May 10, 2013
The “Academia to Policy” column seeks to bridge the debate in academia to the adoption of policy in practice. In this inaugural Academia to Policy article, Natasha Somji discusses the challenges present in the translation of academic work to policy.
Policymakers frequently turn to academics as consultants, who are able to conduct analysis and provide background when considering how to change existing laws or propose new policies. However, the ways in which academia is translated into politics can be rather problematic.
It is often the case that policymakers have little awareness about the tools used in quantitative studies carried out by academics. Indeed there is a need to ‘dumb down’ academia to make it more accessible to the masses. While this is not problematic in itself, if the methodology is flawed, policymakers may be proposing changes that are based on questionable assumptions. Consider Gary Kleck’s and Britt Patterson’s study entitled, The Impact of Gun Control and Gun Ownership Levels on Violence Rates which has been cited time and again in the policy world to justify repealing gun laws. The research finds that gun prevalence and most gun laws have no effect on violence rates.
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Posted in Academia to Policy, Canadian Politics, Natasha Somji, Public Policy |
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May 6, 2013
Written By: Rebecca Gu
Harmless Economics
Economics has rightfully earned a reputation for being abstract to the point of obscurity. Theoretical physics and mathematics also practice this same level of abstraction, but unlike economics, those fields also do not arrogantly claim that their usefulness lies in their applicability to real life. It is this combination of both asserting relevance and simultaneously reducing complexity of real applications that leads to some dangerous assumptions about how the world should work. For example, my research thus far;
The Many Facets of Carbon Emissions
Global climate change is an economic puzzle in that it involves a lot of different elements, that relate back to concepts of fairness and unfairness.
1) Historical Grudges
Given the amount of man-made emissions that have collectively been produced to date, it is arguably the currently rich countries that have benefited the most from this. Carbon emissions are a by-product of industrialisation, and industrialisation is associated with the economic development of most of the West. Thus, climate change treaties are saddled with the burden of how to distribute future obligations based on historical responsibility.
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Posted in Climate Change, Economics, Public Policy, Rebecca Gu |
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Off the Spectrum 