Principles of regulatory policy design

The author contrasts command-and-control regulation (tight control of water purification, for example) with more flexible forms, including incentive regulation (such as price cap regulation), potential regulation (providing for closer scrutiny if enough customers complain), and reactive rather than proactive policies (the firm proposing actions, the regulatory saying yes or no). He contrasts informing regulation (for example, requiring that consumers be informed about ingredients in a product) and enforcing regulation (for example, prohibiting the use of certain chemicals in foods). A country's institutional structure can limit the regulators'potential for commitment, he says -- especially if regulators are limited in their ability to deliver rewards or penalties. The scope and function of regulation may also be fairly limited when technological conditions allow competition to discipline producers. Sophisticated buyers with economic power may reduce the need for regulatory control, and rapid technological change can render comprehensive command-and-control regulation ineffective or debilitating. Many forces operate simultaneously, making regulatory design a complex undertaking. Inertia is one such influence. Regulatory policies that once served an important purpose sometimes persist even though they no longer serve that purpose -- sometimes because they favor a constituency that convinces the regulator to keep the control in place. Subsidies and tariff protection often continue long past the time needed to promote the development of an infant industry, for example. When there is limited public outcry against continuing the special treatment, and the affected firms strongly urge its continuance, the regulator may be convinced to continue special treatment that no longer serves the public interest. Regulation may also be affected by the regulators'personal ambition. When regulators are"captured"by regulated firms -- diverted from the goal of protecting consumers through the promise of personal rewards for favorable treatment of the firms -- regulation may not serve society's best interest. Even if regulators are not motivated by self-interest, their ideas of what is best for society may differ from those of other government officials or of society at large. When that happens, which goals are pursued depends largely on the autonomy regulators that are granted and on the balance of power among government bodies.Regulation should be viewed in this large context to be understood fully.Administrative&Regulatory Law,Environmental Economics&Policies,National Governance,Economic Theory&Research,Insurance&Risk Mitigation

Using a Model-driven Approach in Building a Provenance Framework for Tracking Policy-making Processes in Smart Cities

The significance of provenance in various settings has emphasised its potential in the policy-making process for analytics in Smart Cities. At present, there exists no framework that can capture the provenance in a policy-making setting. This research therefore aims at defining a novel framework, namely, the Policy Cycle Provenance (PCP) Framework, to capture the provenance of the policy-making process. However, it is not straightforward to design the provenance framework due to a number of associated policy design challenges. The design challenges revealed the need for an adaptive system for tracking policies therefore a model-driven approach has been considered in designing the PCP framework. Also, suitability of a networking approach is proposed for designing workflows for tracking the policy-making process.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables, Proc of the 21st International Database Engineering & Applications Symposium (IDEAS 2017

The Complexity Dilemma in Policy Market Design

Regulators are increasingly pursuing their policy objectives by creating markets. To create a policy market, regulators require firms to procure a product that is socially useful but that confers little direct private benefit to the acquiring party. Examples of policy markets include pollutant emissions trading programs, renewable energy credit markets, and electricity capacity markets. Existing scholarship has tended to analyze policy markets simply as market-based regulation. Although not inaccurate, such inquiries are necessarily incomplete because they do not focus on the distinctive traits of policy markets. Policy markets are neither typical regulations nor typical markets. Concentrating on policy markets as a distinctive type of market brings to light common characteristics of such markets, which in turn generates insights into how they can be used more effectively to implement policy. In particular, this Article focuses on a recurring fundamental challenge in policy market design: managing complexity. Typical markets manage complexity through market forces. As a regulatory creation, however, policy markets require regulators to manage their complexity. This poses what we call the complexity dilemma, which requires regulators to balance strong pressures both toward and away from complexity. The central argument of this Article is that although policy markets are an important part of a regulator’s toolkit, they are also subject to complexity that limits their usefulness. Understanding the complexity dilemma and its crucial role in policy market design forms an essential step toward progress in improving the design and function of these markets

Immigration policy and welfare state design; a qualitative approach to explore the interaction

For the design of an immigration policy, in terms of the number and skills of the entrants and their effect on the host country, it is important to realize that the kind of welfare state matters. This study confronts three possible labour migration regimes - a temporary, an open and a selective regime - with two possible welfare state settings - a highly redistributive and a hardly redistributive welfare state. By comparing the likely outcomes between the different regimes, and by taking possible effects on the self-selection of immigrants into account, the study draws the following conclusions. First, both labour migration policy and the welfare state matter for the skill composition of labour migrants. Second, to be attractive for high-skilled labour migrants a highly distributive welfare state needs to undo its discouraging effect on these migrants. Third, a highly redistributive welfare state is attractive for low-skilled labour migrants. Because these migrants may become costly for such a welfare state once they manage to stay permanently, one should be careful with the introduction of temporary migration policies for the low-skilled.

System Design Insurance Policy Issued Reports PT Asuransi Jiwa Eka Life

To be able to compete with other Life Insurance, PT Eka Life Insurance should attempt to provide better services to its customers. With good service facilities expected number of customers will continue to grow. Computerized information system is one way to achieve maximum service so that data processing becomes more effective and efficient. By way of interviews and observations to the field about the current system, and the results were analyzed. This study produced a description that Life Insurance is in great need of the computerized information system to assist the smooth operation, administration, and preparing reports

Experimentation in policy design: Insights from the building sector

The current article questions how experimentation in policy design plays out in practice. In particular, it is interested in understanding how the content and process of policy-design experiments affect their outcomes. The article does so by building on an original study into 31 real-world examples of experimentation in policy design in the building sector in Australia, the Netherlands, and the United States. All examples aim to improve the environmental sustainability of the building sector. The article finds that these 31 examples have attracted moderate to substantial numbers of participants (policy outcome HO.i), but have not achieved substantial numbers of buildings built or retrofitted with high levels of sustainability (policy outcome HO.ii). By carefully unpacking these policy designs into a number of key characteristics, it finds that this mismatch between the two outcomes may partly be explained by flawed policy-design processes. The article concludes with the main lessons learnt and provides some suggestions on how to improve experimentation in policy design

Optimal policy design for the sugar tax

Healthy nutrition promotions and regulations have long been regarded as a tool for increasing social welfare. One of the avenues taken in the past decade is sugar consumption regulation by introducing a sugar tax. Such a tax increases the price of extensive sugar containment in products such as soft drinks. In this article we consider a typical problem of optimal regulatory policy design, where the task is to determine the sugar tax rate maximizing the social welfare. We model the problem as a sequential game represented by the three-level mathematical program. On the upper level, the government decides upon the tax rate. On the middle level, producers decide on the product pricing. On the lower level, consumers decide upon their preferences towards the products. While the general problem is computationally intractable, the problem with a few product types is polynomially solvable, even for an arbitrary number of heterogeneous consumers. This paper presents a simple, intuitive and easily implementable framework for computing optimal sugar tax in a market with a few products. This resembles the reality as the soft drinks, for instance, are typically categorized in either regular or no-sugar drinks, e.g. Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola Zero. We illustrate the algorithm using an example based on the real data and draw conclusions for a specific local market

Policy Design for International Greenhouse Gas Control

In this heart-searching, process based thesis, I want to find out who I am in the field of Architecture. Trough my urge to create, I am discovering and searching by making and producing objects by hand to feel and be present with the materiality, construction and art of architecture. My production of objects are divided in three parts based on scale, context and time, giving me a richer understanding about my will, intent and qualities.   "Two truths approach each other, one comes from within, one coming from the outside and where they meet there is a chance to see yourself” Tomas Tranströmer, Preludium II I detta hjärtsökande, processbaserade Xjobb, vill jag ta reda på vem jag är inom området arkitektur. Genom min lust att skapa, upptäcker och söker jag genom att göra och producera objekt för hand för att känna och vara närvarande med materialiteten, konstruktionen och konsten i arkitekturen. Min produktion av objekt är uppdelad i tre delar baserad på skala, kontext och tid, vilket ger mig en rikare förståelse om min vilja, avsikt och kvaliteter.   “Två sanningar närmar sig varann, en kommer inifrån, en kommer utifrån och där de möts har man en chans att få se sig själv”     To­mas Tran­strö­mer, Pre­lu­dium I