Expertise and public policy: a conceptual guide

This paper seeks to provide a guide to better understand: what is expertise, how to determine who are the relevant experts where it comes to the technical aspects of public policy debates, and how to go about choosing between competing expert claims. Executive summary: In developing policy and assessing program effectiveness, policy makers are required to make decisions on complex issues in areas that involve significant public risks. In this context, policy makers are becoming more reliant on the advice of experts and the institution of expertise. Expert knowledge and advice in fields as diverse as science, engineering, the law and economics is required to assist policy makers in their deliberations on complex matters of public policy and to provide them with an authoritative basis for legitimate decision making. However, at the same time that reliance on expertise and the demands made of it are increasing, expert claims have never been subject to greater levels of questioning and criticism. This problem is compounded by the growing public demand that non-experts should be able to participate in debates over issues that impact on their lives. However their capacity to understand and contribute to the technical aspects of these debates may be either limited or non-existent. This paper provides a guide to assessing who is and who is not an expert in the technical aspects of public policy debates, by providing a framework of levels of expertise. It also notes the importance of identifying the specific fields of expertise relevant to the issue in question. The main focus is on scientific and technical areas, but the issues raised also apply in other domains. It then examines the problem of how non-experts can evaluate expert claims in complex, technical domains. The paper argues that, in the absence of the necessary technical expertise, the only way that non-experts are able to appraise expertise and expert claims is through the use of social expertise. This is expertise using everyday social judgements that enables them to determine who to believe when they are not in a position to judge what to believe. In this context, the paper suggests policy makers ask a series of questions: –      can I make sense of the arguments? –      which experts seems the more credible? –      who has the numbers on their side? –      are there any relevant interests or biases? And –      what are the experts’ track records? By identifying the strengths and limitations of each of these strategies, the paper provides guidance on how each might best be used. It also argues that using them in combination improves their strength and reliability. The role of those who can act as intermediaries between technical experts and non-experts is also examined. The paper makes clear that none of these strategies are without problems, but it postulates that a more systematic approach to how non-experts use social expertise might enhance their ability to become active rather than passive consumers of technical expertise

A bayesian belief networks approach to risk control in construction projects

Although risk control is a key step in risk management of construction projects, very often risk measures used are based merely on personal experience and engineering judgement rather than analysis of comprehensive information relating to a specific risk. This paper deals with an approach to provide better information to derive relevant and effective risk measures for specific risks. The approach relies on developing risk models to represent interactions between risk factors and carrying out analysis to identify critical factors on which risk measures must focus. To ameliorate the problem related to the scarcity of risks information often encountered in construction projects, Bayesian Belief Networks are used and expert knowledge is elicited to augment available information. The paper describes proposed modifications to the standard methods used to develop Bayesian Belief Networks in order to deal with divergent information originated from epistemic uncertainty of risks. The\ud capacity of the proposed approach to provide better information to support risk related decision making is verified by means of an illustrative application to risk factors involved in the construction of cross passages between tunnels tubes in soft soils

Subjective probabilities: psychological evidence and economic applications

Real-life decision makers are often forced to estimate the likelihood of uncertain future events. Usually, economists assume that agents behave as though they are fully rational, employing statistical rules to assess probabilities, and that they maximize expected utility. Psychological studies, however, have shown that people tend not to adhere to these rationality postulates. We review three rules of thumb taken from the psychology literature that people have been shown to rely on when assessing the likelihood of uncertain events. We construct a simple model of belief formation that incorporates these rules and present one formal and two illustrative applications in which these psychological phenomena cause deviations from anticipated economic outcomes.Economic conditions ; Prediction (Psychology)

The Role of Decision-Making Biases in Ireland’s Banking Crisis. ESRI WP389. May 2011

This paper considers Ireland’s banking crisis from the perspective of behavioural economics. It assesses whether known biases in judgement and decision-making were instrumental in the development and severity of the crisis. It investigates evidence that key decision-makers, including consumers, businesspeople, bankers and regulators, as well as parties such as civil servants, politicians, academics and journalists, were influenced by seven specific phenomena which have been identified previously via experiments and field studies. It concludes that evidence is consistent with the influence of these established phenomena. Ireland’s long boom, rapid financial integration and lack of relevant past experience may have increased the vulnerability of decision-makers to economic and financial reasoning that proved disadvantageous. The analysis has potential implications for attempts to prevent future crises

Road User Charging – Pricing Structures.

This project considers the extent to which the public could cope with complex price or tariff structures such as those that might be considered in the context of a national congestion pricing scheme. The key elements of the brief were: • to review existing studies of road pricing schemes to assess what information and evidence already exists on the key issues; • to identify what can be learned about pricing structures from other transport modes and other industries and in particular what issues and conclusions might be transferable; • to improve the general understanding of the relationship between information and people’s ability to respond; and • to recommend what further research would be most valuable to fill evidence gaps and enable conclusions to be drawn about an effective structure