POLICY MAKING
ISMAIL LAGARDIEN: 'Cognitive capture' causes us to waste a good economic crisis
There is a great opportunity in public policy making that may be going to waste. A growing body of new thinking in economics can be converted into public policy. I have previously written about this, but it is worth restating, briefly. Since the 2008 crisis, many questions have been raised about the tout court application of mainstream economics as the basis for public policy making. This crisis provided a marvellous opportunity for a more systematic and aggressive rethinking of economics; of public policy-making in general; for opening the scope of the discussion much wider. The scrutiny should expand beyond economics, an academic or professional practice that presents itself as independent and aloof and necessarily inaccessible to everyone else. It is always rather disappointing that whenever there is an economic crisis — especially when economic policies fail in their stated objectives — the very same economists who presented the original policies are almost exclusively relied up...
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