"The main proposals in this paper have a highly focussed aim: to prevent the continuation in Britain of an increasingly depressed group of under-skilled workers. The main intention is to ensure that all 16-19 year olds and as many adults as possible achieve at least Level 2 qualifications. For...

In this paper I give an impressionistic account of the situation in Russia in September 1994 and its implications for Western aid priorities. Considering the starting point, the progress of the reform has been remarkable. In the paper I discuss it under the three traditional headings:...

"It is not only in Japan that traditional employment systems are being called into question. It has become conventional wisdom on the OECD conference circuit that we are entering a new era of intensified global competition in which only the most and quot;flexible" firms can survive....

Productivity comparisons need to be based on a careful definition of the objectives. Labour productivity per hour worked is the best measure of prosperity per effort at any time, but can sometimes be achieved at the expense of unemployment or low capital productivity. Total factory productivity...

This paper contains the text of a guest lecture delivered by Dr Gomulka to the Nordic Finance Committee at its meeting in Lillehammer, Norway on 21 January 1994. The paper looks at empirical evidence, both economic and political, from the whole area of Central and Eastern Europe and the Former...

This paper was originally delivered as a TSB Forum lecture in Glasgow on Thursday 28 October, 1993. Professor Layard argues that unemployment must be reduced permanently below the intolerable levels of the 1980s and early 1990s. To achieve this, reforms must be made in the areas of training and...

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...

"This paper addresses two questions: -Can Welfare-to-Work expand employment and -Has Britain's New Deal for young people actually done so, and have its benefits justified the cost? There is ample evidence that unemployment (and employment) is affected by how the unemployed are treated. Other...

As modern economies grow, production and consumption shift towards economic value that reside in bits and bytes, and away from that embedded in atoms and molecules. This paper discusses the implications of such changes for the nature of ongoing growth in advanced economies and for the dynamics...

Since the early 1990s, there has been a renaissance in the study of regional growth, spurred by new models, methods and data. We survey a range of modelling traditions, and some formal approaches to the 'hard problem' of regional economics, namely the joint consideration of agglomeration and...