Pro-life advocates focus on a single entity, the foetus. Pro-choice advocates focus on another single entity, the pregnant mother. There should also be a third focus, on all people already born – on how a new entrant on average damages (or enhances) the whole community. Communal accounts are...

The paper analyses the short and long term effects of education activities for an open economy, linking current costs to future benefits of alternative educational policies. The simulations find that growth effects are higher for those policies that reduce the internal inefficiency of the...

The paper provides a flexible framework to deal with educational provision and public policies in developing countries, linking the impact of quality-quantity-equity of educational policies on labour markets and the external sector. The model includes typical aspects of developing countries that...

This paper challenges the conclusions of an econometric analysis by Daniel Ortega and Francisco Rodríguez on the effects on literacy of the Misión Robinson program in Venezuela. Their analysis concludes "most of our estimates of program impact represent qualitatively small and rarely...

This issue brief examines the Child Tax Credit (CTC) in its current form and finds that many of the families with children most in need of additional assistance receive no or little benefit from the credit. The paper analyzes a restructuring of the present CTC put forth by the Brookings...

Understanding the role and functions of social policy and social security systems is a key point for a discussion on reforms of the retirement systems. In this essay I describe the subject and range of social policy in the modern welfare state. The work has a descriptive character and aims at...

If the best universities in the world – who have the widest choice of candidates – systematically appoint top researchers as their vice chancellors and presidents, is this one form of evidence that, on average, better researchers make better leaders? This paper addresses the first part of...

This paper analyses the impact of new institutional structures in global health governance on the realization of social rights in poor countries. Meanwhile, health is broadly seen as an import precondition for social and economic development. This leads to an integration of the “diseases of...

The production of health does not only depend on the medical services supplied by the physi-cian but is also influenced by the patient’s compliance. A model of medical treatment is pre-sented in which both the actions of physician and patient are modeled as a productive input. The analysis...