Policy and regulatory decision-making under uncertainty

The complexity of many regulated industries is increasing. We also live in a world of 'macro' shocks, such as the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine. In combination, this makes forecasting difficult.

However, virtually every regulatory decision involves comparing anticipated futures and choosing the action that leads to the best-predicted outcome. Thus the increasing difficulty of forecasting is a challenge for regulators.

Together with Access Partnership, Communcations Chambers has published a paper addressing this challenge, and proposing five broad ways of improving decision-making under uncertainty: delegation, experiments, forecasting, waiting, and contingency planning & error correction.