What fuels public policy?

Away from fossil-fuels and toward a bioeconomy: Knowledge versatility for public policy?

In the face of energy security and climate change, and with technological advances, many industrial countries have embraced the transition to a bioeconomy – an economy based on energy, chemicals and materials obtained from biomass. However, the policy and academic discourses on a bioeconomy transition suggest growing controversy around its social, environmental and ethical impacts. In this arti...

Fertility, Education and Public Policy: What entices the Stork?

Developed economies, experiencing concomitant declining fertility and rising educational attainment, have introduced policies to boost fertility. This paper extends Galor and Weil (2000) by introducing bought in services as an input in both the rearing and education of children. Within this framework, we analyse the e¤ects on fertility and education of a baby bonus, paid maternity leave and chi...

Can public policy fix what ails managed care?

SOCIAL SCIENCE AND PUBLIC POLICY What is Socially Relevant Science?

Interest in the effect on society of scientific discoveries can be traced back to the beginnings of the modern sciences. It is plain to see that for reasons of legitimizing science alone, this question was not only of interest to the early scientists. Affirmative answers to the question of the practical virtues of science helped the first generation of scientists—and of course present-day scien...

Russia's drug policy fuels infectious disease epidemics.

On Feb 3, 2012, the Russian Government blocked the website of the Andrey Rylkov Foundation for Health and Social Justice. The reason, according to the Federal Drugs Control Service, was the website’s “placement of materials that propagandize (advertise) the use of drugs, information about distribution, purchasing of drugs and inciting the use of drugs”. The drug in question was methadone, which...