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"Crowdfunding is already transforming the way many entrepreneurs and enterprises around the globe think about community engagement and fundraising for various causes. This book puts forth the belief that policymakers, public servants and various governments, municipalities and regions can significantly benefit from crowdfunding through employing crowd-related mechanisms within their frameworks and using their crowd as an asset - a crowdasset. Using real-world examples, this book explores the opportunities presented by crowdfunding and crowdfunded innovation, and how major policymakers are already using crowdfunding and crowd mechanisms to accelerate innovation, engagement and community transformation. A guide for those involved in crowdfunding, CrowdAsset brings readers through the journey of maximising crowd impact"--Publisher's website

Calls for the use of evidence in education policy have become increasingly widespread nationally and internationally. Despite this, there have been relatively few in-depth studies of how, when and under what conditions policy-makers use research evidence. This paper will share findings emerging from a one-year study with the Victorian Department of Education and Training (DET) in Australia on their use of evidence in policy development. Drawing on in-depth interviews and documentary analysis with policy writers, advisors and researchers who worked on two specific policies, it sheds new light on how evidence is (and is not) used and the complexities that are involved in the process. It makes links to wider debates around the 'political uses' of expert knowledge (Boswell, 2009).Specifically, this paper will: provide in-depth examples of how different kinds of evidence were used in the development of two specific recent policies in Victoria (What types of evidence have been used, in what ways and for what purposes?)share policy-makers' reflections on the complexities involved in identifying, evaluating and using evidence with these policies (What challenges are involved in using evidence, and what helps and/or hinders evidence use to happen?)explore theoretical connections and points of difference between this work and wider debates around the 'political uses' of expert knowledge (Boswell, 2009) and the role of 'policy narratives' (Boswell et al., 2011).A number of theoretical influences informed this project. Firstly, an important conceptual starting point has been a desire to study 'the use of evidence' as opposed to 'the impact of research'. This picks up on a distinction highlighted by Weiss in the late 1970s, who noted that social scientists tend to ask 'how can we increase the use of research in decision making?' Weiss argued that it would be preferable to study 'how can we make wiser decisions, and to what extent, in what ways, and under what conditions, can social research help' (Weiss, 1978, p. ...

Monetary policy is still one of the most contested areas of modern economics,and since the original publication of Policy Makers on Policy much has changed. This new edition collects contributions from leading policy makers and practitioners to reflect on the aims and objectives of monetary policy and on what it can achieve, combining the old chapters from Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, Kenneth Clarke, Geoffrey Howe, Nigel Lawson, and others,with new perspectives from Mervyn King, Jean-Claude Trichet, Ernst Welteke, Otmar Issing, and Alastair Darling. A new far-reaching introduction from the editors Forrest Capie and Geoffrey Wood puts these important contributions to the discussion of economic policy in the new context. They look at what lessons can be learnt from the earlier discussions, what anticipations of present difficulties can be found in them and what, in other words,the comparatively recent past teaches us about how to deal with the turbulent present.The second edition of Policy Makers on Policy brings together otherwise inaccessible commentaries and reflections on policy by those involved in making it, along with a commentary on and context for their remarks. Thus the book will be of great interest and use to students of economics andpolitics, and indeed anyone with an interest in current economic developments and their roots in the past.

While still far from parity, female representation in politics has continuously increased over the last two decades worldwide. In light of this development, we analyze whether higher female representation has substantive effects on policy choices using the example of child care – a public good arguably valued by women. We hand-collect micro-data for 224,448 candidates running in the local council elections of 2002, 2008 and 2014 across 1,632 municipalities in the German state of Bavaria. Exploiting an open-list electoral system, we run RDD regressions centered around mixed-gender races for the last council seat that accrues to a party. We find that a female victory in a mixed-gender race accelerates the expansion of public child care provision by 40%. Our main strategy to explore mechanisms uses information from hand-collected minutes of 7,721 monthly council meetings. We show that an additional woman changes "the conversation": female councilors speak up more often and child care is discussed more frequently in the council.