Rational Policy-making Research Articles

Exploring the Role of Environmental Ethical Consideration in Advancing Green Growth: Perspectives from India

Aims: The current study explores the intricate nexus between environmental ethical considerations and green growth in the context of India, a country grappling with dual challenges of rapid industrialization and environmental sustainability. As India seeks to balance rigorous economic growth, ecological preservation and integration of ethical principles into environmentally friendly policy design it is necessary to understand the meaning of ethical consideration and green growth relationship. Theoretical Framework: The research aims to understand the interrelationship and implication of the of environmental ethical consideration into driving green growth, by exploring the challenges and prospects in context of India- a rapidly developing economy. This paper is structured in the form of exploration of available literature and through providing a vast perspective and strategic framework in regards of Indian policy makers and scenario in context of countries socio-economic and cultural structure. Methodology: The study explores the available literature in the field and synthesizes the challenges available in the path of green growth management. Analysis of barriers to green growth in developing country framework is done by identifying chances of market failure, underinvestment in green technologies, and the lack of clear ethical guidelines present in the Indian developmental structure. Results: The findings of this paper suggest the possibility of enhancing current scenarios to achieve what is needed to follow the path of green growth in economic context and coming future challenges. The findings are supported by rational policymaking and strategic investment, which can significantly advance India’s green economy, ensuring long term benefits and environmental well-being.

Why Do Some Countries Innovate Better than Others? A New Perspective of Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy Regimes and National Absorptive Capacity

This paper looks into the determinants of national innovation performance from the perspective of policy regime and establishes a theoretical model on how a country’s dual Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) policy regimes, democratic and meritocratic, and national absorptive capacity (NAC) jointly determine its national innovation performance. A democratic STI policy regime promotes innovation through channels of freedom, social equality, and public participation. A meritocratic STI policy regime promotes innovation through channels of good governance and rational policymaking. The model further proposes that the relationships between STI policy regimes and national innovation performance are moderated by potential NAC (PNAC) and realized NAC (RNAC) in opposing directions. The fixed-effects panel regression of OECD countries confirms that both democratic and meritocratic STI policy regimes have positive effects on national innovation performance. Moreover, the democratic effect is positively moderated by PNAC but negatively moderated by RNAC. In contrast, the meritocratic effect is positively moderated by RNAC but negatively moderated by PNAC. The major contribution of this paper is to highlight the importance of a country’s STI policy regimes as the bedrock and NAC as the leverage to generate more homegrown innovations.

From bench to policy: a critical analysis of models for evidence-informed policymaking in healthcare.

The use of research evidence in policy making is a complex and challenging process that has a long history in various fields, especially in healthcare. Different terms and concepts have been used to describe the relationship between research and policy, but they often lack clarity and consensus. To address this gap, several strategies and models have been proposed to facilitate evidence informed policy making and to identify the key factors and mechanisms involved. This study aims to critically review the existing models of evidence informed policy making (EIPM) in healthcare and to assess their strengths and limitations. A systematic search and review conducted to identify and critically assess EIPM models in healthcare. We searched PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus databases as major electronic databases and applied predefined inclusion criteria to select the models. We also checked the citations of the included models to find other scholars' perspectives. Each model was described and critiqued each model in detail and discussed their features and limitations. Nine models of EIPM in healthcare were identified. While models had some strengths in comprehension, flexibility and theoretical foundations, analysis also identified limitations including: presupposing rational policymaking; lacking alternatives for time-sensitive situations; not capturing policy complexity; neglecting unintended effects; limited context considerations; inadequate complexity concepts; limited collaboration guidance; and unspecified evidence adaptations. The reviewed models provide useful frameworks for EIPM but need further improvement to address their limitations. Concepts from sociology of knowledge, change theory and complexity science can enrich the models. Future EIPM models should better account for the complexity of research-policy relationships and provide tailored strategies based on the policy context.

Salmonellosis outbreak archive in China: data collection and assembly

Infectious disease outbreaks transcend the medical and public health realms, triggering widespread panic and impeding socio-economic development. Considering that self-limiting diarrhoea of sporadic cases is usually underreported, the Salmonella outbreak (SO) study offers a unique opportunity for source tracing, spatiotemporal correlation, and outbreak prediction. To summarize the pattern of SO and estimate observational epidemiological indicators, 1,134 qualitative reports screened from 1949 to 2023 were included in the systematic review dataset, which contained a 506-study meta-analysis dataset. In addition to the dataset comprising over 50 columns with a total of 46,494 entries eligible for inclusion in systematic reviews or input into prediction models, we also provide initial literature collection datasets and datasets containing socio-economic and climate information for relevant regions. This study has a broad impact on advancing knowledge regarding epidemic trends and prevention priorities in diverse salmonellosis outbreaks and guiding rational policy-making or predictive modeling to mitigate the infringement upon the right to life imposed by significant epidemics.

Fiscal stabilisation in real time: An exercise in risk management

Fiscal policy in the EU has been largely pro-cyclical. We propose an approach that supports more informed decision making aimed at stabilising output. Rather than relying on notoriously uncertain point estimates of the cycle, our approach is built around the management of risks: (i) launching discretionary measures to support or dampen aggregate demand when, in hindsight, no measures would have been required, versus (ii) remaining inactive when, in hindsight, a stabilisation measure would have been warranted. A rational policymaker can manage these risks by using information on past forecast errors and take stabilisation measures only when real-time estimates of the cycle exceed an optimal threshold. We show that the observed tendency to run pro-cyclical fiscal policies can reflect two complementary factors: a preference for activism combined with the desire to avert downside risks to growth, while putting a blind eye on upside risks.

Rational policymaking during a pandemic

Policymaking during a pandemic can be extremely challenging. As COVID-19 is a new disease and its global impacts are unprecedented, decisions are taken in a highly uncertain, complex, and rapidly changing environment. In such a context, in which human lives and the economy are at stake, we argue that using ideas and constructs from modern decision theory, even informally, will make policymaking a more responsible and transparent process.

Should euthanasia and assisted suicide for psychiatric disorders be permitted? A systematic review of reasons.

Euthanasia and assisted suicide (EAS) based on a psychiatric disorder (psychiatric EAS) continue to pose ethical and policy challenges, even in countries where the practice has been allowed for years. We conducted a systematic review of reasons, a specific type of review for bioethical questions designed to inform rational policy-making. Our aims were twofold: (1) to systematically identify all published reasons for and against the practice (2) to identify current gaps in the debate and areas for future research. Following the PRISMA guidelines, we performed a search across seven electronic databases to include publications focusing on psychiatric EAS and providing ethical reasons. Reasons were grouped into domains by qualitative content analysis. We included 42 articles, most of which were written after 2013. Articles in favor and against were evenly distributed. Articles in favor were mostly full-length pieces written by non-clinicians, with articles against mostly reactive, commentary-type pieces written by clinicians. Reasons were categorized into eight domains: (1) mental and physical illness and suffering (2) decisional capacity (3) irremediability (4) goals of medicine and psychiatry (5) consequences for mental health care (6) psychiatric EAS and suicide (7) self-determination and authenticity (8) psychiatric EAS and refusal of life-sustaining treatment. Parity- (or discrimination-) based reasons were dominant across domains, mostly argued for by non-clinicians, while policy reasons were mostly pointed to by clinicians. The ethical debate about psychiatric EAS is relatively young, with prominent reasons of parity. More direct engagement is needed to address ethical and policy considerations.

Understanding climate change as risk: a review of IPCC guidance for decision-making

This paper examines the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) recommendation for risk-based approaches to knowing and communicating policy problems, and its suitability as a general directive for public policy decision-makers and their advisors. Although explicitly ambiguous about what a risk-based approach is or should be, this paper shows how the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report nonetheless perpetuates ideals of objective risk calculation for rational policymaking. Policy evidence can benefit from context-appropriate problem-framings, as the IPCC concedes. Risk is one of a number of useful conceptual frames for understanding climate policy problems. This paper contributes to climate-related policymaking by describing how IPCC decision-scientists can enhance their guidance to account for the politics of policymaking. It cautions against continuing assumptions or prescriptions for the rational application of objective risk assessment to policymaking, and discusses some of the challenges faced to date by the risk-based approach when it has been applied to policymaking. The paper then briefly examines how we might better situate understandings of risk within alternative conceptual frames to advance climate change policy.

A Positive Theory of Monetary Policy in a Natural Rate Model

A Positive Theory of Monetary Policy in a Natural Rate Model

Good Enough for Government Work? Life-Evaluation and Public Policy

A life-evaluation question asks a person to quantify his or her overall satisfaction with life, at the time when the question is asked. If the goal of public policy is to make individuals’ lives better, does it follow that maximizing aggregate life-evaluations constitutes policy success? This paper argues that life-evaluation data provides a solid basis for welfare-consequentialist policy-making. This is illustrated by the successful argument for expanding state-funded mental health services in the United Kingdom. However, life-evaluations do not always provide a complete account of individual welfare. Policy-makers therefore must sometimes inquire into the extent to which individuals’ preferences would be fulfilled, if different policies were to be adopted. This article proposes synthesizing life-evaluationist and preferentist data about individual welfare, as a basis for rational policy-making.

Fiscal Policy and the Assessment of Output Gaps in Real Time: An Exercise in Risk Management

Fiscal policymakers are expected to conduct countercyclical policies to mitigate cyclical fluctuations of output, but the assessment of cyclical conditions in real time is subject to considerable uncertainty. They face two types of risk: (i) launching discretionary measures to support or dampen aggregate demand when no measures are required (type I error), or (ii) not launching any stabilising measures when this is warranted by cyclical conditions (type II error). A rational policymaker could manage these risks by correcting real-time estimates for past errors, notably the apparent tendency to underestimate good times when they occur. In practice, however, fiscal policy has been largely pro-cyclical or a-cyclical at best. Using statistical decision theory, we calculate thresholds for realtime output gap estimates beyond which governments could launch stabilisation measures, so as to reduce the risk of running pro-cyclical policies. We consider different preferences for avoiding type I or type II errors, and for addressing upside and downside growth risks. We show that the tendency to run pro-cyclical fiscal policy and the ensuing deficit bias can reflect two factors: a preference for activism that is, attaching a lower cost to type I errors, combined with an inclination to be gloomy about cyclical conditions.

The Empirical Evidence for Telemedicine Interventions in Mental Disorders.

This research derives from the confluence of several factors, namely, the prevalence of a complex array of mental health issues across age, social, ethnic, and economic groups, an increasingly critical shortage of mental health professionals and the associated disability and productivity loss in the population, and the potential of telemental health (TMH) to ameliorate these problems. Definitive information regarding the true merit of telemedicine applications and intervention is now of paramount importance among policymakers, providers of care, researchers, payers, program developers, and the public at large. This is necessary for rational policymaking, prudent resource allocation decisions, and informed strategic planning. This article is aimed at assessing the state of scientific knowledge regarding the merit of telemedicine interventions in the treatment of mental disorders (TMH) in terms of feasibility/acceptance, effects on medication compliance, health outcomes, and cost. We started by casting a wide net to identify the relevant studies and to examine in detail the content of studies that met the eligibility criteria for inclusion. Only studies that met rigorous methodological criteria were included. Necessary details include the specific nature and content of the intervention, the research methodology, clinical focus, technological configuration, and the modality of the intervention. The published scientific literature on TMH reveals strong and consistent evidence of the feasibility of this modality of care and its acceptance by its intended users, as well as uniform indication of improvement in symptomology and quality of life among patients across a broad range of demographic and diagnostic groups. Similarly, positive trends are shown in terms of cost savings. There is substantial empirical evidence for supporting the use of telemedicine interventions in patients with mental disorders.

Reflections on the Budget 2015 Child Hardship Package

The 2015 Budget contained benefit rate increases for beneficiaries with children and some minor adjustments to work-based child-related tax credits. The significance of these increases when other policies are taken into account suggests a reshuffling of money in which much of the distributional effect will be minimal and offset. For children it resembles the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff rather than a structural review of child-related income policies that might be reformist, preventative and inclusive. The cost to society is more complexity in the benefit system and a cementing in of reliance on work-related child tax credits that have unproven worth either in incentivising work or in reducing child poverty. A rational policy-making approach with the clear aim of child poverty reduction, measurable outcomes, agreed criteria and a process for evaluation might have suggested that a different policy direction was more appropriate and more likely to be effective.

Approaches to evaluating model quality across different regime types in environmental and public health governance

A reliance on mathematical modelling is a defining feature of modern global environmental and public health governance. Initially hailed as the vanguard of a new era of rational policy-making, models are now habitually subject to critical analyses. Their quality, in other words, is routinely queried, yet what exactly is quality in this context? The prevailing paradigm views model quality as a multi-dimensional concept, encompassing technical dimensions (e.g. precision and bias), value judgments, problem-framing, treatment of “deep” uncertainties, and pragmatic features of particular decision contexts. Whilst those technical dimensions are relatively simple to characterise, the broader dimensions of quality are less easily formalised and as a result are difficult to take account of during model construction and evaluation. Here, we present a typology of governance regimes (risk-based, precautionary, adaptive and participatory) that helps make explicit what these broader dimensions of model quality are, and sketches out how the emphasis placed on them differs by regime type. We show that these regime types hold distinct positions on what constitutes sound evidence, on how that evidence should be used in policy-making, and to what social ends. As such, a model may be viewed within one regime as providing legitimate evidence for action, be down-weighted elsewhere for reflecting a flawed problem-framing, and outright rejected in another jurisdiction on the grounds that it does not cohere with the preferred ethical framework for decision-making. We illustrate these dynamics by applying our typology to a range of policy domains, emphasising both the disconnects that can occur, as well as the ways that modellers have adapted their practices to ensure that their evidence is brought to bear on policy problems across diverse regime types.

Proposal of the Continuous-Valued Penalty Avoiding Rational Policy Making Algorithm

Applying reinforcement learning to actual problems, sometimes requires the treatment of continuousvalued input and output. We previously proposed a process calledExploitation-oriented Learning(XoL) to strongly enhance successful experience and thereby reduce the number of trial-and-error searches. A method based on Penalty-Avoiding Rational Policymaking (PARP) is proposed as a XoL method corresponding to continuous-valued input, but types of action treating continuous-valued output are not executed. We study the treatment of continuous-valued output suitable for a XoL method in which the environment includes both a reward and a penalty. We extend PARP in continuous-valued input to continuousvalued output. We apply our proposal to the pole-cart balancing problem and the biped LEGO robot, and confirm its effectiveness.

Mental health in complex health promotion policy programmes: The contribution of programme evaluations

In order to develop policymaking, evaluation is required. The research project studied national health promotion policies concentrating on mental health promotion policy. In this paper the focus is on the position of evaluation. To explore the position of evaluation in the development of the national public health strategies of England and Finland and particularly with regard to mental health promotion policies. The evaluation phase of the policymaking process is also scrutinised through multiple streams of policy change. Meta-evaluative approach applying a conceptual framework of policy analysis. Evaluations of national health strategies were executed in both countries. These evaluations entailed multiple tasks; not only to monitor the progress of the targets but to learn for the future in a wider perspective. Aims of mental health policy are not easily turned into quantitative targets and therefore outcome evaluation was not felt to be satisfactory as it lacks focus on process as well as null, perverse, and unintended consequences. While the position of evaluation is almost always more complicated than is assumed in so-called rational policymaking theory, mental health appears to be even more challenging in this respect. Possibilities for alternative evaluation strategies should be studied further.

„Family“ of health-related impact assessments – opportunities to support rational policy-making

„Family“ of health-related impact assessments – opportunities to support rational policy-making

When Worlds Collide: Health Surveillance, Privacy, and Public Policy

Surveillance serves as the eyes of public health. It has provided the foundation for planning, intervention, and disease prevention and has been critical for epidemiology research into patterns of morbidity and mortality for a wide variety of disease and conditions. Registries have been essential for tracking individuals and their conditions over time. Surveillance has also served to trigger the imposition of public health control measures, such as contact tracing, mandatory treatment, and quarantine. The threat of such intervention and long-term monitoring has provoked alarm and rendered surveillance suspect for those concerned about the unwarranted exercise of state authority in the name of public health. Thus the history of surveillance has been bounded by promise of disease control and a specter of intrusion. In this article we address the tension between the public's need for knowledge as a foundation for rational policy-making and the centrality of norms of privacy for democratic societies.

Learning benevolent leadership in a heterogenous agents economy

This paper studies the potential commitment value of cheap talk announcements in an agent-based dynamic extension of the Kydland–Prescott model. In every period, the policy maker makes a non-binding inflation announcement before setting the actual inflation rate. It updates its decisions using individual evolutionary learning. The private agents can choose between two different forecasting strategies: They can either set their forecast equal to the announcement or use an adaptive learning scheme to (potentially) forecast the true inflation. They switch between these two strategies as a function of information about the associated payoffs they obtain through word-of-mouth, choosing always the currently most favorable one. While all agents using the first strategy make the same forecast, those using the second strategy may generate different individual forecasts. In spite of the complexity of the environment, the boundedly rational policy maker learns to sustain a situation with a positive but fluctuating fraction of believers. This outcome is Pareto superior to the outcome predicted by standard theory. Interestingly enough, the actions taken by the policy maker undergo marked qualitative changes as a function of the prevailing heterogeneity among and learning characteristics of the private agents.

BROADENING THE DEBATE: COMMENTS ON MICHAEL J. FEUER'S MODERATING THE DEBATE

Abstract. In Moderating the Debate: Rationality and the Promise of American Education, Michael Feuer argues that insights from cognitive science and the theory of bounded rationality can help us understand why educational policy makers overreach in seeking optimal solutions to educational problems. In this essay, Emily Robertson argues that cognitive science is of limited help for two reasons. First, since the findings of the theory of bounded rationality are supposed to describe how we actually do make decisions under conditions of uncertainty, it is unclear how those findings can help us explain why educational policy makers have apparently used different decision‐making strategies. Second, the idea that educational reform can be set right by being made the province of more fully rational policy makers neglects the public, value dimension of education, and thus obscures some of the true sources of overpromising.