Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International
Pages: 330
•
Trim: 6½ x 9
978-1-78661-134-5 • Hardback • August 2019 • $160.00 • (£123.00)
978-1-78661-135-2 • Paperback • August 2019 • $56.00 • (£43.00)
978-1-78661-136-9 • eBook • August 2019 • $53.00 • (£41.00)
Stefanie Haeffele is Senior Research Fellow, Deputy Director of Academic and Student Programs and a senior fellow for the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
Anne Hobson is a Program Manager for Academic and Student Programs at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
Introduction by Stefanie Haeffele and Anne Hobson
Chapter 1: Economic Flaws in Computerized Socialism by Joseph Kane
Chapter 2: Reading Between the Lines: Rulemaking Discretion in the Federal Railroad Administration by Stephen Jones
Chapter 3: Williamsport Revisited: Applying an Austrian Lens to the Lumber and Fracking Booms of Williamsport, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania by Erika Grace Davies
Chapter 4: The Fable of the Packets: A New Institutional/Market Process Approach to Network Neutrality by Nicholas Krosse
Chapter 5: Community Broadband, Community Benefits? An Economic Analysis of Local Government Broadband Initiatives by Brian Diegnan
Chapter 6: Entry Regulation in Hospital Markets: The Impact of Certificate of Need Laws on Hospital Concentration by Ariel Slonim
Chapter 7: Section 1115 Waivers: An Increasing Part of the Medicaid Program by Kelly Ferguson
Chapter 8: Monetary Policy After the Crisis and Alternative Systems for Macroeconomic Stability by Chris Kuiper
Chapter 9: Failed Interventions: The Increasing Ineffectiveness of Monetary and Fiscal Policies in High-Debt Environments by Katelyn Christ
Chapter 10: Risk-Based Capital Regulation and Bank Asset Allocations by Kristine Johnson
Chapter 11: Legal Entity Identifiers as Public Goods and Regulatory Management of Financial Risk by David Rann
Chapter 12: Economic Effects of the “Volcker Rule”: Restrictions on Banking Activity and their Consequences for Economic Stability by Derek Thieme
Creating effective public policy is hard: Policymakers never have all the facts and they can’t predict all the consequences. Thus, a dose of humility is essential in policymaking and the researchers in this timely volume show why through insightful examples ranging from economic development in Pennsylvania to state Medicaid waivers. It’s an important book for policymakers and analysts alike.
— Adam Millsap, Assistant Director of the L. Charles Hilton Jr. Center at Florida State University and affiliated scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University
The Need for Humility in Policymaking helps to remind students, scholars, and policy practitioners of our limited capacity to anticipate how people will react to changes in their incentives. This volume makes it clear that overlooking a relevant aspect of culture, a key social norm, or the importance of local knowledge when designing policies can have dire social consequences.
— Rosemarie Fike, Instructor of Economics, Texas Christian University
Economists, even after the Financial Crisis of 2007, haven’t exactly fostered a reputation for policy humility. This is primarily because mainstream economic models often do not fully incorporate concerns for knowledge and incentive problems in policy implementation. Thus, most policy advice proffered by economists implicitly assumes that policymakers, and the economists advising them, have both the adequate information and the proper incentives to make precise interventions in complex economies. The lack of concern for these real-world policy challenges makes policy interventions seem much more simplistic than they actually are. This in turn emboldens policymakers to undertake interventions without due humility. That lack of humility often leads to unintended consequences that, in at least some cases, are worse than the problems the policy was intended to address. In The Need for Humility in Policymaking, Haeffele and Hobson bring together twelve case studies of policy, ranging from telecommunications to banking policy, detailing the economic consequences of hubris in policymaking. Collectively, these chapters make a compelling argument for both economists and policymakers to embrace humility when it comes to policymaking.
— Daniel J. Smith, Director, Political Economy Research Institute at Middle Tennessee State University