#economics – Y-PERN

Mapping Strategic Priorities of Local and Combined Authorities in Yorkshire

Claire Smithson & Paul Hayes

A key challenge for academic policy engagement lies in how to effectively prioritise and coordinate the demand and supply of research and expertise. Currently much of the work being done in this area tends to be either bespoke or through existing relationships, which can create inconsistencies across organisations, their departments and universities.

Whilst the UK government has taken steps to address these gaps through the creation of calls for evidence or “Areas of Research Interest” (ARIs), which have been adopted by some local levels, such as the local ARIs established by the University of Leeds and Leeds City Council, there is still little in the way of formal mechanisms for academic policy engagement at the Local or Combined Authority levels in England.

Local and Combined Authority officers often grapple with competing priorities, limited resources, and time constraints, all while striving to meet their overarching strategic goals. These goals frequently align across authorities due to shared civic responsibilities and the common place-based challenges they face. However, engagement routes between researchers and councils can often be unclear. Researchers, nonetheless, have significant opportunities to support councils’ policy and decision-making processes. This support can take various forms, including research collaborations, participation in expert groups, contributions to policy forums or scrutiny boards, the sharing of relevant research, and undertaking placements or secondments. By harnessing these engagement pathways, researchers can bridge the gap between academic insights and practical policymaking.

As part of Y-PERN’s ongoing efforts to engage with Local and Combined Authorities across Yorkshire and Humber, we conducted a mapping exercise to identify priorities from key strategic documents of all Combined and Local Authorities, such as the West Yorkshire Plan (West Yorkshire Combined Authority) or Barnsley 2030 (Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council). The findings from this exercise have helped provide a clear strategic focus for Y-PERN and other research networks, streamlining the process and connecting networks together that can directly provide support and evidence that is both relevant and impactful.

This project has also been welcomed by combined and local authority partners, supporting them in identifying priorities and challenges across the region, and will act as a catalyst for cross authority idea sharing and collaboration, including the planned establishment of a joint local government academic policy network for the region. The mapping exercise clearly demonstrated that the core objectives of Local and Combined Authorities align closely with their peers, with key themes consistently reflected across the region. However, subtle differences in their priorities and approaches highlight the unique roles each authority plays within the broader governance structure, as well as some differing local and subregional challenges and priorities, including political priorities.

Economic growth is a primary focus for both Local and Combined authorities, with a shared ambition to foster more inclusive economies. Local authorities tend to be more rooted in community engagement and development, tailoring their strategies to the specific needs of their local areas. Combined authorities, on the other hand, adopt a more strategic, sub region-wide perspective, often aligning their efforts with sub-regional economic ambitions. This reflects the wider service delivery and place responsibilities of local councils, as opposed to the more overview and investment role of combined authorities, as well as the public transport responsibilities of CA’s

In addition to this, environmental sustainability has emerged as a critical priority for all authorities. Local authorities again, often take a community-level and hyper-local approach, emphasising mitigation efforts like reducing local emissions, increasing resilience to climate change, and adapting infrastructure to meet sustainability targets. In contrast, combined authorities are typically utilising environmental challenges as an opportunity to drive economic growth, with a focus on green infrastructure investment and creating new jobs in emerging sectors such as renewable energy and sustainable technologies.

Transport is another sector where distinctions between the authorities become apparent. Combined authorities, with their devolved powers and larger geographic remit, are positioned to lead on significant transport infrastructure projects designed to enhance regional connectivity, addressing issues such as inter-city links and improving public transport networks across wide areas.

By comparison, local authorities concentrate on more immediate and localised transport needs, such as highways maintenance and the promotion of local modal shift, ensuring that their transport solutions meet the day-to-day requirements of their residents.

Social care and children’s services remain fundamental responsibilities for local authorities, these services are central to local authorities’ civic duties as well as making up the majority of their day-to-day spending), shaping their research and policy development. Combined authorities are less involved in these areas, as their focus is more aligned with overarching economic and infrastructure initiatives.

Finally, both local and combined authorities recognise the importance of ‘place’ in shaping their strategic priorities, but the interpretation of this concept differs. Local authorities focus on creating place-based initiatives that reflect the unique needs and characteristics of their communities. This may involve community regeneration, improving local services, or enhancing public spaces. Combined authorities, however, are more likely to concentrate on regional development, viewing ‘place’ through the lens of economic connectivity and cohesion, working to strengthen ties between localities to ensure the entire region benefits from growth and development.

This mapping exercise provides a start to addressing gaps in academic policy engagement infrastructure, providing insights into the shared priorities of local and combined authorities across the Yorkshire and Humber regions. By emphasising key focus areas such as economic growth, inclusive economies, environmental sustainability, and transport, strategic research and policy efforts can be better aligned with regional needs. The exercise will play a key role in developing groundbreaking work led by Y-PERN and colleagues across partner universities who are working in collaboration with local and combined authorities to create an integrated local and regional Areas of Research Interest framework across the whole of the region.

When engaging with the overarching priorities of local and combined authorities, it is essential for academics to thoroughly review and understand these priorities while adopting the councils’ own language to ensure alignment with regional objectives. Establishing strong, reciprocal relationships based on shared understanding and the co-creation of projects that reflect mutual interests can pave the way for meaningful and sustained academic-policy collaborations.

Claire Smithson is Policy Engagement Officer, at Policy Leeds. Drawing on her experience across both academia and the policy charity sector, Claire brings a nuanced understanding of the intersection between research and public policy to ensure that academic research informs and shape policy development at a local, regional and national level.

Paul Hayes is a Senior Policy Fellow at the Leeds University Business School. Paul was previously a Policy Manager at Wakefield Council. He has worked extensively with government, think tanks and academics around issues relating to regional and local government, public services, and local economies and economic inclusion.

Universities collaborating for the good of our regions is fast becoming a policy imperative

Y-PERN’s Policy Director Dr Peter O’Brien and Diana Beech, chief executive of London Higher explore the kinds of value that are created when higher education institutions work together regionally.

Keir Starmer’s new Labour government is committed to delivering five key missions: growth; NHS reform; clean energy; safer streets; and opportunity for all. Underpinning this approach is a shift towards a more active, smarter state that works in partnership with business, trade unions, local leaders, and devolved governments, guided by a new industrial strategy that seeks equitable economic growth across the country.

A sub-national architecture of devolution is taking root in England as a model of civic leadership, led by mayors and mayoral combined authorities. An English Devolution Bill is also set to drive further effective regional development by giving mayoral combined authorities and local authorities greater capacity and resources to set out ambitious growth agendas for the regions and to pull the necessary levers to achieve those ambitions.

In London, the capital’s devolved infrastructure goes back 25 years, while in Yorkshire, by June 2025, there will be four mayoral combined authorities with elected mayors covering Hull and East Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, and York and North Yorkshire. Devolution is always an unfinished story; as devolved administrations mature, they build capacity to take on more responsibility and accomplish more.

There are significant opportunities for higher education institutions in Labour’s adoption of a place-based, partnership-led approach, bringing in skills, research and innovation, educational opportunity, public sector productivity, and effective policymaking at the regional level. But it will also test the capability of universities to forge and sustain meaningful regional collaborations with each other and with regional policymakers and industry.

Our combined experience of working in regional university networks shows the power and impact that networked collaboration among higher education institutions can have, but as a sector we need to collectively buy into the idea that collaboration for the good of our regions is not an optional nice-to-have, but a core part of the higher education mission.

Strength in diversity

Policymakers and their teams have lots of stakeholders and priorities, and limited bandwidth. Regional groupings of universities offer the golden opportunity for efficiency in connecting up policymaking to expert insight and research, without the need to go from institution to institution.

One of the real strengths a regional network can offer is access to diversity of institutional knowledge; with research-intensive, modern and specialist universities involved in both our networks, our collective views are nuanced and our access to insight very broad indeed, meaning we can broker expertise across a wide range of local priorities.

This capability is seen at its most powerful through strategic engagement with regional policymakers. London, for example, has a plethora of boards and policy initiatives such as the London Partnership Board, which brings together representatives of key institutions across the capital including business, health, local government, and further education to build London’s capability to tackle future challenges.

In Yorkshire, a ground-breaking memorandum of understanding between Yorkshire Universities and Yorkshire and Humber Councils provides a framework for a long-term strategic partnership between local government and higher education in the region. The Yorkshire and Humber Policy Engagement & Research Network (Y-PERN) facilitates inclusive and place-based academic policy engagement, while the Yorkshire and Humber Policy Innovation Partnership (Y-PIP) is expanding the range of research activity co-designed and co-delivered between the region’s universities, policymakers, local communities and businesses to help drive positive, practical change within and across Yorkshire.

It’s worth adding that the London Higher and Yorkshire Universities staff are accustomed to working with policymakers, skilled in generating ideas and connections, and knowledgeable about the policy landscape – that doesn’t mean that individual institutions don’t need those capabilities to some degree, but having a shared hub of expertise has a helpful amplification effect and can be a space for capacity building on the development, monitoring and evaluation of policy and its impacts.

Regional growth

The dual role of universities in educating a highly skilled workforce and driving innovation and knowledge exchange through research means that they are critical delivery partners in regional economic growth agendas. Regional networks can play a role not only in forging collaborations between universities, but in connecting the sector to business and local communities.

Each of our organisations has a clear – though slightly different – theory of how our member higher education institutions collectively contribute to economic growth, including through tackling specific productivity challenges, investment in infrastructure, improving business leadership and management, educating future entrepreneurs, and through cultural and civic engagement – and we’re always ready with the examples to back up those arguments. Our analysis is rooted in a whole-region context for innovation activity, giving us a view of the larger ecosystem in which our universities are operating and the various assets that are available across our networks.

On a practical level, regional university groups can use their convening power to deliver major changes. In Yorkshire and the Humber a legacy of high-carbon emitting industry, threats from flooding, and a series of energy transitions that have affected communities inequitably across the region have generated a consensus on a need not only for decarbonisation, but a green energy agenda infused with social justice. The Yorkshire and Humber Climate Commission, the largest place-based climate commission in the UK acts as a vehicle to mobilise Yorkshire’s universities’ combined research and policy expertise to tackle climate, sustainability and environmental challenges.

Expanding opportunity

Individual institutions have their own widening participation missions and priorities for access, but through collaboration we can expand our collective reach to prospective students and create a much more navigable higher education opportunity landscape for learners. London Higher’s Access HE division is long-established, and is able to create opportunities for targeted programmes of outreach activity to priority groups such as care leavers, and engage in collective advocacy on widening participation funding.

London Higher’s recent acquisition, redesign and relaunch of the Study London campaign is equally helping to drive international education exports to both the capital and nation by bringing together London’s higher education sector under one powerful brand to drive growth and opportunities, and maintain London’s competitive advantage on the global stage.

As in other parts of the country, universities in London and Yorkshire have much to contribute to interventions and investments that match needs of their localities. While London’s universities have deep local roots, a large number of the capital’s institutions are inherently global, with the ability to leverage international connections to attract and retain major foreign direct investment. However, the funding and talent that arrives in London does not only benefit the London region but generates wider impacts right across the country.

Similarly, Yorkshire’s universities have global connections that transcend regional boundaries. In the case of Sheffield Hallam and York St John, some institutions are also forging a physical presence in the capital, making them key players in creating, nurturing and retaining talent and driving international trade and investment. The powerful reputations of London’s and Yorkshire’s universities are therefore vital to delivering on national and sub-national growth agendas.

Wherever the region, and whatever its strengths, regional university groups are going to be key under this government in delivering the devolution deals each part of the country needs.

The article was originally published in Wonkhe, the home of the UK higher education debate

The Labour Government, the King’s Speech and a new path to devolution?

The new Government’s plans for English devolution are rightly ambitious, but important questions remain and more consideration should be given to the whole picture of sub-national governance and the role of local government in it – argue Y-PERN Policy Fellow Dr Neil Barnett (Leeds Beckett University) and Paul Hayes, Senior Policy Engagement Fellow at Leeds University Business School.

The incoming Labour Government has wasted no time setting out its intentions for the Devolution agenda in England. Notably, in an early and much-publicised meeting at No. 10, Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner met with the twelve elected Metro Mayors in England to outline the intention to deepen their responsibilities, give them more financial flexibility, particularly for economic development, transport, skills and housing, and to establish a new relationship of central-mayoral partnership. This has been hailed as a significant change in the relationship to one in which Mayors considered they had been ‘talked down to’ by previous administrations. The new Government clearly see sub-national devolution as key to driving its growth agenda, with new responsibilities over spatial planning mooted, along with a requirement to produce Local Growth Plans.

Quickly following the meeting, Angela Rayner wrote to all areas she labelled as ‘devolution deserts’ (e.g. Hampshire) not yet covered by a devolution deal to, essentially, ‘get a move on’. Following this, the King’s Speech outlined an English Devolution Bill which will set out a new, standardised, Devolution Framework with devolution as the ‘default setting’.

“The Government in Whitehall is overloaded, and as a result people in the regions grow increasingly impatient about the decisions being made in London which they know could be better made locally. Under our new style of government, we will devolve government power so that more decisions are made locally.
We will bring forward a sensible measure of local government reform which will involve a genuine devolution of power from the central government.”
1970, Conservative Party Election Manifesto – ‘A better tomorrow’

An end to bartering behind closed doors?

There is much to be welcomed here. The detail of the new Devolution Framework remains to be seen, but it offers an alternative to the bartering, often ‘behind closed doors’, of deal-making with individual areas, which has been the case so far, and has been based on an opaque and piecemeal process seemingly without underlying principles. It is not yet clear whether this is intended to fully replace the ‘Tiered’ approach to Devolution (with four levels of powers) introduced by Michael Gove (former Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities); but it does seem likely that, as of now, differing places will find themselves with differing powers.

With respect to Yorkshire, it remains to be seen if there will be a ‘levelling up’ of the Combined Authorities (CAs), to give a more congruent set of responsibilities within and across the Region. Another issue is the current status of the Devolution Deal for a Hull and East Riding Mayoral Combined Authority, agreed with Gove, but yet to be confirmed.

Remaining questions: how will power be bestowed?

There are, however, other questions, which remain. The Prime Minister has spoken about new ‘powers’ for Metro Mayors, but it is unclear as to what this means in practice at this stage. For example, will Mayors, and CA’s get new statutory duties, or will they get more responsibility for allocating resources and funding, as is the case now. Will the new ‘powers’, be allocated to Mayors as elected officeholders, or go to the Combined Authorities collectively? Early indications seem to be that the Government is keen to ‘streamline’ decision-making by extending the powers of Mayors and allowing for majority voting in Combined Authority decision-making. This, however, has the potential to bring to the fore competing claims for democratic legitimacy between Mayors and constituent local authority leaders.

Remaining questions: the role of local authorities

Secondly, the focus of the devolution discourse, so far, has been on Mayors and CAs. There has been little mention of devolution to local authorities, but it is local government that provides the foundational services which must underpin any attempt to ‘kickstart’ economic growth. Angela Rayner has recently recognised this, and promised longer-term and more flexible funding settlements, and an end to competitive bidding for pots of funding (what one Council Leader referred to as ‘knobbly knees contests’). Councils will, however, continue to face severe financial constraint, at least in the medium-term, but as it stands it is unclear where (or if at all) they fit in the ‘Devolution Revolution’, and some fear that local government powers may actually be ‘sucked upwards’. Several areas have been unable, or unwilling, to secure agreement on the necessary combinations of councils necessary to be granted a Devolution Deal. The Government, however, is seemingly intent on getting more areas into the devolution fold by September this year. Not only does this seem overly ambitious, but paradoxical in the sense that the whole direction of travel is supposed to be based on enhancing local voice.

Moreover, the agenda also seems to continue the focus set in train by the previous government; devolution will be agreed between government and the ‘top level’ unitary or county local authorities (Angela Rayner’s letter was addressed to the leaders of these councils) with the remaining District Councils in county areas only considered as consultees.

We are likely to see a continuation of an inexorable move towards large, unitary, county councils in a ‘streamlining’ of the system, completing a re-organisation of English local government, which has proceeded incrementally and almost by stealth over the past two decades. This is despite clear evidence of the service or financial benefits of moving to larger councils, let alone the implications for local democracy.

The new Government’s intention to waste no time and move quickly to deliver growth, and its focus on delivery, are understandable, and, given this context, stepping back to raise the issue of wider local government structures may seem somewhat obtuse. However, more time and consideration should be given to the whole picture of sub-national governance and the role of local government in it.

Remaining questions: what’s the best approach for delivery?

Finally, the new Government’s ambitions are rightly and necessarily ambitious. A new approach based on partnership and outcomes has been signalled. The focus is on delivery and ‘what works’. Here, necessary conditions have been highlighted – the need for ‘joined-up’ government, and for a mission-driven approach, for example. Those of a certain age (like the authors) will remember these phrases as central to the Blair Government’s ‘modernisation’ agenda for public services and indeed New Labour’s ‘Third Way’. Moreover, localism and handing down power from Whitehall played a big part in the Coalition Government’s rhetoric after 2010. In the case of New Labour, the result, in reality, was an intensification of central control via hundreds of performance indicators; the Coalition Government passed the Localism Act 2012, which fell far short of the rhetoric, and the subsequent years were also dominated by austerity and intense financial control.

This is not to say that all governments disappoint, but to point out the scale of the task if Labour are to re-set central-local relations and, in doing so, achieve the long-pursued and seemingly elusive ambition of changing civil service culture and the desire of Ministers to keep close oversight for things over which they will be expected to assume public scrutiny.

The process of learning from evidence, then, should include learning from the difficulties previously experienced in striving for ‘joined-up’ approaches, for example, and from areas where there might have been signs of success. One initiative worth re-examining, for example, which ticks the boxes of localism, joined up working and a focus on outcomes and missions, would be place-based budgeting (aka ‘Total Place’), which was piloted during the Brown administration, but not built on after 2010.

It may also be worth re-examining proposals around what Hazel Blears (former Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government) described in 2007 as ‘devolution to the doorstep’. What powers should be devolved down to local council level, and potentially below? Freedoms to bring in local private landlord licensing without central approval immediately come to mind, and there will be other localist ideas that councils may want to push Angela Rayner for. The new Government’s intended new path gives fresh hope for that such initiatives can be brought back into the debate.

Reflecting on the voices of female entrepreneurs in shaping policy for York & North Yorkshire and beyond

Dr Rebecca Kerr, Y-PERN Policy Fellow (York & North Yorkshire), talks about her work examining the evidence around place-based approaches to supporting female entrepreneurship.

York and North Yorkshire finds itself at an exciting juncture of change. In the run-up to the new combined mayoral authority and mayoral elections, comes a distinct desire to ensure the policy concerns of the region’s residents are placed to the fore.

With this in mind, we initiated a piece of collaborative research focused on female entrepreneurship in the York and North Yorkshire region – working with the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) and Enterprise Works at the University of York. Research in this area generally exists at a national scale, but there’s clear demand for more place-based evidence which can inform sub-regional policy – as shown by the positive and enthused engagement from some of our region’s female entrepreneurs at a workshop we held at York’s historic Guildhall.

Throughout the workshop, women noted that they wanted support and mentorship from other women in business and not self-proclaimed ‘experts’ with limited comparable lived experience. This sentiment was placed to the heart of this research undertaken on female entrepreneurship in York and North Yorkshire, where each stage of research design was informed by participant engagement to ensure we were asking the right questions and collecting the most appropriate data. After spending time on community consultation processes and survey, the workshop event focused on solutions to identified challenges around seven key themes.

This research will be published in due course. In the meantime, the process offers valuable insights into regional policy development. It sheds light on the intricate balance between relying on ‘experts’, engaging in community consultation and learning from policy development experiences. This is especially pertinent in the context of navigating the complexities of a series of new devolution deals in Yorkshire.

From national to sub-regional policy, avoiding diluted success

Understanding the national picture is important when prioritising research as there is a clear rationale to reflect on pre-existing policy solutions. But the geographical, social, economic and political landscape can make the transferability of these top-level recommendations somewhat diluted. While there is pre-existing research on female entrepreneurship, notably in the Alison Rose Report and subsequent iterations, Professor Kiran Trehan (Enterprise Works and member of the Y-PERN Directorate) has argued that a place-based focused piece of research is needed to hear the experiences, challenges and barriers and potential policy solutions that are most appropriate for the region’s female entrepreneurs.

Peck (2011) highlights this sentiment clearly when considering the increasing permeability of geographical boundaries for policies, indicating that while policies freely cross these boundaries, their impact is not standardised across them. Policymakers have a responsibility to use high-quality evidence and not just prioritise the data that has been collected and measured (Hindkjaer Madsen, 2024). This implies that while pre-existing data is useful for supplementing policy development or in guiding discussion at community consultation stages, policy development should be guided by the needs of policy users within their own sub-region, as each comes with its own challenges.

Researchers and policy makers also need to be aware of the constraints of bounded rationality. For example, where a pre-existing policy solution has drawn some successful results, there is the temptation to adopt this policy and apply it at the sub-regional level, as this seems the rational thing to do. But the confines of bounded rationality may inhibit an appropriate cost-benefit analysis at the sub-regional level. This may even tether into lesson drawing and striving for ‘rational’ policy decisions, which comes with its own challenges (see James and Lodge, 2003).

Deliberation over the types of policies that are most successful has centred on a trade-off between intense and specific policy solutions, where intense policies represent a measure of a policy’s overall design and specific policies focus on targeted objectives (Sewerin, Fesenfeld and Schmidt, 2023). For example, an intense policy in the context of our research on female entrepreneurship may include a recommendation of increasing funding pots to local entrepreneurs by £5 million. In contrast, a specific policy may recommend a funding pot targeted at a specific sector, boarded and jointly managed by local stakeholder groups to increase ownership and input to such an initiative. The advantage of a specific policy is that they can be replaced by equally specific and intense policies, especially at sub-regional level with local stakeholder, actor and community buy-in.

Sub-regional to sub-regional policy transfer and learnings

Policy failure may be encouraged by uninformed, incomplete and inappropriate transfer, a point made clear by Dolowitz and March (2002). Whilst they reference case studies of policy transfer between countries, similar reflections are relevant for UK sub-regional policy transfer. Indeed, Keating, Cairney and Hepburn (2012) demonstrate that the policies may be borrowed across the devolved nations simply because of weak policy development capacity in devolved governments. This reflection is important when applied to the devolved authorities across the Yorkshire region.

While it may be likely that York and North Yorkshire may have more in common with Leeds, Hull and Sheffield compared to London, each region has its own ecosystem that is a collection of smaller eco-systems. Within York and North Yorkshire alone, a challenge of policy development is the diversity within it. It boasts a coastline, rurality, market towns and a historic city to boot, but each bring their own set of policies for the female entrepreneurs within them. While we can look to neighbouring policy as a starting point and aim for joint initiatives across the Yorkshire region, this needs further thinking to ‘embed mobility’ into policy (Peck, 2011).

At a minimum, it requires the workshopping of solutions identified in one sub-region to another and naturally, some form of abductive data collection or knowledge exchange.

While recognising the significance of collaborating with neighbouring sub-regions for policy development – facilitating lessons learned, establishing common starting points, and sharing resources – it’s crucial to balance this with the implementation of place-based policies. These policies should respect and preserve the unique diversity within the Yorkshire and Humber region.

What does it mean to be an economist?

Economics is sometimes still seen as being the preserve of an exclusive group of specialist experts; but to address the complex challenges that society faces, we must draw in a wider, more diverse range of perspectives into the space – argue members of the Y-PERN team, including Tom Haines-Doran, Rebecca Kerr, Jamie Morgan and Andrew Brown.

Conventional thinking sees economics as a specialist discipline, very distinct from other areas of enquiry and debate. A classic divide is politics from economics. While TV and press news platforms typically lead with the politics of the day, economics tends to be reserved for a section towards the end. The language is different too: while editors make an effort to make political news intelligible to its target audience, financial reporting is replete with esoteric language, which assumes a high degree of financial literacy not possessed by the vast majority.

“As the Y-PERN project continues, we aim to show that a pluralistic approach to economics, that welcomes rather than ‘colonises’ diverse academic disciplines, can be even more inclusive and relevant to real world policy challenges.”
– Tom Haines-Doran, Rebecca Kerr, Jamie Morgan, Andrew Brown and the Y-PERN team

The form of this separation also implies that, while politics is a legitimate arena of mass debate and discussion – a situation presumably necessary for liberal democracies to function – economics is not. Understanding economics, by contrast, is for experts with the right training. And while these experts might have the credentials to play in this exclusive casino, none of us has the ability to re-write the house rules. Whereas politics can change – sometimes dramatically – the fundamentals of the economy tend to be presented as ever-present and natural.

In the academic world, the separation between economics and other disciplines has a remarkable history, in three phases (our brief account below adapts that of Ben Fine.)

“Academic experts in, say, employment relations, education, or sociology often do not see themselves as ‘economic experts’ …. [yet] their knowledge counts as economic knowledge which can be used in economic applications.”
Y-PERN team

The evolution of economics

The roots of modern economics lie in the ‘marginalist revolution’ towards the end of the 19^th Century, which created a situation whereby economics could claim to describe the functioning of the economy, while the other social sciences’ role was to explain everything ‘non-economic.’ This meant a bifurcation between economics and the rest of social science. For those in the latter camp, economics could not be incorporated into to their methodology, except as a taken-as-given outside influence on social phenomena.

The revolution did not take hold immediately but by the mid-twentieth century, marginalist economics had become firmly established as definitive of economics per se: a highly technical and mathematical ‘science’ of optimising individuals and firms, of perfect markets, and efficient market equilibrium. At its core was the notion – often rejected by other social sciences – that people in an economy are no more than individuals out to optimise their ‘utility’ (or hedonistic pleasure) through rational decisions in market transactions.

PHASE 2: From roughly the 1950s to the 1970s academic economics remained in this form largely isolated from other disciplines but with notable exceptions: public choice theory in politics, cliometrics in history, and the economics of education. These exceptions treated the non-market world exactly like a perfect market. They were the first form of what has been termed ‘economics imperialism,’ a form superseded by the phase that followed.

PHASE 3: Thanks to its success within its own field, and to important ‘tweaks’ in its content, standard economics was, from about the 1980s onwards, able to import its techniques and assumptions to resolving non-market questions. It did so typically through relaxing one or more standard assumption whilst retaining the others, e.g. a shift from ‘perfect’ markets (where agents are assumed to know everything), to ‘imperfect’ markets (where they are not). Returning to the field of politics, this phase has seen the widespread application of game theory.

A new public face or one-way street?

In the development of phase 3 in the last 20 years or so, more and more standard economics assumptions have been relaxed in one or other branch or application, including the assumption of optimising individuals. We have agent-based modelling, behavioural and happiness economics, (nudge theory) social capital theory, and so on. These are applied to a wealth of new kinds of data, often ‘throwing in’ a mix of variables – some that derive from optimising principles others that do not, for example in applications new growth theory.

These latest developments have given economics a new public face, in popular books such as Freakonomics, and led some to question if there is any core theory to mainstream economics beyond a general insistence on mathematical modelling. However, through our work in Y-PERN, we have found that the separation that began with the marginalist revolution has been nuanced and hidden, but not bridged. In particular:

the core marginalist economics principles, centred on optimising individuals, remain dominant at the interface between economics and policy.
economics continues to be regarded as a specialism only understood by highly trained practitioners, such that the breaking out of this core to other social sciences is still typically a one-way street.

The need for new perspectives

This creates significant problems for any project such as Y-PERN. Y-PERN’s mission statement is to connect and convene expertise across Yorkshire’s sub-regions to meet local policy demand and local expertise. Inevitably this leads us to consider fundamental questions of economics, simply understood as the study of the production and distribution of natural and human-produced resources. Most obviously, where public services are concerned, there are questions about who should get what and how, and how this will be provided and paid for, and by whom?

These are not just questions for the economics discipline. Depending on the specific public service in question, then a wide range of disciplinary expertise will be relevant – to take the example of childcare provision then this requires sociological, psychological, educational and employment relations expertise. Two difficult questions must therefore be answered:

How, in practice, can diverse disciplines be brought together when they respectively involve opposing underlying assumptions (e.g. qualitative vs quantitative, individualistic vs wholistic)?

Marginalist economics, as its name implies, applies best to small-scale (marginal) change, so what form of economics and what form of interdisciplinary synthesis should be undertaken for cases of large-scale (‘non-marginal’ or ‘transformational’) change?

Rising to complex challenges ahead

To meet these challenges Y-PERN champions a pluralistic approach – which means taking advantage of the full depth and breadth of systems-based and place-based academic expertise across Yorkshire and the Humber, regardless of disciplinary origin, and inclusive of multiple approaches to economics. A pluralistic approach that is both quantitatively and qualitatively rigorous, that integrates individuals and social structures, can play an important role in helping local and regional authorities make public policy decisions.

Our pluralistic approach is not without challenges. Recent experience in creating calls for evidence for local policy partners has found some reticence from our academic colleagues in ‘non-economic’ fields to take part. Academic experts in, say, employment relations, education, or sociology often do not see themselves as ‘economic experts’, despite the undoubted importance of economics in policymaking in their fields’ attendant spheres of application. We have at times found it difficult to persuade experts that their knowledge counts as economic knowledge which can be used in economic applications.

Yet, the complex policy challenges we face – e.g. planetary collapse, inequality of wealth and of health, and ongoing austerity – are, we believe, undermining previously commonsense notions of what does and does not count as economics and economic evidence. As the Y-PERN project continues, and looking towards its longer-term impacts, we aim for our practice to show that a pluralistic approach to economics, that welcomes rather than ‘colonises’ diverse academic disciplines, can be even more inclusive and relevant to real world policy challenges.

The Y-PERN team is planning to explore the issues discussed in this blog further as part of upcoming events and workshops. You can find out about these by signing up to our newsletter – or you can visit our webpages if you’re already interested in getting involved in Y-PERN.

Academics from any field are also welcome to reach out to the authors to discuss the points raised in the blog or submit a comment below.