Democracy and the feedback mechanism in Botswana

No country knows what the right policy choices are because we live in a world of uncertainty. One way to improve policy choices is to ensure a good feedback mechanism. With feedback, current policy choices might be altered to ensure a better fit with prevailing circumstances. Botswana seems to be an interesting case study, where the deportation of a well-known academic placed a lid on its history of openness and public debate. This paper explores why a government respected for good management would choose to display such signs of autocracy, and how it is possible within the prevailing government institutions.Poverty, Botswana, Botswana government, Democracy, Feedback mechanism, Institutions

Monetary policy as a source of uncertainty

This paper proposes a model in which control variations induce an increase in the uncertainty of the system. The aim of our paper is to provide a stochastic theoretical model that can be used to explain under which uncertainty conditions monetary policy rules should be less or more aggressive, or, simply, applied or not.

Toward a theory of the effects of the interaction of formal and informal institutions on social stability and economic development: Prepared for The Conference on Formal Institutions and Informal Arrangements in Transformation Societies, University of Potsdam, Germany, October 7 - 9, 1998

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Targeting Inflation under Uncertainty: Policy Makers' Perspective

Monetary policy makers need to build two pillars for their inflation targeting strategy. Firstly, a methodology for producing the central forecast should be developed, since the whole decision process is more easily organised around a model forecast. Secondly, a methodology for dealing with uncertainties is equally important, because a poor evaluation of uncertainties can significantly reduce the quality of monetary policy decisions. Reflecting the further progress of the methodological debate inside the CNB, this paper aims to provide suggestions to policy makers as to which methods could be used to assess uncertainty during the monetary policy decision process. Suggestions for each stage of the process are summarised in the final chapter. These take into account the findings of surveys of three very distinct sources - the economic literature on monetary policy under uncertainty, the managerial literature on decision analysis, and the real-life strategies of five central banks. The lessons from these three surveys are presented in separate chapters.Inflation targeting, uncertainty, decision analysis, pay-off matrix.

Decision support tools for urban contingency policy: a scenario approach to risk management of the Vesuvio area in Naples, Italy

Contingency management, in particular the management of unanticipated events outside the control of an ordinary planning system, has in the last 50years become an important andfrequently debated issue in the scientific literature on complex systems management underrisk conditions. The urban system can be regarded as such an open complex system whereexternal events, not always foreseeable with a closed system's model, may strongly impact on the internal dynamics of an urban area.Conventionally, planning the future presupposes collecting information and analyzing itrationally in order to control for unexpected contingency events. But it is an importantquestion in the field of urban planning, how proper strategies can be developed to deal withexternal uncertainty and shocks that transcend the imagination of policy-makers. How should decision-makers respond to such unforeseen jumps in asystem?The aim of this paper is to present and apply a new scientific decision support method based on the future studies literature, with the aim to helpdecision-makers in the strategicmanagement of uncertainty and risk in order "to anticipate the extraordinary events correctlyin order to act more effectively" (Godet, 1987). In particular, we will deploy here the scenariomethodology in combination with multicriteria analysis and fuzzy set theory, as a usefu

Accommodating Indigenous Cultural Heritage Values in Resource Assessment: Cape York Peninsula and the MurrayÐDarling Basin, Australia

In this paper we consider the problem of accommodating indigenous cultural heritage values in resource assessment and valuation. We suggest a need for price-based approaches to valuation to be replaced by or complemented with quantitative constraints, reflecting the requirement that rights should not be violated.indigenous cultural heritage, resource assessment, valuation

Institutional foundations of subsistence agriculture in transition economies

The paper considers the problem of subsistence and semi-subsistence farming in Central and Easter Europe. The latter is analysed in terms of the institutional characteristics of the transition process. The concepts of institutions and institutional change are clarified and subsistence agriculture is derived as a natural consequence from the process of economic transition. The process of shortening which gives rise to subsistence agriculture is described. It is demonstrated to have economy-wide effects, and in the domain of agriculture these effects lead the emergence of subsistence behavioural patterns. The policy implications of the proposed view of subsistence agriculture are briefly reviewed and some policy recommendations derived.

Institutional foundations of subsistence agriculture in transition economies

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Taking Personalities out of Monetary Policy Decision Making? Interactions, Heterogeneity and Committee Decisions in the Bank of England’s MPC

The transparency of the monetary policymaking process at the Bank of England has provided very detailed data on both the votes of individual members of the Monetary Policy Committee and the information on which they are based. In this paper we consider interval censored responses of individual committee members in the context of a model in which inflation forecast targeting is used but there is both heterogeneity and interaction among the members of the committee. We find substantial heterogeneity in the policy reaction function across members. Further, we identify significant interactions between individual decisions of the committee members. The nature of these interdependencies inform about information sharing and strategic interactions within the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee.Monetary policy; Interest rates; Committee decision making; Expectation-Maximisation Algorithm; Spatial Weights Matrix; Spatial Error Model.