The government’s pensions Green Paper – A new contract for welfare: partnership in pensions – proposes fundamental changes to the UK’s retirement income system. Members of CASE and of the Department of Social Policy at LSE have looked at the likely implications of the reforms for...

This CASEbrief summarises the responses to 'The pensions Green Paper - A new contract for welfare: partnership in pensions' made by members of CASE in CASEpaper 23, 'Tightropes and tripwires: New Labour's proposals and means-testing in old age' by Katherine Rake, Jane Falkingham and Martin...

Visiting the main employment office in Warsaw in late 1989, I asked how many people they were currently paying benefits to. The answer (in a city of 1.6 million people) was five. A year later, unemployment in Poland was more than a million, and by December 1993 was three million. There is no...

This paper discusses how to construct student loans to ensure that, for the most part, they count as private spending. Though the specifics relate to the finance of higher education, the issue has much wider ramifications for flexible combinations of public and private activity, for example in...

This paper sets out the economic analytics of pensions. After introductory discussion, successive sections consider the effects of different pension arrangements on labour markets, on national savings and growth, and on the distribution of burdens and benefits. These areas are controversial and...

The decision to move to a market economy sets in train two major forces. 1. The fall in output has led to a reduction in personal incomes and created a fiscal crisis. 2. A widening earnings and income distribution is a result of wage and price liberalisation, and is an inherent part of the...

The finance of higher education faces a clash between technological advance, driving up the demand for skills, and fiscal constraints, given competing imperatives for public spending. Paying for universities is also immensely politically sensitive. This paper sets out core lessons for financing...