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In formulating policy, the process and the mindset can have a significant impact on the success or failure of outcomes. How you do it can be as or more important than what you do.

In today's western economies, this observation may go a long way in explaining why policy outcomes have consistently fallen short of what policymakers themselves have expected, let alone what is needed to address important and growing economic challenges.

Signs of disappointing policy outcomes are, unfortunately, all around us. Over the last two years, American policymakers have failed miserably to lower persistently high unemployment despite a series of stimulus measures, fiscal and monetary, conventional and unconventional. In Europe, the debt crisis has spread despite numerous summits, declarations, policy actions and political changes.

In both cases, policymakers identified and sometimes mis-identified the problems and took highly publicized steps to solve them. Considerable financial resources and political capital were deployed. The credibility of policymakers (and policymaking itself) was placed on the line. Yet to no avail. The identified problems not only persisted, they deepened.

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