Public policyPublic policy is an institutionalized proposal or a decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to solve or address relevant and real-world problems, guided by a conception and often implemented by programs. The implementation of public policy is known as public administration. Public policy can be considered to be the sum of a government's direct and indirect activities and has been conceptualized in a variety of ways. They are created and/or enacted on behalf of the public typically by a government.
PolicyPolicy is a deliberate system of guidelines to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. A policy is a statement of intent and is implemented as a procedure or protocol. Policies are generally adopted by a governance body within an organization. Policies can assist in both subjective and objective decision making. Policies used in subjective decision-making usually assist senior management with decisions that must be based on the relative merits of a number of factors, and as a result, are often hard to test objectively, e.
Fiscal policyIn economics and political science, fiscal policy is the use of government revenue collection (taxes or tax cuts) and expenditure to influence a country's economy. The use of government revenue expenditures to influence macroeconomic variables developed in reaction to the Great Depression of the 1930s, when the previous laissez-faire approach to economic management became unworkable.
Social learning theorySocial learning is a theory of learning process social behavior which proposes that new behaviors can be acquired by observing and imitating others. It states that learning is a cognitive process that takes place in a social context and can occur purely through observation or direct instruction, even in the absence of motor reproduction or direct reinforcement. In addition to the observation of behavior, learning also occurs through the observation of rewards and punishments, a process known as vicarious reinforcement.
Policy analysisPolicy analysis or public policy analysis is a technique used in the public administration sub-field of political science to enable civil servants, nonprofit organizations, and others to examine and evaluate the available options to implement the goals of laws and elected officials. People who regularly use policy analysis skills and techniques on the job, particularly those who use it as a major part of their job duties are generally known by the title Policy Analyst.
Monetary policyMonetary policy is the policy adopted by the monetary authority of a nation to affect monetary and other financial conditions to accomplish broader objectives like high employment and price stability (normally interpreted as a low and stable rate of inflation). Further purposes of a monetary policy may be to contribute to economic stability or to maintain predictable exchange rates with other currencies.
Stabilization policyIn macroeconomics, a stabilization policy is a package or set of measures introduced to stabilize a financial system or economy. The term can refer to policies in two distinct sets of circumstances: business cycle stabilization or credit cycle stabilization. In either case, it is a form of discretionary policy. “Stabilization” can refer to correcting the normal behavior of the business cycle, thus enhancing economic stability.
AdaptationIn biology, adaptation has three related meanings. Firstly, it is the dynamic evolutionary process of natural selection that fits organisms to their environment, enhancing their evolutionary fitness. Secondly, it is a state reached by the population during that process. Thirdly, it is a phenotypic trait or adaptive trait, with a functional role in each individual organism, that is maintained and has evolved through natural selection. Historically, adaptation has been described from the time of the ancient Greek philosophers such as Empedocles and Aristotle.
Evidence-based policyEvidence-based policy is a concept in public policy that advocates for policy decisions to be grounded on, or influenced by, rigorously established objective evidence. This concept presents a stark contrast to policymaking predicated on ideology, 'common sense,' anecdotes, or personal intuitions. The approach mirrors the effective altruism movement's philosophy within governmental circles. The methodology employed in evidence-based policy often includes comprehensive research methods such as randomized controlled trials (RCT).
Cultural studiesCultural studies, also called the cultural sciences, is an interdisciplinary field or scientific branch that examines the dynamics of contemporary culture (including its politics and popular culture) and its historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers generally investigate how cultural practices relate to wider systems of power associated with, or operating through, social phenomena. These include ideology, class structures, national formations, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and generation.
Computer simulationComputer simulation is the process of mathematical modelling, performed on a computer, which is designed to predict the behaviour of, or the outcome of, a real-world or physical system. The reliability of some mathematical models can be determined by comparing their results to the real-world outcomes they aim to predict. Computer simulations have become a useful tool for the mathematical modeling of many natural systems in physics (computational physics), astrophysics, climatology, chemistry, biology and manufacturing, as well as human systems in economics, psychology, social science, health care and engineering.
LearningLearning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals, and some machines; there is also evidence for some kind of learning in certain plants. Some learning is immediate, induced by a single event (e.g. being burned by a hot stove), but much skill and knowledge accumulate from repeated experiences. The changes induced by learning often last a lifetime, and it is hard to distinguish learned material that seems to be "lost" from that which cannot be retrieved.
Large deviations theoryIn probability theory, the theory of large deviations concerns the asymptotic behaviour of remote tails of sequences of probability distributions. While some basic ideas of the theory can be traced to Laplace, the formalization started with insurance mathematics, namely ruin theory with Cramér and Lundberg. A unified formalization of large deviation theory was developed in 1966, in a paper by Varadhan. Large deviations theory formalizes the heuristic ideas of concentration of measures and widely generalizes the notion of convergence of probability measures.
SimulationA simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulations require the use of models; the model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected system or process, whereas the simulation represents the evolution of the model over time. Often, computers are used to execute the simulation. Simulation is used in many contexts, such as simulation of technology for performance tuning or optimizing, safety engineering, testing, training, education, and video games.
Observational learningObservational learning is learning that occurs through observing the behavior of others. It is a form of social learning which takes various forms, based on various processes. In humans, this form of learning seems to not need reinforcement to occur, but instead, requires a social model such as a parent, sibling, friend, or teacher with surroundings. Particularly in childhood, a model is someone of authority or higher status in an environment.
ForagingForaging is searching for wild food resources. It affects an animal's fitness because it plays an important role in an animal's ability to survive and reproduce. Foraging theory is a branch of behavioral ecology that studies the foraging behavior of animals in response to the environment where the animal lives. Behavioral ecologists use economic models and categories to understand foraging; many of these models are a type of optimal model. Thus foraging theory is discussed in terms of optimizing a payoff from a foraging decision.
Latino studiesLatino studies is an academic discipline which studies the experience of people of Latin American ancestry in the United States. Closely related to other ethnic studies disciplines such as African-American studies, Asian American studies, and Native American studies, Latino studies critically examines the history, culture, politics, issues, sociology, spirituality (Indigenous) and experiences of Latino people.
Black studiesBlack studies, or Africana studies (with nationally specific terms, such as African American studies and Black Canadian studies), is an interdisciplinary academic field that primarily focuses on the study of the history, culture, and politics of the peoples of the African diaspora and Africa. The field includes scholars of African-American, Afro-Canadian, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latino, Afro-European, Afro-Asian, African Australian, and African literature, history, politics, and religion as well as those from disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, education, and many other disciplines within the humanities and social sciences.
Natural selectionNatural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charles Darwin popularised the term "natural selection", contrasting it with artificial selection, which is intentional, whereas natural selection is not. Variation exists within all populations of organisms. This occurs partly because random mutations arise in the genome of an individual organism, and their offspring can inherit such mutations.
Deviation (statistics)In mathematics and statistics, deviation is a measure of difference between the observed value of a variable and some other value, often that variable's mean. The sign of the deviation reports the direction of that difference (the deviation is positive when the observed value exceeds the reference value). The magnitude of the value indicates the size of the difference. Errors and residuals A deviation that is a difference between an observed value and the true value of a quantity of interest (where true value denotes the Expected Value, such as the population mean) is an error.
