Experimental’s Post

A new study reveals that Dutch voters are open to experimenting with public policy to understand the real-world impacts of government initiatives. Conducted by Prof. Robert Dur and Dr Arjan Non from Erasmus School of Economics, together with Paul P. and Benedetta Ricci, the study finds that the majority of Dutch voters support randomised policy experiments, particularly when they do not have a strong opinion about the policy. Policy experimentation, commonly seen in controlled scientific trials, involves implementing policies for a random subset of the population to observe their effectiveness before nationwide rollout. ‘Dutch voters seem to understand the value of experimenting before implementing policies nationwide,’ says Professor Robert Dur, one of the study’s lead authors. ‘This receptiveness could encourage politicians to conduct more controlled trials and make evidence-based decisions.’ Interested? Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gdDkW7qA #policy #publicpolicy #dutchgovernment

Join us in congratulating Robert Inklaar, who was appointed as editor of the journal Review of Income and Wealth. Starting August 1, Inklaar will be one the two co-editors of the Review of Income and Wealth. This journal is dedicated to advancing knowledge on economic measurement, with studies on national income, wealth and inequality. As the official journal of the International Association of Research in Income and Wealth, it advances research in economic and social accounting, including the development of concepts and definitions for the measurement and analysis of income and wealth. The association also has the objective to further the development and integration of systems of economic and social statistics, and related problems of statistical methodology. Inklaar: “This journal’s focus on economic measurement is a strong and unique focus. This makes it the pre-eminent place for scholars interested in understanding and improving our measurement of concepts like economic growth and inequality. It is a great honor to soon be in a position to help chart this journal’s course.” The journal has an international readership and focuses on comparative analyses between countries. Inklaar’s area of expertise is on the economics of productivity and welfare, aiming to understand differences in economic development across countries. In his work, he has, for instance, focused on measuring cross-country income differences, studying the role of these differences in the availability of human and physical capital, analyzing the productivity slowdown and measurement of productivity in the public sector. #IncomeAndWealth #EconomicMeasurement #Inequality

Interesting read for global health practitioners.

This is a must read for those working in AI policy, those who rely on AI policy experts of all kinds, and more importantly those who fund them. I'm personally running out of breath of advocating for civil society organization (CSO)-led policy (action and/or art-based) research and governance innovation. Maybe that's my fault, maybe I haven't found the right words or the right ears. Ken Opalo certainly found strikingly clear ones as Nanjira Sambuli quoted below. Béatrice Vaugrante recently reported that Wanda Muñoz also is advocating for CSO-led AI policy and governance. I have been watching (not inactively) for 7 years now democracy being taken for granted, CSOs not being funded in AI governance and therefore silenced. AI Impact Alliance was founded in 2017. Meanwhile, new non-profits emerged supporting the voice of the tech industry in AI regulation. Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen said that the amount of good a technology can bring depends on the investment models and the political system it is deployed in. We (the Royal one) are not investing in a sector that is the 3rd pillar to democracy, civil society organizations (Public-Private-Civil). They need to be defined, their role understood and funded. Without it, AI "for good" strategies will collapse and leave trickle of good for humanity. GPAI Catherine Regis Lyse Langlois Obvia International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy Philippe Dongier Patrimoine canadien -- Canadian Heritage Ana Brandusescu Eleonore Fournier-Tombs CIFAR UN Sustainable Development Group Mercy Atieno Odongo Syeda (Fiana) Arbab Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University #policy #aigovernance #ResponsibleAI #AIlaw #economy #algorithmicfrontiers. If you're looking for more references on art-based, Indigenous-led and CSO led AI policy, see one of my lists here: https://lnkd.in/eW8iz_2m If you're interested in art-based AI policy innovation, please visit: https://lnkd.in/ergs37mT

Our new report showcases a breadth of social science research, perspectives and ideas from over 100 leading social scientists on policy applicable areas. One such area is housing. There is little doubt that the UK faces significant challenges around housing. There is a need to build more homes, especially more affordable and social housing, as well as more homes retained under council ownership. There are also significant issues around second homes, under-occupation and ineffective allocation of the existing housing stock. Added to this is the large number of people who are homeless or in temporary accommodation. The poor standard of the accommodation in which many are forced to live also presents health and safety risks. There are, however, potential practical and affordable solutions to these challenges. Our social science experts identified several areas of apparent consensus about ways forward. For example, our contributors tended to agree that there is a need for a more coherent housing and planning strategy to address the full range of interconnected challenges, as suggested in the report, ‘A road map to a coherent housing policy’. Authored by Professor Christine Whitehead FAcSS, The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Professor Tony Crook FAcSS, The University of Sheffield, with Kath Scanlon, LSE, the report states that the core to a coherent housing policy is to ensure that all relevant departments and agencies work more closely together. Download the full report to find out more ➡ https://lnkd.in/gwRPHTkA ‘Beyond the ballot: social science insights on eight key policy challenges’ is a joint publication between the Academy's Campaign for Social Science and Sage Publications. It summarises the insights of over 100 social scientists who contributed to the Campaign’s Election 24 project which sought to foreground social science perspectives, research and evidence relevant to public policy in the run up to the UK General Election. #socialscience #policy #socialsciences

🚀 Excited to Share My Latest Publication! 🚀 I am thrilled to announce that my paper: "Political instability and economic growth: Causation and transmission", coauthored with Torsten Schmidt, has been published in the European Journal of Political Economy: 📈🌍 This publication marks the culmination of a journey that began with my master's thesis in 2021.  Over the past few years, this work has been presented at numerous conferences and undergone many internal discussions and revisions, leading to the final paper. In the study, we explore the relationship between political instability and economic growth using a panel VAR estimated via the System GMM and an instrumental variable approach. Key findings include: 🔍 A one-standard deviation shock of political instability significantly and substantially reduces economic growth. 🔍 No evidence was found that economic growth affects political instability. Check out the full article here: DOI: https://lnkd.in/e4wPcXqk I am grateful for the support and collaboration from my colleagues from the RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research and the academic community. Your feedback and thoughts are most welcome! #Research #Economics #PoliticalEconomy #EconomicGrowth #PoliticalInstability #AdvancedEconomies #SystemGMM #PanelVAR #AcademicPublishing

🎉 We are hosting a very special event next month:   Henrik Kleven, Princeton University, will present his work on the "𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗣𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘁𝘆 𝗔𝘁𝗹𝗮𝘀” as the 16th 𝗖𝗘𝗦𝗶𝗳𝗼 & 𝗜𝗜𝗣𝗙 𝗥𝗶𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗠𝘂𝘀𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗟𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗿 on Thursday, 21 March 2024, 6pm CET.   👉 #Childpenalties are the effects of having children on women relative to men, i.e. the impact of #parenthood on #employment and a driver for #genderinequality in the labor market.   By building a global atlas of child penalties, based on data from 134 countries, home to more than 95% of the global population, Henrik Kleven and his co-authors camille landais and Gabriel Leite Mariante address the following questions:   ❓ How general are child penalties? ❓ How do they vary with political and cultural institutions? ❓ How do they evolve with economic development?   They find that most countries show child penalties, but the effect varies widely between countries. If you want to know more, have a look on our website 👇 The lecture will be livestreamed (the link will be made available on 21 March on the same page). #IIPF ifo Institute – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research Clemens Fuest Claus Thustrup Kreiner Hannover Re Barbara Hebele https://lnkd.in/dhsFRKnP

Measuring the Costs and Benefits of Regulation Matilde Bombardini Miao Ben Zhang National Bureau of Economic Research This article discusses recent methodological innovations in the area of cost and benefit assessment of government regulation, in both a prospective and retrospective sense. Much of the extant progress is presented on the front of private costs of compliance. Private benefits, social costs, and social benefits remain much less systematically organized and more arduous to quantitatively assess, mostly due to the difficulty of standardizing partial and general equilibrium counterfactuals. We offer a discussion of potential future methodological improvements in cost-benefit analysis. DOI 10.3386/w32955 This paper is linked to what I learnt from the #2024MilanCBASummerSchool organised by the CSIL and CSIL, Development and Evaluation Unit which I would like to thank for the very insightful discussions and case studies analysed.

Angus Deaton says that the economics profession should widen its view of welfare beyond income and wealth to encompass important aspects of human well-being such as meaningful work, family, and community. Economists should balance a tendency to focus on efficiency with more attention to equity. He rejects the notion that globalisation is the main problem, contending that the true culprits are the winners who pull up the ladders behind them, yielding poor public policies that breed corporate rent-seeking. https://lnkd.in/dpXfUtuh

Professor Michelle D'Arcy of the Department of Political Science was recently published in the prestigious Journal of Political Economy. The paper, co-authored with Professors Marina Nistotskaya and Ola Olsson of the University of Gothenburg, uses data from 159 countries over the last millennium to analyse the correlation between public land ownership records and economic growth. We caught up with Michelle to delve a bit deeper into the paper's findings: Can you provide an overview of what this paper investigates and its key findings? Many economists have argued that you need strong property rights to achieve economic growth. But up until now we haven't been able to fully test this argument because we did not have very good measures of property rights over long time periods. So we collected data from 159 countries over the last 1000 years on the existence and quality of records of property ownership (cadasters). Using this data we found a positive association between cadasters and economic growth.    What's one interesting insight that surfaced during your research on this topic? China is the country with the oldest history of cadasters, with comprehensive national cadasters going back to the 12th century. Throughout your research, was there a particular moment or finding that surprised you? If so, could you share that with us? Ireland was the part of Great Britain that had the earliest mapped cadaster - the Down Survey in 1656-8 that was what we call a conquest cadaster, used to establish a new property rights order. Elsewhere in the UK, the landed elite were so strong that the government never managed to fully establish a mapped cadaster and even today 17% of landownership is not publicly known. Looking ahead, in what ways do you envision this research influencing real-world policies or practices in the future? Our research underlines the importance of strong, transparent public record keeping on property ownership. Without this information the state cannot underpin efficient property markets, tax property assets, and establish property rights clearly. Reflecting on your career and experiences, what advice would you offer to students or new researchers in the field of political science? Follow your intellectual curiosity, rather than progression incentives alone, and focus on quality over quantity. This paper took ten years to come to fruition but we hope will provide useful data for other researchers for years to come. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/e8Fr4V6Z