Imrecon

Economics is without doubt the dominant discipline involved in regulatory economics, but economic analysis in this field, as in many others, requires a reach across a broad spectrum of professional insights. 

Ian Rowson has a degree in mathematics, is a Chartered Accountant and has advised policy makers in regulatory economics since the early 1990s. 

The main framework used for price cap computations, the RAB-basis for RPI-X,  is at its core an accounting framework tracing its origins back at least to a 1986 report to HM Treasury, 'Accounting for the Economic Costs and Changing Prices', by an advisory group led by the then Deputy Chief Economic Adviser, Ian Byatt.  Accounting concepts, economic theory, information limitations, political realities, public policy objectives, corporate governance, capital markets and the opinion-forming audience for management regulatory reputations all play a part in the environment for regulatory economics.

Quality of rigour

Based on these insights and the experience of operating across the fields of economics, accounting, finance and public policy making, Imrecon approaches economic analysis from a decision maker's perspective.  This respects the fact that the decision makers' economic objectives are real-world objectives in a real world that does not always work according to economic theory and that the audience for the decisions have a range of different perspectives.  Nevertheless, economics remains at the core of analysis for policy and strategy decisions and, importantly, the quality of rigour that the adademic tradition of economics can bring is a critical foundation for reliable analysis.

Imrecon's economic analysis is founded on this tradition, with an emphasis on rigour.  Rational thought and argument, drawing from theory, precedent and intuitively correct assertions, represent an important part of economic analysis in regulatory policy and other fields, but Imrecon's instincts are often to back this up, test it and provide new new ways of understanding through modelling.  Its analytical methodologies have informed Imrecon's insights into how regulation works, which in turn helps inform its advice to clients. 

A central plank of Imrecon's economic analysis is that the economic behaviour of participants in a sector is informed by economic incentives operating mainly on firms, reputational incentives operating on firms' managements, the forces of supply and demand, competition and the established theories of finance and asset pricing.  Imrecon draws from the body of finance and economics literature, sources of financial data, precedent and modelling, firmly rooted in the context of a real-world understanding of the decision-making context, to provide authoritative, useful and revealing analysis for its clients.