Influencing public policy requires credibility–credibility among decision makers, whether those be legislators, administrators, regulators or the voters to whom those people answer in a democracy. The decisions being influenced are decisions among alternative approaches to solving problems (or perhaps whether a problem exists or not). And entities (like me :-)) who intend to influence those decisions use reasoned arguments, often drawing upon data and models to forecast the future. Collecting that data and building those models is time consuming and costly, giving the advantage to entities with ‘deep pockets.’ Not that having resources for consultants and attorneys makes a party necessarily wrong, just that it often makes for an unlevel playing field.
What can a small entity like Economics Workshop do to influence policy for clients with relatively little money to spend on data collection and model building? While EW can do data collection and model building, lesser-funded entities are often left with reviewing the work of policy analysis put forth by well-funded entities rather than developing original data and models. Because those data and models are often developed by well known consulting companies and presented with an air of invincibility, it takes an analyst with confidence and courage to confront that work–to not fall into the trap of assuming impenetrability but rather to take a methodical and creative approach to asking questions and checking reasonableness. And when initial approaches to evaluating a problem run into a dead end, to come back undaunted with new approaches to evaluating the matter–to ‘Work the Problem.’
Confronting major policy issues and the work of major consulting firms, by its nature, means that there is a ‘not insignificant’ chance that the efforts will come up empty. An analyst of goodwill (and his/her client) must accept that an honest public policy analysis may well end up with results that do not match expectations. But that is how credibility is built–by being willing to accept less-than-expected results rather than trying to create expected results where they are not justified. That said, my experience is that analyses evaluating complex and seemingly impenetrable modeling, if carefully crafted, will often find material issues.
Economics Workshop seeks clients of goodwill who wish to obtain resolutions of public policy matters in the public interest and offers to those clients its best efforts to diligently ‘work the problems’ presented for review.