I saw this guest post on the Slow Boring substack, by a former senior US government official, and figured it might be of interest here. The post's original title is "The economic research policymakers actually need", but it seemed to me like the post could be applied just as well to other fields.

Quotes and excerpts:

I was a senior administration official, here's what was helpful

[Most] academic research isn’t helpful for programmatic policymaking — and isn’t designed to be. I can, of course, only speak to the policy areas I worked on at Commerce, but I believe many policymakers would benefit enormously from research that addressed today's most pressing policy problems.

... most academic papers presume familiarity with the relevant academic literature, making it difficult for anyone outside of academia to make the best possible use of them.

The most useful research often [...]

---

Outline:

(00:26) I was a senior administration official, here's what was helpful

(01:42) New data and measures of the economy

(02:27) Broad overviews and literature reviews

(03:24) Analysis that directly quantify or simulate policy decisions

(04:37) How else can researchers help policymakers?

---

First published:

Source:

Linkpost URL:
https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-economic-research-policymakers

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.