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Particularly in governance and policy processes, critique is embedded in highly institutionalized formats. In this chapter, the authors apply Boltanski’s concept of critical tests to examine accepted forms of expression in the context of an institutionalized policy setting, the annual Conferences of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The authors find that different policy actors’ uses of critique reflect embedded field positions and interests. While marginal actors drew upon existential tests to construct radical critique, the highly ritualized performance of critique called into question its efficacy in promoting change within the overall structure of a highly institutionalized event. The authors discuss inroads to studying the relations between critique, power, and microfoundations of institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the teaching of undergraduate macroeconomics.

To suggest a roadmap, based on a consumption function, to be used by instructors willing to teach the Lucas Critique subject.

Therefore, this paper proposes a lesson, which consists of three parts, to help undergraduates better understand the subject: (1) a grading exercise to bring the topic closer to students’ lives; (2) a Keynesian and an optimal consumption function, followed by an example based on an unemployment insurance policy; and (3) two optional topics consisting of extensions of the optimal consumption function and some empirical results related to the Lucas Critique.

The Lucas Critique influenced the evolution of research in macroeconomics, but it is not easily grasped in a classroom.

While the topic of women's entrepreneurship continues to grow in academic appeal, the policy aspect is one that has received limited scholarly attention, especially in the context of developing countries. To address this gap in scholarship, the purpose of this paper aims to critically explore women's entrepreneurship policy in Tanzania. The research question asks: How are policies designed to encourage and support entrepreneurship in Tanzania gendered, and how might such policies be (re)designed so that they are more relevant to women entrepreneurs in the Tanzanian context? The authors contribute to extant scholarship by: drawing attention to the particular context for women's entrepreneurship in Tanzania; identifying gender biases inherent in current entrepreneurship policies; offering some recommendations for policymakers and identifying areas worthy of future research attention in this area.

The study builds on the Global Women's Enterprise Policy project. The authors apply an adapted reading guide technique to analyse and critique relevant entrepreneurship policy documents in Tanzania. The reading guide examines the category and type of document being analysed, key themes, content, language and imagery, as well as the key policy recommendations being offered and their relevance to women's entrepreneurship in Tanzania and the wider sub-Saharan African region. Completed reading guide templates are then coded and collated into an excel spreadsheet. Findings are discussed and critiqued within a regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive framework.

The study provides rich and valuable insights into the unique context for women's entrepreneurship in Tanzania, shedding new light on how women's entrepreneurship is supported in a particular region of sub-Saharan Africa. Findings reveal that while current policy acknowledges the important role women play in their communities, especially in terms of their contribution to labour, it is geared more towards small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) development than entrepreneurship; this is despite the fact that entrepreneurship is identified as a means to address sustainable development challenges (notably unemployment and poverty) and expand opportunities for socially disadvantaged groups, especially women. Existing policy is essentially “context neutral” and hence relatively ineffective; the gender focus is lacking and there is a failure to take account of the specific context in which Tanzanian women entrepreneurs have to operate. The authors argue for policies designed to support women's entrepreneurship to be formalised and contextualised in their specific geographical and cultural setting. The “institutional pillars” framework allows us to identify areas where contextualisation of women's entrepreneurship policies could be enhanced.

The study implies that, to be effective, policies designed to support women's entrepreneurship need to be formalised and contextualised to their specific geographical and cultural setting. Some areas where this might be achieved are identified. Avenues for future research in this area are also suggested.

The value of the paper lies in its focus on Tanzania, and its critique of existing policies from a gender and institutional perspective. It also enhances understanding of the unique context in Tanzania for entrepreneurship.

This chapter is designed to outline how current methods in formal policy analysis have evolved to better respect limits to an analyst's knowledge. These limits are referred to as model uncertainty both in order to capture the idea that formal policy analysis is predicated on mathematically precise formulations that embody assumptions on the part of an analyst and because model uncertainty, which represents a recognition of the potential for these assumptions to produce unsound analyses, has been an active area of research in economics and statistics for the last 15 or so years. The argumentation in this chapter is not original and is admittedly selective. For Austrian economists, the paper will hopefully be of interest in indicating how empirical work is evolving in a way that better respects limits to a social scientist's knowledge. I certainly do not mean to suggest that these arguments should eliminate the objections that have been raised by some Austrian economists to formal empirical work. Rather, the intent of this chapter is to indicate the possibility of dialog and debate between Austrian and non-Austrian economists on the role of formal empirical work. In several contexts, I have introduced arguments concerning the limits of formal econometric analysis by Hayek and von Mises to both illustrate how the perspectives in this chapter relate to their views in order to suggest why, in my judgment, some of their skepticism is unwarranted.

The purpose of this paper is to provide guidance to African governments by delineating a framework that would help them to formulate policies that have the potential to engender opportunity entrepreneurship. This framework is used to critique existing entrepreneurship policy in Nigeria. Entrepreneurship policy should stimulate economic growth as a necessary condition for employment generation and poverty alleviation.

The paper adopts evaluative methodology. Data and information used in this paper were obtained from several secondary sources. These included literature review related to the subject area addressed; the Central Bank of Nigeria, which has designed and funded various initiatives to enable SMEs access funding for their businesses; the Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics which has conducted surveys of SMEs in the country; and the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency of Nigeria, which was established to help promote and develop the SME sub-sector.

The critical findings of the paper are that opportunity entrepreneurship has a better prospect of promoting growth, creating jobs and alleviating poverty than a generic MSME policy being current currently promoted. Targeted entrepreneurship policy to incentivize opportunity-oriented entrepreneurs would produce greater benefit to the economy and society. Such entrepreneurship policy should aim at motivating and facilitating the transitions of necessity entrepreneurs to opportunity entrepreneurship and microenterprises to small and medium enterprises. More importantly, entrepreneurship policy should be targeted at drastically shrinking the informal sector to the barest minimum, while helping to aggressively expand the formal sector, spur innovations, foster growth, expand opportunities and create jobs.

The implication of this paper is the desperate need to refocus public policy on a high-impact entrepreneurship. This calls for a rethinking of existing policy and programs to address their inherent shortcomings.

Existing micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) policy has not achieved the twin goals of job creation and poverty alleviation. This paper contributes to the existing body of work by providing a framework for informed decision-making relative to entrepreneurship policy that has the potential to achieve macroeconomic goals of job creation and poverty alleviation. The framework directs the attention of policymakers to opportunity entrepreneurship as a necessary focus of public policy.

Policies aimed at intensifying innovation, and how they relate to industrial activities, is the major theme of this chapter. We build on Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) studies of innovation, as well as relational approaches to policy studies, to examine the means and goals of innovation policy. From the IMP literature, we take the notion that interaction in business relationships implies continuous learning and adaptations. From this perspective, investments in innovation are marginal in relation to existing patterns of investment, including those in business relationships. From policy studies, we take the view that policymaking and implementation should be treated as sets of interactions, whose outcomes are the effects of multiple and heterogeneous relationships. Based on these principles, we pursue three arguments: (1) Innovations are not primarily effects of innovation policies; (2) Policy-initiated innovation systems, clusters and networks do not necessarily intensify innovation; and (3) Innovation policies and their instruments produce tangible effects, although often in unexpected or unintended ways. We conclude the chapter with suggestions for research and for innovation policymaking.

Uses parametric Granger causality techniques to test whether trade acted as an engine of growth during the period 1971(2)‐1994(2) in Australia. The causality tests were performed on time‐series data that were filtered after unit root and cointegration testing. During the study period there was a dramatic shift from a protectionist to a more liberal trading regime in Australia. Superexogeneity tests were applied to the conditional growth and the marginal trade policy models derived by the application of general to specific methodology. The superexogeneity tests examined whether the shift from a protectionist to a more liberal trading regime in the mid‐1980s undermined the structure of Australian trade growth dynamics as foreshadowed in the Lucas critique. Reviews the macropolicy implications of the trade policy regime shift.

The purpose of this paper is to present a composite framework for critical policy analysis drawing from discourse analysis and post-structuralist analysis. Drawing on an interpretive paradigm (Yanow, 2014), this paper provides a thick description (Geertz, 1973) of the processes involved in the application of these tools in a critical policy analysis project, focusing on disability policy within the Irish context. Methodologically, this is a resourceful cross-fertilization of analytical tools to interrogate policy, highlighting its potential within critical disability policy analysis and beyond.

Merging a critical discourse analysis framework and a policy problematization approach, the combination of tools presented here, along with their associated processes, is referred to as the critical discourse problematization framework.

Potentially, the framework can also be employed across a number of cognate social policy fields including education, welfare and social justice.

The value of this paper lies in its potential to be used within analytical practice in the field of critical (disability) policy work by offering an evaluation of the analytical tools and theoretical framework deployed and modeled across an entire research process.

The framework has the potential and has been used successfully as a tool for disability activism to influence policy development.

The analytical framework presented here is a methodically innovative approach to the study of policy analysis, marrying two distinct analytical tools to form a composite framework for the study of policy text.