking in recent decades, accompanied by an implication that “the more of it the better” should be a presumptive policy stance. In contrast, very many members of the public appear to find these propositions far from obvious, not least those who are owners of, or workers for, business enterprises.
June 17, 2024
Past Learnings
Fairness, the Ultimatum Game and Public Policy
The notion of ‘fairness’ is widely referenced in public policymaking and enforcement, but with no settled meaning. What we see is incoherent application of the notion across economic contexts, a form of policy disorder with which we are well familiar. Moreover, the disorder (‘entropy’) appears to be increasing over time.
June 17, 2024