|
Modelling Public Policy with MapSys
Designing effective public policy is a very complex task due to the dynamic interaction of many actors and systems. System Dynamics has a long history of application in public policy areas that goes back to the original work by Jay Forrester , the field's founder, on Urban Dynamics. jay's work showed clearly that complex social systems display counterintuitive behavior. Complex systems resist change by activating hidden feelback loops that go against the intended outcome in many situations.
It is critical that policy makers avoid implementing policies without examining their long term effects on the behavior of the system. System Dynamics and MapSys can help policy makers understand the structure of the system they plan to modify and predict their possible behavior in the future. Let's look at one well known example through a simple MapSys model.
This simple example deals with the effect of increased police activity on the crime rate related to drugs. The example is described as a part of MIT System Dynamics in Education Project (D-4597). In this model, the police bust has the unintended consequence of actually increasing the crime rate. A typical Causal Lopp Diagram (CLD) for this problem is depicted below:
According to this diagram, an increase in Drug Bust lowers the stock of heroin on the market which in the presence of constant or growing demand leads to increase in price. When price goes up more dealers find the market attractive and employ more sophisticated criminal ways to import drugs.
A MapSys model of this problem will look something like this:
In this model the price increases the level of crime and the increased crime leads to increased police activity in the form of drug busts. This leads to further increase in the market price for heroin encouraging even more crime.
The above example is just one of may areas where MapSys can be applied to design effective policies in complex socio-economic situtations.
|
