This paper analyses the shifting balance between public sector and private sector welfare provision in the United Kingdom over the past two decades. Five sectors – education, health, personal social services, housing, and income maintenance and social security – are examined over three time...

Since a speech by the Prime Minister in January 2013 , the Conservative party has been committed to holding a referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union (EU) in 2017. So this is a good moment to consider what would be the likely economic effects on the UK from such a move...

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 represents a dramatic change in the US welfare state. One of its key goals was to move lone mothers, even those with young children, from welfare to work. Early evidence suggests that, in concert with a strong...

In the closing decades of the twentieth century there has been an almost complete intellectual triumph of the twin principles of marketization (understood here as referring to the liberalization of domestic markets and freer international mobility of goods, services, financial capital and...

This paper develops a model according to which the costs of business cycles are nontrivial because they reduce the average level of output. The reason is an interaction between job creation costs and an agency problem. The agency problem triggers separations during economic downturns even though...

This paper examines the effects of recent welfare reforms in the US and UK on the well-being of children in low-income families, looking specifically at the effects on poverty, family expenditures, and child health and development. The paper finds some commonalities but also some notable...

We analyse self-reported measures of satisfaction with life in a transition country, Kyrgyzstan, using 1993 household survey data. We test whether higher levels of satisfaction are associated with greater economic well-being. This hypothesis is strongly supported by the data. Unhappiness is...

The second-order stochastic dominance criterion for inequality analysis introduced by Atkinson (1970) covers nearly all well-known inequality indices. The same cannot be said, in respect of poverty indices, for the second-order stochastic dominance criterion for poverty analysis introduced by...

Should raising the growth rate of GDP per capita be a policy goal of governments in general, and of the British government in particular? Many people would say no, for the following reasons: 1) GDP is hopelessly flawed as a measure of welfare; 2) Growing GDP is pointless since most people don’t...

The paper analyses the performance of unemployment benefit systems in a search-theoretic framework. The criteria of evaluation comprise the alleviation of poverty and the reduction in income inequality, whilst the diversity of opinions about these is taken into account. Also, the trade-off...