The paper examines the structural and organisational problems of social insurancesystems in Brazil and the Argentine in order to illuminate current debates about pension‘reform’. Much of the present discussion depicts social insurance ‘crisis’ as a modernphenomenon. Similarly,...

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

In this paper we use insights from organizational economics and financialregulation to study the optimal architecture of supervision. We suggest that thenew architecture should revolve around the following principles: (i) banking,securities and insurance supervision should be further integrated;...

A key issue in political economy concerns the accountability structures put in place to select public officials. While the principle that legislators are to be elected is now a defining feature of modern democracies, there are some offices where a plurality of selection methods survive. A key...

In April 2002 Jobcentre Plus started to operate in the UK bringing together theservice of the Benefits Agency and the Employment Service. Offering a fullyintegrated benefit claiming and work placement/job-seeking service for peopleof working age this new organisation aims to strengthen the link...

In July 2000, the Taipei City Government launched an anti-poverty program,Taipei Family Development Accounts, which drew heavily on Sherraden’sasset-based welfare theory, and was to provide matched savings accounts forlow-income families in the City. This paper presents the “income to...

This paper examines the decline of National Insurance in Britain, as witnessedby its declining share of all social security spending and the steady dilution ofthe “contributory principle” on which it was originally based. It argues that thisdecline is not an accident: under governments of...

[...]This paper examines the recent recession, with particularattention given to developments in the labor market and in UI program financing. Its three objectives are to describedevelopments in the macroeconomy and in the labor marketthat have relevance for UI funding issues, to present...

[...]This paper reexamines the debate over the appropriate formof housing assistance. First, we briefly summarize and evaluate arguments in favor of demand-oriented housing subsidies(such as Section 8 vouchers) and supply-oriented housingsubsidies (such as production subsidies). We conclude...

[...]In this paper, we first provide background information onprogram expenditures and a brief review of the literature. Next,we describe the housing provided under each program and ourmethodology for estimating costs. We then present our totalcost estimates along with estimates of the share of...