Predicting Policy Impact
Learning objectives
After completing this course, you will be able to:
- Frame a policy question in forward-looking terms by considering its likely outcomes before implementation.
- Identify whose decisions a policy affects and understand the factors that shape those decisions.
- Apply economic reasoning to anticipate how individuals and organisations may respond to a policy.
- Translate these insights into evidence-informed predictions of a policy's likely effects.
- Understand how individual responses can add up to effects at programme or population level.
- Apply the approach to a policy or programme question from your own professional or research context.
Topics covered
- Predicting policy outcomes before implementation: how this approach differs from evaluating the effects of policies that are already in place.
- Understanding decision-making: how individuals and organisations make choices and the factors that influence them.
- From policy incentives to outcomes: how people and organisations may respond to a policy and how these responses can shape its overall effect.
- Assessing predictions: understanding the assumptions behind policy predictions, their limitations and how much confidence to place in them.
- Applying the approach to your own policy and programme questions.
Teaching approach
The course combines interactive lectures, practical examples, guided exercises and group discussion. Concepts are introduced through real policy challenges and developed step by step, allowing you to build both conceptual understanding and practical confidence.
Throughout the week, you will work on a policy or programme question from your own professional or research context, receiving feedback from both instructors and peers.
Your profile:
- PhD candidates
- Master students
- Researchers
- Professionals having affinity with Research Methods and who design, appraise, or advise on policy and programme decisions
