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Increased airplane safety by IGNORING final outcomes
The New York Times carries a story today, ‘Fatal Airplane Crashes Drop 65%‘. It reports that fatal airplane crashes in the US have dropped by 65%. The death rate in 1997 was one in 2 million whereas...
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Trading-off indicator accuracy for incentivization – forecast calls for pain
An article in the London Times today (4 October 2007) – Why a bulging bonus is part of the problem, argues that the current credit crisis following the melt-down of the US mortgage markets has not yet...
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Attibution and President Bush's approval rating
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about indicators and attribution these days. I think that a lot of problems (particularly misinterpretations of how well or badly parties are doing within outcomes...
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More on politicians – accountability (praise and blame) and having 'blown it'
Further to my last posting on whether or not the jump in President Bush’s approval rating was attributable to him (i.e. provable that he caused most of it, rather than it just being the fact that he...
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14 years for revealing an indicator!
One of the principles of outcomes theory is that if you want groups of stakeholders to not have a complete understanding of what is happening as an outcomes model plays out, you try to suppress...
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Bonuses role in the financial melt-down
President Obama has amplified the attack on bonuses being paid to staff in companies which have been bailed out by the U.S. government (CNN, 16 March 2009). What does outcomes theory have to say about...
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Time for an Attribution Commission?
A blog posting by Dean Baker (he is one of the few economists who accurately predicted the housing collapse) looks at the ‘comparative responsibility’ of Bush and Obama for the 2009 U.S. deficit in the...
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To attribute or not to attribute – Jon Stewart vs Dick Cheney
In a recent episode of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show he deconstructs a high-profile interview with Dick Cheney, the previous Vice President of the United States, undertaken by another interviewer. While...
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Extraordinary circumstances and Dick Cheney's 'stuff happens'
In my last blog posting I commented on Jon Stewart’s critique of ex-Vice President Dick Cheney’s claim that the Bush administration should not be held accountable for the U.S. economic melt-down...
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Tracking jobs created under the U.S. Recovery Act – when should the attempt...
The default expectation in at least some sections of the U.S. public sector seems to be that it should always be feasible and affordable to both measure and attribute the results of interventions. This...
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