“Public Policy is the process by which governments translate their political vision into programmes and actions to deliver ‘outcomes — desired changes in the real world’. The ‘real world’ is constantly changing and this has resulted in the movement towards greater use of evidence in policy design, making and implementation. Rational choice theory, or now more frequently known as evidence-based policy, argues that focusing on scientific evidence, instead of history and culture, should guide public policy making.

The foundation of public policy is composed of national constitutional laws and regulations. Further substrates include both judicial interpretations and regulations which are generally authorized by legislation. Public policy is considered strong when it solves problems efficiently and effectively, serves and supports governmental institutions and policies, and encourages active citizenship.

In ‘Advanced Introduction to Public Policy’, B. Guy Peters defines public policy as “the set of activities that governments engage in for the purpose of changing their economy and society“, effectively saying that public policy is legislation brought in with the aim of benefiting or impacting the electorate in some way. In another definition, author B. Dente in his book ‘Understanding Policy Decisions’ explains public policy as “a set of actions that affect the solution of a policy problem, i.e. a dissatisfaction regarding a certain need, demand or opportunity for public intervention. Its quality is measured by the capacity to create public value.”

Other scholars define public policy as a system of “courses of action, regulatory measures, laws, and funding priorities concerning a given topic promulgated by a governmental entity or its representatives. “Public policy is commonly embodied in “constitutions, legislative acts, and judicial decisions.”

Public Policy focuses on the decisions that create the outputs of a political system, such as transport policies, the management of a public health service, the administration of a system schooling and the organization of a defence force.

In the United States, this concept refers not only to the result of policies, but more broadly to the decision-making and analysis of governmental decisions. As an academic discipline, public policy is studied by professors and students at public policy schools of major universities throughout the country. The U.S. professional association of public policy practitioners, researchers, scholars, and students is the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

Much of public policy is concerned with evaluating decision-making in governments and public bureaucracies.

Crafting & Implementing Public Policy 

Public Policy making can be characterized as a dynamic, complex, and interactive system through which public problems are identified and resolved by creating new public policy or by reforming existing public policy.

Public problems can originate in endless ways and require different policy responses (such as regulations, subsidies, import quotas, and laws) on the local, national, or international level. The public problems that influence public policy making can be of economic, social, or political nature.

The Government holds a legal monopoly to initiate or threaten physical force to achieve its ends when necessary. For instance, in times of chaos when quick decision making is needed.

Public policy making is an exhausting and time-consuming ‘policy cycle’. The basic stages of policy cycle are as follows; a problem is identified, a policy response is formulated, the preferred solution is then selected and implemented, and finally the policy is evaluated. However, the evaluation stage takes an in depth look into what can be learnt from the process as a whole, whether the original problem has been solved, and if not, what is recommended as an alternative course of action. Thus, returning policy makers to the very first step; the identification.

Each system is influenced by different public problems and issues, and has different stakeholders; as such, each requires different public policy.

In public policy making, numerous individuals, corporations, non-profit organizations and interest groups compete and collaborate to influence policymakers to act in a particular way.

The large set of actors in the public policy process, such as politicians, civil servants, lobbyists, domain experts, and industry or sector representatives, use a variety of tactics and tools to advance their aims, including advocating their positions publicly, attempting to educate supporters and opponents, and mobilizing allies on a particular issue.

Many actors can be important in the public policy process, but government officials ultimately choose public policy in response to the public issue or problem at hand. In doing so, government officials are expected to meet public sector ethics and take the needs of all project stakeholders into account.

It is however worth noting that what public policy is put forward can be influenced by the political stance of the party in power. Following the 2008/2009 financial crisis, David Cameron’s Conservative party looked to implement a policy of austerity in 2010 after winning the General Election that year, to shore up the economy and diminish the UK’s national debt. Whilst the Conservatives saw reducing the national debt as an absolute priority, the Labour Party, since the effects of Conservative austerity became apparent, have slated the policy for its ‘needless’ pressure on the working classes and those reliant on welfare, their 2019 election manifesto stating “Tory cuts [have] pushed our public services to breaking point” and that “the Conservatives have starved our education system of funding”. This is a good example of how varying political beliefs can impact what is perceived as paramount for the electorate.

Since societies have changed in the past decades, the public policy making system changed too. In the 2010s, public policy making is increasingly goal-oriented, aiming for measurable results and goals, and decision-centric, focusing on decisions that must be taken immediately.

Furthermore, mass communications and technological changes such as the widespread availability of the Internet have caused the public policy system to become more complex and interconnected. The changes pose new challenges to the current public policy systems and pressures leaders to evolve to remain effective and efficient.

Public policies come from all governmental entities and at all levels: legislatures, courts, bureaucratic agencies, and executive offices at national, local and state levels. On the federal level, public policies are laws enacted by Congress, executive orders issued by the president, decisions handed down by the US Supreme Court, and regulations issued by bureaucratic agencies.

On the local, public policies include city ordinances, fire codes, and traffic regulations. They also take the form of written rules and regulations of city governmental departments: the police, fire departments, street repair, or building inspection. On the state level, public policies involve laws enacted by the state legislatures, decisions made by state courts, rules developed by state bureaucratic agencies, and decisions made by governors.

“Governance, Sovereignty & Legislature” Governance Critical Success Factors: (1) Participatory; (2) Rule of Law; (3) Effective and Efficient; (4) Transparent; (5) Responsive; (6) Equitable and Inclusive; (7) Consensus Oriented; and (8) Accountability

Governance is essentially related to politics, in that politics is often defined as the art of governance. Just as politics talks about governments, institutions, power, order, and the ideals of justice, governance also deals with the public sector, power structures, equity, and ideals of public administration. Nevertheless, they are distinct from each other in the sense that politics is broader than governance. Traditionally, the study of politics entails the concept of the “good life” and the “ideal society,” which are so broad they include a web of subjects and every possible form of government. The study of governance, on the contrary, is generally attuned to the concept of democracy, and on how the government and the civil society arrive at a decision in meeting their needs.

Parliamentary Sovereignty or parliamentary supremacy or legislative supremacy is a concept in the constitutional law of parliamentary democracies. It holds that the legislative body has absolute sovereignty and is supreme over all other government institutions, including executive or judicial bodies. It also holds that the legislative body may change or repeal any previous legislation and so it is not bound by written law (in some cases, even a constitution) or by precedent. In some countries, parliamentary sovereignty may be contrasted with separation of powers, which limits the legislature’s scope often to general law-making, and judicial review, where laws passed by the legislature may be declared invalid in certain circumstances.
The doctrine of parliamentary supremacy may be summarized in three points:

  • Parliament can make laws concerning anything.
  • No Parliament can bind a future parliament (that is, it cannot pass a law that cannot be changed or reversed by a future Parliament).
  • A valid Act of Parliament cannot be questioned by the court. Parliament is the supreme lawmaker.

Legislature is a deliberative assembly with the authority to make laws for a political entity such as a country or city. Legislatures form important parts of most governments; in the separation of powers model, they are often contrasted with the executive and judicial branches of government.
Laws enacted by legislatures are usually known as primary legislation. In addition, legislatures may observe and steer governing actions, with authority to amend the budget involved. The members of a legislature are called legislators. In a democracy, legislators are most commonly popularly elected, although indirect election and appointment by the executive are also used, particularly for bicameral legislatures featuring an upper chamber.
In parliamentary and semi-presidential systems of government, the executive is responsible to the legislature, which may remove it with a vote of no confidence. On the other hand, according to the separation of powers doctrine, the legislature in a presidential system is considered an independent and coequal branch of government along with both the judiciary and the executive. Legislatures will sometimes delegate their legislative power to administrative or executive agencies.
Evidence-based legislation (EBL) calls for the use of the best available scientific evidence and systematically collected data, when available, by legislatures as a basis for their formulation and writing of law. Evidence-based legislation has its roots in the larger movement towards evidence-based practices.

Evidence-based practices
Evidence-based policing
Evidence-based policy

“Constitution, Judiciary & Accountability” Constitution is a fundamental law, written or unwritten, that establishes the character of a government by defining the basic principles to which a society must conform; by describing the organization of the government and regulation, distribution, and limitations on the functions of different government departments; and by prescribing the extent and manner of the exercise of its sovereign powers.

SCOPE:

  • Constitutional amendment
  • Constitutional court
  • Constitutional crisis
  • Constitutional economics
  • Constitutionalism

A legislative charter by which a government or group derives its authority to act. The concept of a constitution dates to the city-states of ancient Greece. The philosopher Aristotle (384–322 b.c.), in his work Politics, analyzed over 150 Greek constitutions. He described a constitution as creating the frame upon which the government and laws of a society are built:

  • A constitution may be defined as an organization of offices in a state, by which the method of their distribution is fixed, the sovereign authority is determined, and the nature of the end to be pursued by the association and all its members is prescribed. Laws, as distinct from the frame of the constitution, are the rules by which the magistrates should exercise their powers and should watch and check transgressors.
    In modern Europe, written constitutions came into greater use during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Constitutions such as that of the United States, created in 1787, were influenced by the ancient Greek models. During the twentieth century, an increasing number of countries around the world concluded that constitutions are a necessary part of democratic or republican government. Many thus adopted their own constitutions.

Judiciary (also known as the judicial system, judicature, judicial branch, Judiciative Branch, or court or judiciary system) is the system of courts that interprets and applies law in legal cases.

“Infrastructure, Land & Sea” Governance Critical Success Factors: (1) Participatory; (2) Rule of Law; (3) Effective and Efficient; (4) Transparent; (5) Responsive; (6) Equitable and Inclusive; (7) Consensus Oriented; and (8) Accountability

Governance is essentially related to politics, in that politics is often defined as the art of governance. Just as politics talks about governments, institutions, power, order, and the ideals of justice, governance also deals with the public sector, power structures, equity, and ideals of public administration. Nevertheless, they are distinct from each other in the sense that politics is broader than governance. Traditionally, the study of politics entails the concept of the “good life” and the “ideal society,” which are so broad they include a web of subjects and every possible form of government. The study of governance, on the contrary, is generally attuned to the concept of democracy, and on how the government and the civil society arrive at a decision in meeting their needs.

Parliamentary Sovereignty or parliamentary supremacy or legislative supremacy is a concept in the constitutional law of parliamentary democracies. It holds that the legislative body has absolute sovereignty and is supreme over all other government institutions, including executive or judicial bodies. It also holds that the legislative body may change or repeal any previous legislation and so it is not bound by written law (in some cases, even a constitution) or by precedent. In some countries, parliamentary sovereignty may be contrasted with separation of powers, which limits the legislature’s scope often to general law-making, and judicial review, where laws passed by the legislature may be declared invalid in certain circumstances.
The doctrine of parliamentary supremacy may be summarized in three points:

  • Parliament can make laws concerning anything.
  • No Parliament can bind a future parliament (that is, it cannot pass a law that cannot be changed or reversed by a future Parliament).
  • A valid Act of Parliament cannot be questioned by the court. Parliament is the supreme lawmaker.

Legislature is a deliberative assembly with the authority to make laws for a political entity such as a country or city. Legislatures form important parts of most governments; in the separation of powers model, they are often contrasted with the executive and judicial branches of government.
Laws enacted by legislatures are usually known as primary legislation. In addition, legislatures may observe and steer governing actions, with authority to amend the budget involved. The members of a legislature are called legislators. In a democracy, legislators are most commonly popularly elected, although indirect election and appointment by the executive are also used, particularly for bicameral legislatures featuring an upper chamber.
In parliamentary and semi-presidential systems of government, the executive is responsible to the legislature, which may remove it with a vote of no confidence. On the other hand, according to the separation of powers doctrine, the legislature in a presidential system is considered an independent and coequal branch of government along with both the judiciary and the executive. Legislatures will sometimes delegate their legislative power to administrative or executive agencies.
Evidence-based legislation (EBL) calls for the use of the best available scientific evidence and systematically collected data, when available, by legislatures as a basis for their formulation and writing of law. Evidence-based legislation has its roots in the larger movement towards evidence-based practices.

Evidence-based practices
Evidence-based policing
Evidence-based policy

[“Defence, Safety & Security”

The Defence, Safety and Security (DSS) focuses on the exchange and dissemination of information, knowledge and state-of-the-art practice on all aspects of defence, safety and security matters for the benefit of society and the development of individuals working in these fields. This service lines would ensure best practice design, availability and regulations, production, fitness-for-purpose, applications, cost, end of life, and sensitivity in respect of national safety and security.

Potential causes of national insecurity include actions by other states (e.g. military or cyber attack), violent non-state actors (e.g. terrorist attack), organised criminal groups such as narcotic cartels, and also the effects of natural disasters (e.g. flooding, earthquakes). Systemic drivers of insecurity, which may be transnational, include climate change, economic inequality and marginalisation, political exclusion, and militarisation. In view of the wide range of risks, the security of a nation state has several dimensions, including economic security, energy security, physical security, environmental security, food security, border security, and cyber security. These dimensions correlate closely with elements of national power.
Increasingly, governments organise their security policies into a National Security Strategy (NSS); as of 2017, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States are among the states to have done so. Some states also appoint a National Security Council to oversee the strategy and/or a National Security Advisor.
Although states differ in their approach, with some beginning to prioritise non-military action to tackle systemic drivers of insecurity, various forms of coercive power predominate, particularly military capabilities. The scope of these capabilities has developed. Traditionally, military capabilities were mainly land- or sea-based, and in smaller countries they still are. Elsewhere, the domains of potential warfare now include the air, space, cyberspace, and psychological operations. Military capabilities designed for these domains may be used for national security, or equally for offensive purposes, for example to conquer and annex territory and resources.

Influence the formulation and implementation of the DSS policies to meet the needs of members in this sector.

  • Airport security
  • Civil defense
  • Infrastructure security
  • Port security

National Security is the security and defense of a nation state, including its citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of government. Originally conceived as protection against military attack, national security is now widely understood to include also non-military dimensions, including the security from terrorism, minimization of crime, economic security, energy security, environmental security, food security, cyber-security etc. Similarly, national security risks include, in addition to the actions of other nation states, action by violent non-state actors, by narcotic cartels, and by multinational corporations, and also the effects of natural disasters.

The scope of DSS includes:

  • Emergency preparedness and response (for both from hostile forces, terrorism and natural disasters), including volunteer medical, police, emergency anagement, and fire personnel;
  • Domestic and DSS activities;
  • Critical DSS infrastructure, including physical/perimeter and cyber protection;
  • Transportation and logistics security, including aviation, maritime, and land transportation; As higher volumes of cargoes are processed at the borders each year, security risks also increase. In fact, illegitimate entities such as money laundering, drug trafficking, contraband and human trafficking cartels strategically select busy ports of entry and high traffic times, seeking to penetrate the borders;
  • Research on next-generation security technologies.
  • Safeguarding the country from human trafficking, drug trafficking, contraband, money laundering, extortion;
  • Critical infrastructure, including physical/perimeter and cyber protection;

Governments rely on a range of measures, including political, economic, and military power, as well as diplomacy, to safeguard the security of a nation-state. They may also act to build the conditions of security regionally and internationally by reducing transnational causes of insecurity, such as climate change, economic inequality, political exclusion, and nuclear proliferation.

Dimensions of national security

  • Physical security
  • Political security
  • Economic security
  • Ecological security
  • Security of energy and natural resources
  • Infrastructure security
  • Information Security

The DSS Strategy Advisors will:

  1. Raise the strategic awareness on defence, safety and security sectors by working across and within, as well as with other learned bodies and external initiatives.
  2. Establish links with and work together with all appropriate sub-groups of the Country, including regional groups, which have common interest in defence, safety and security matters, putting on appropriate meetings to draw together and give identity, whilst also providing opportunities for cross-fertilisation within these different groups.
  3. Encourage training and professional development and put in place new provisions to meet future training needs.
  4. Develop links with all sectors of the defence, safety and security interest groups, and with areas of academia involved with research and education in this field.
  5. Develop and maintain the database of new developments and the activities within DSS.

“Aerospcae & Aviation” Governance Critical Success Factors: (1) Participatory; (2) Rule of Law; (3) Effective and Efficient; (4) Transparent; (5) Responsive; (6) Equitable and Inclusive; (7) Consensus Oriented; and (8) Accountability

Governance is essentially related to politics, in that politics is often defined as the art of governance. Just as politics talks about governments, institutions, power, order, and the ideals of justice, governance also deals with the public sector, power structures, equity, and ideals of public administration. Nevertheless, they are distinct from each other in the sense that politics is broader than governance. Traditionally, the study of politics entails the concept of the “good life” and the “ideal society,” which are so broad they include a web of subjects and every possible form of government. The study of governance, on the contrary, is generally attuned to the concept of democracy, and on how the government and the civil society arrive at a decision in meeting their needs.

Parliamentary Sovereignty or parliamentary supremacy or legislative supremacy is a concept in the constitutional law of parliamentary democracies. It holds that the legislative body has absolute sovereignty and is supreme over all other government institutions, including executive or judicial bodies. It also holds that the legislative body may change or repeal any previous legislation and so it is not bound by written law (in some cases, even a constitution) or by precedent. In some countries, parliamentary sovereignty may be contrasted with separation of powers, which limits the legislature’s scope often to general law-making, and judicial review, where laws passed by the legislature may be declared invalid in certain circumstances.
The doctrine of parliamentary supremacy may be summarized in three points:

  • Parliament can make laws concerning anything.
  • No Parliament can bind a future parliament (that is, it cannot pass a law that cannot be changed or reversed by a future Parliament).
  • A valid Act of Parliament cannot be questioned by the court. Parliament is the supreme lawmaker.

Legislature is a deliberative assembly with the authority to make laws for a political entity such as a country or city. Legislatures form important parts of most governments; in the separation of powers model, they are often contrasted with the executive and judicial branches of government.
Laws enacted by legislatures are usually known as primary legislation. In addition, legislatures may observe and steer governing actions, with authority to amend the budget involved. The members of a legislature are called legislators. In a democracy, legislators are most commonly popularly elected, although indirect election and appointment by the executive are also used, particularly for bicameral legislatures featuring an upper chamber.
In parliamentary and semi-presidential systems of government, the executive is responsible to the legislature, which may remove it with a vote of no confidence. On the other hand, according to the separation of powers doctrine, the legislature in a presidential system is considered an independent and coequal branch of government along with both the judiciary and the executive. Legislatures will sometimes delegate their legislative power to administrative or executive agencies.
Evidence-based legislation (EBL) calls for the use of the best available scientific evidence and systematically collected data, when available, by legislatures as a basis for their formulation and writing of law. Evidence-based legislation has its roots in the larger movement towards evidence-based practices.

Evidence-based practices
Evidence-based policing
Evidence-based policy

“Macro, Micro & Thermoeconomics”

Provide Straetgic Advice on the following Ecosystems;

  • Consumer spending
  • Exchange rate
  • Gross domestic product
  • GDP per capita
  • GNP
  • Stock Market
  • Government debt
  • Rate of Inflation
  • Unemployment
  • Balance of Trade

Economic development, as a public sector term, is the process by which the economic well-being and quality of life of a nation, region or local community are improved according to targeted goals and objectives. The term has been used frequently in the 20th and 21st centuries, but the concept has existed in the West for centuries. “Modernization“, “Westernization“, and especially “industrialization” are other terms often used while discussing economic development. Whereas economic development is a policy intervention endeavor aiming to improve the well-being of people, economic growth is a phenomenon of market productivity and rise in GDP. Consequently, as economist Amartya Sen points out, “economic growth is one aspect of the process of economic development“. But what do practitioners say about this term? Economists study the broader economy or the commercial economy, they do not study the practice of economic development as carried out by practitioners such as those in the Community Economic Development field, who focus on socio-economic development as well.

Constitutional economics is a research program in economics and constitutionalism that has been described as explaining the choice “of alternative sets of legal-institutional-constitutional rules that constrain the choices and activities of economic and political agents“. This extends beyond the definition of “the economic analysis of constitutional law” and is distinct from explaining the choices of economic and political agents within those rules, a subject of orthodox economics. Instead, constitutional economics takes into account the impacts of political economic decisions as opposed to limiting its analysis to economic relationships as functions of the dynamics of distribution of marketable goods and services. Constitutional economics was pioneered by the work of James M. Buchanan. He argued that “The political economist who seeks to offer normative advice, must, of necessity, concentrate on the process or structure within which political decisions are observed to be made. Existing constitutions, or structures or rules, are the subject of critical scrutiny.”
Constitutional economics has been characterized as a practical approach to apply the tools of economics to constitutional matters. For example, a major concern of every nation is the proper allocation of available national economic and financial resources. The legal solution to this problem falls within the scope of constitutional economics. Another example is to study the “compatibility of effective economic decisions with the existing constitutional framework and the limitations or the favorable conditions created by that framework”.

Institutional economics focuses on understanding the role of the evolutionary process and the role of institutions in shaping economic behaviour. Its original focus lay in Thorstein Veblen’s instinct-oriented dichotomy between technology on the one side and the “ceremonial” sphere of society on the other. Its name and core elements trace back to a 1919 American Economic Review article by Walton H. Hamilton. Institutional economics emphasizes a broader study of institutions and views markets as a result of the complex interaction of these various institutions (e.g. individuals, firms, states, social norms). The earlier tradition continues today as a leading heterodox approach to economics. “Traditional” institutionalism rejects the reduction of institutions to simply tastes, technology, and nature (see naturalistic fallacy). Tastes, along with expectations of the future, habits, and motivations, not only determine the nature of institutions but are limited and shaped by them. If people live and work in institutions on a regular basis, it shapes their world views. Fundamentally, this traditional institutionalism (and its modern counterpart institutionalist political economy) emphasizes the legal foundations of an economy (see John R. Commons) and the evolutionary, habituated, and volitional processes by which institutions are erected and then changed (see John Dewey, Thorstein Veblen, and Daniel Bromley.) Institutional economics focuses on learning, bounded rationality, and evolution (rather than assuming stable preferences, rationality and equilibrium). It was a central part of American economics in the first part of the 20th century, including such famous but diverse economists as Thorstein Veblen, Wesley Mitchell, and John R. Commons. Some institutionalists see Karl Marx as belonging to the institutionalist tradition, because he described capitalism as a historically-bounded social system; other institutionalist economists[who?] disagree with Marx’s definition of capitalism, instead seeing defining features such as markets, money and the private ownership of production as indeed evolving over time, but as a result of the purposive actions of individuals.

Macroeconomics (from the Greek prefix makro- meaning “large” + economics) is a branch of economics dealing with the performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. This includes regional, national, and global economies. While macroeconomics is a broad field of study, there are two areas of research that are emblematic of the discipline: the attempt to understand the causes and consequences of short-run fluctuations in national income (the business cycle), and the attempt to understand the determinants of long-run economic growth (increases in national income).  Macroeconomic models and their forecasts are used by governments to assist in the development and evaluation of economic policy. Macroeconomists study aggregated indicators such as GDP, unemployment rates, national income, price indices, and the interrelations among the different sectors of the economy to better understand how the whole economy functions. They also develop models that explain the relationship between such factors as national income, output, consumption, unemployment, inflation, saving, investment, energy, international trade, and international finance. Macroeconomics and microeconomics, a pair of terms coined by Ragnar Frisch, are the two most general fields in economics. In contrast to macroeconomics, microeconomics is the branch of economics that studies the behavior of individuals and firms in making decisions and the interactions among these individuals and firms in narrowly-defined markets. The central problems of an economy are 1. What to produce ? 2. How to produce ? 3. For whom to produce ?

Microeconomics focuses on behaviour of individuals and firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources and the interactions among these individuals and firms. One goal of microeconomics is to analyze the market mechanisms that establish relative prices among goods and services and allocate limited resources among alternative uses. Microeconomics shows conditions under which free markets lead to desirable allocations. It also analyzes market failure, where markets fail to produce efficient results. While microeconomics focuses on firms and individuals, macroeconomics focuses on the sum total of economic activity, dealing with the issues of growth, inflation, and unemployment and with national policies relating to these issues. Microeconomics also deals with the effects of economic policies (such as changing taxation levels) on microeconomic behavior and thus on the aforementioned aspects of the economy. Particularly in the wake of the Lucas critique, much of modern macroeconomic theories has been built upon microfoundations—i.e. based upon basic assumptions about micro-level behavior.

Applied microeconomics includes a range of specialized areas of study, many of which draw on methods from other fields.
Economic history examines the evolution of the economy and economic institutions, using methods and techniques from the fields of economics, history, geography, sociology, psychology, and political science.

  • Education economics examines the organization of education provision and its implication for efficiency and equity, including the effects of education on productivity.
  • Financial economics examines topics such as the structure of optimal portfolios, the rate of return to capital, econometric analysis of security returns, and corporate financial behavior.
  • Health economics examines the organization of health care systems, including the role of the health care workforce and health insurance programs.
  • Industrial economics examines topics such as the entry and exit of firms, innovation, and the role of trademarks. Labor economics examines wages, employment, and labor market dynamics.
  • Judicial economics applies microeconomic principles to the selection and enforcement of competing legal regimes and their relative efficiencies.
  • Political economy examines the role of political institutions in determining policy outcomes.
  • Public economics examines the design of government tax and expenditure policies and economic effects of these policies (e.g., social insurance programs).
  • Urban economics, which examines the challenges faced by cities, such as sprawl, air and water pollution, traffic congestion, and poverty, draws on the fields of urban geography and sociology.

Thermoeconomics is based on the proposition that the role of energy in biological evolution should be defined and understood not through the second law of thermodynamics but in terms of such economic criteria as productivity, efficiency, and especially the costs and benefits (or profitability) of the various mechanisms for capturing and utilizing available energy to build biomass and do work