Our involvement with economic policy design goes back beyond the existence of the Foundation or of SEEL but to the original work by Hector McNeill initiated in 1975 in Brazil. In observing the impact of rising petroleum prices resulting from the OPEC price sanctions imposed in 1973, which raised international petroleum prices seven-fold over the next decade, Hector McNeill realised that this imported or exogenous rises in costs upended the then current monetary theory. Indeed, the insistence of policy makers both in Brazil and the United Kingdom to attempt to control stagflation by applying conventional policy instruments only exacerbated the state of affairs and prejudiced companies and constituents.

This realisation gave rise to the consideration of what became an important branch of our work into "Evaluation metrics". This is based on the identification of the basic determinants and their relationships in creating inflation or "inflationary mechanics" that determine prices as a basis to identify the most effective policy instruments to bring inflation under control.

This work identified flaws in the Quantity Theory of Money which ignore the decision analysis and logic of microeconomic units or firms facing inflation and which need to take actions to safeguard their profits and survival. By developing methods to measure the degree to which companies contribute to inflation and then tracing the financial logic of behaviour such as "anticipatory pricing" a new approach to economics appeared in the form of the Real Incomes Approach to economics, also referred to as RIO-Real Incomes Objective economics.

RIO establishes a basis for inflation control that does not depend upon centrally imposed single valued interest or taxation rates but provides a freedom for companies to adapt their response to inflation by applying anticipatory pricing combined with a sliding levy that replaces corporate taxation. This has the effect of enabling companies to raise their net of levy margins by adopting business rules that raise productivity to lower unit costs to enable more compettive and lower output prices. The result is the income-price elasticity of demand levers these more competitively priced products and services into the market raising the purchasing power of the currency and the real incomes of constituents. By the same course of action corporate income gains in purchasing power as does government revenue.

The Foundation provides policy design consultancy, presentaions and short courses on the Real Incomes Approach to business, governments and political parties.