From stewartb

The Yahoo article above is amplifying something written in The Conversation.com/UK, an online magazine which has a tag line ‘academic rigour, journalistic flair”. Based on its headline: “Scottish National Investment Bank looks hardwired for failure – here’s why” – and now having skip-read the full paper on which the the article is based – I would suggest that ‘journalistic flair’ has won out!

Source: https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/business/rbf/workingpapers/RBF19_020.pdf

The source paper is IMHO a bit of a ramble. It is a working document rather than a peer reviewed paper: it would benefit greatly from such a review.

Not to make too much of this given its O/T here but for interest, here are a few extracts from the source paper:

“It would be both premature and invidious to be too definitive about the suitability of bank’s precise modus operandi prior to its establishment.” – but the paper devotes much space to doing precisely this!

“Whilst a more diffusion-oriented approach for SNIB seems like a sensible way forward, we do however take the strong view that while making these kind of theoretical distinctions it is important to recognise that sophisticated modern knowledge-based economies cannot be simply shoehorned into one (or the other) simple all-encompassing model. In other words, the policy choices facing economies are not a simply a crude “either or” choice in terms two binary innovation approaches delineated.“ – whilst the whole purpose of the paper is to argue for one of only two approaches!

“The – admittedly subjective – central contention put forward in the paper is that a mission- oriented policy approach constitutes “fuzzy” policy making which is likely to obfuscate rather than enlighten the policy implementation process.” – yes indeed a subjective view! But then later the author relies on: “.. this (his paper’s) detailed examination,..”