Improving public policy (gov't) using behavioral economic evidence
January 10, 2015 9:09 AM   Subscribe

 
If only you could be sure your government wanted things to improve.
posted by srboisvert at 9:14 AM on January 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


viz. cynicism as a sign of political decay, cf. "Americans tended to respond in one of four ways—with hypocrisy, moralism, cynicism, or complacency... wealthy Americans more often fit Huntington's definition of hypocrisy, while small town and blue-collar Americans were more prone to cynicism. When combined, these mentalities tended to 'perpetuate the status quo...' "

robert reich talks about gov't being deliberately degraded in the 'used' link: "Some believe the central political issue of our era is the size of the government. They're wrong. The central issue is whom the government is for..."

speaking of which check out:
-Elizabeth Warren to GOP: 'Who do you work for—Wall Street or the American people?'
-Remarks by Senator Warren on Citigroup and its bailout provision
-Bernie Sanders opens a new front in the battle for the future of the Democratic Party

also btw:
  • Democracy and the threat of revolution: New evidence - "Some theories suggest that the threat of revolution plays a pivotal role in democratisation. This column provides new evidence in support of this hypothesis. The authors use democratic transitions from Europe in the 19th century, Africa at the turn at the 20th century, and the Great Reform Act of 1832 in Great Britain. They find that credible threats of revolution have systematically triggered pre-emptive democratic reforms throughout history."
  • The revolution has begun: Michael Woodford now embracing Kahneman - "In rational choice theory, individuals are assumed always to choose the option that will provide them maximum utility. But actual choices must be based on subjective perceptions of the attributes of the available options, and the accuracy of these perceptions will always be limited by the information-processing capacity of one's nervous system."
  • Here's What Economics Gets Right - "Economics does a better job of predicting the future than some critics think."
  • Meet the market shapers - "A new breed of high-tech economist is helping firms crack new markets."
  • Robots, trade, and four other things that might be keeping you from getting a raise - "The labor share of income is falling. Here are our best guesses as to why."
  • Unemployment and Productivity Growth - "From our point of view, on the other hand, production is a creative, social activity. Economic growth is not a matter of allowing an exiting [sic] material process to continue operating through time, but of learning how to work together in new ways. The fundamental problem is coordination, not allocation. From this point of view, the technical conditions of production are endogenous to the organization of production, and the money payments that structure it. So it's natural to think that aggregate expenditure could be an important factor determining the pace at which productive activity can be reorganized."
oh and fwiw:
-Econo-yakking (observations from the AEA conference)
-Cardiff Garcia on the AEA meetings, and the health care cost slowdown
-Two big questions for economists today: "Can higher education make a person more productive at his or her ultimate job? How much of a society’s resources should be put into reducing CO2 emissions?"
posted by kliuless at 9:33 PM on January 11, 2015


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