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20
Jun 2017

Information Pack

Dear YEP-D 2017 Participant,

We have now about fifteen days to the Young Economic Policy Designers 2017 workshop. The workshop is about policymaking and requires a sound theoretical knowledge. Upon the standard curricula of your departments, now it is the time to build a common knowledge base for all participants.

Please kindly note that fulfilling the requirements of this information pack is not optional. So, you are now invited to devote the next two weeks to refreshing your knowledge on the following. You can use any respectable resource like your earlier textbooks, encyclopedias, handbooks, lecture notes or web pages of respected institutions. Homework sites or ordinary blogs might not be a wise choice. Remember that internationally renowned textbooks are the best tie-breakers when two different resources deliver different information on the same thing.

First, let’s remember the five main themes of the Workshop:

(1) Equality of opportunities or outcome

(2) Aging society

(3) Innovative society

(4) Infrastructure for long term growth

(5) Energy

Second, given the themes, we provide you with the following list of keywords and phrases: Adequacy, Aging society, Automation, Constraint, Contestable market, Conventional energy, Cyber security, Data protection, Democratic decision making, Demographics, Digital currency, Effective, Efficient, Equitable, Environmental hazard, Equality, Fiscal constraint, Government, Green economy, Hard infrastructure, Inequality of opportunity, Innovation, Intergenerational inequality, International movement of labor, Internet of Things, Labor market rigidity, Market distortion, Medical efficiency, Objective function, Outlook, Parental difference, Pluralist liberal democracy, Policy, Privacy, Productivity gain, Public education, Public sphere, Renewable energy, Research and Development, Social security system, Social well-being, Soft infrastructure, Spatial, Sustainable, Technological innovation, Temporal, Transit hub. The terms in the list are in alphabetical order and not categorized with respect to themes. A proper coverage of them by each participant is highly valuable to us, serving as the fabric of technical communication.

Third, besides the keywords and phrases above, you may find the following documents useful. We know they make a huge volume of reading. Now it’s time to use your skimming and scanning skills.

Document 01   Document 02   Document 03   Document 04   Document 05   Document 06

Document 07   Document 08   Document 09   Document 10   Document 11   Document 12

Document 13   Document 14

Fourth, we believe the following set of questions might be useful to trigger the policymaker inside your brain:

We believe design is an integral dimension of policymaking. Some may argue against that view, yet a design perspective is mostly useful to get a holistic understanding. What does holistic mean?

It is often said that good analysis is essential for reliable synthesis. So, what is analysis? What is synthesis? Do you think synthesis is in connotation with design? How can analysis be good? What is reliability? What is the meaning of Garbage In Garbage Out?

Can somebody develop useful policies in the absence of sound/scientific knowledge? Do you agree with the view that policymaking is more of an art rather than science?

Have you ever heard about the Ockham’s Razor (sometimes written as Occam’s Razor) or any philosophical razor principle? Have you heard about the principle of parsimony? While building a model or writing down a project report, your professors often say Keep It Small and Simple (or Keep It Stupid Simple). Do you observe any parallels among the terms mentioned in this paragraph?

Finally, let’s note couple of points on the structure and workings of the Workshop:

-1- During the workshop you will work in groups that will be formed by our Scenario Creator on the first day of YEP-D 2017. Each team will be guided by two or three mentors who were the participants of YEP-D 2016.

-2- Once the first theme has been introduced, the workshop begins. During the time allocated to each theme, you are supposed to discuss/clarify issues and develop/design views and policies.

-3- Each theme in YEP-D 2017 will come with many ill-defined questions. So, before going through your designs, it will be crucial to narrow down these questions to workable dimensions and to identify the relevant pieces of information and data. Note that there is no single, unique, or textbook-type answers. It can even be hard to reach a complete solution.

-4- Regardless of the type and depth of your responses, you will be reporting them on a poster. Given the limited space of a poster, effective use of text, visuals and conceptual links seems to be essential.

-5- Upon completion of each theme by teams, poster of each team will be viewed and criticized by the body of participants, mentors and organizers.

We look forward to seeing you in İzmir!