Thanks all for synthesizing these thoughts and laying out the team’s plan for the upcoming year. I look forward to reading more around how the team’s thoughts progress on these important questions. I understand that defining and subsequently determining ‘key institutions’ is a priority area for the team and so to the extent these still may be being considered please feel free to ignore. I have some questions regarding institutions as a vector for driving effective change.
What would you consider to be the other main decision making vectors (I am imagining individuals, authoritarian leaders etc) and is there a reason why improving the decision-making processes of ‘institutions’ specifically should be prioritized over these other vectors? Do you see overlap between IIDM and the arguments for an increased focus on ‘economic growth’ style interventions? Accordingly, to what extent is IIDM analogous to driving effective change through improved macroeconomic interventions?
Thanks Tony.Sena for the comment and the great questions. It’s really good to challenge premises, particularly at the beginning! I guess focusing on institutions is on the premise that good decision-making within institutions involves more than each individual within that institution making good decisions separately—there’s coordination, aligning goals etc to think about—and also on the premise that we think most resources / norms are controlled by institutions rather than individuals (even authoritarian leaders operate within a greater decision making operation). I / we shall have to think a bit more about the similarity to economic growth / more macro interventions. I’m imagining you could frame economic growth as the goal and then figure out which institutions to work with and how to support better decision making to promote economic growth, or define “welfare” as the goal and assess economic growth as one of the potential options to get there. I’m much more comfortable on the randomista side of the things myself but shall do some more thinking about what IIDM looks like on a macro level. Thanks again.
Thanks all for synthesizing these thoughts and laying out the team’s plan for the upcoming year. I look forward to reading more around how the team’s thoughts progress on these important questions. I understand that defining and subsequently determining ‘key institutions’ is a priority area for the team and so to the extent these still may be being considered please feel free to ignore. I have some questions regarding institutions as a vector for driving effective change.
What would you consider to be the other main decision making vectors (I am imagining individuals, authoritarian leaders etc) and is there a reason why improving the decision-making processes of ‘institutions’ specifically should be prioritized over these other vectors? Do you see overlap between IIDM and the arguments for an increased focus on ‘economic growth’ style interventions? Accordingly, to what extent is IIDM analogous to driving effective change through improved macroeconomic interventions?
Thanks Tony.Sena for the comment and the great questions. It’s really good to challenge premises, particularly at the beginning! I guess focusing on institutions is on the premise that good decision-making within institutions involves more than each individual within that institution making good decisions separately—there’s coordination, aligning goals etc to think about—and also on the premise that we think most resources / norms are controlled by institutions rather than individuals (even authoritarian leaders operate within a greater decision making operation). I / we shall have to think a bit more about the similarity to economic growth / more macro interventions. I’m imagining you could frame economic growth as the goal and then figure out which institutions to work with and how to support better decision making to promote economic growth, or define “welfare” as the goal and assess economic growth as one of the potential options to get there. I’m much more comfortable on the randomista side of the things myself but shall do some more thinking about what IIDM looks like on a macro level. Thanks again.