Both the quantity and quality of education and training in Britain are being comparedunfavourably with arrangements in other countries at a time when public expenditure isfacing the most stringent constraints. This paper starts from the presumption thatimprovements in the quality and quantity of...

The report, 'A Fresh Start', was published in 1999. 'A Fresh Start' was based onfindings of the Working Group on Adult Basic Skills chaired by Sir Claus Moser.The Moser report brought home the huge amount of catching up that needs to be doneto improve levels of basic skills nationally. It...

The paper explores the link between international economic integration and technological capability in colonial India. The example of iron industry shows that many new ideas and skills flowed into India from Europe, but not all met with commercial success. The essay suggests that in those fields...

This paper is a revised version of an Economic History thesis submitted to the London School of Economics in September 2000.The main text assumes analytical rather than chronological form, and, to avoid breaking the flow of the argument, it refers to persons, Labour Party structures and...

Economics has always had two connected faces in its Western tradition. In Adam Smith's eighteenth century, as in John Stuart Mill's nineteenth, these might be described as the science of political economy and the art of economic governance. The former aimed to describe the workings of the...

This paper examines changing patterns of labour relations innineteenth-century Brazil associated with the building of railways andexpansion of export agriculture. It addresses the 1850s-1880s period,decades when the `labour question' became a pressing issue forcontemporaries. The extinction of...

The analysis in the Report of the Pensions Commission (UK Pensions Commission2004, henceforth referred to as the Report), is sound, the data a wonderful treasure trove, thepresentation particularly clear, and the diagnosis correct. This comment takes the Report’sanalysis as given, and sets out...

Building on earlier work (Barr 2004a), this paper discusses the role of tuition fees in paying for teaching at universities in England, though much of the analysis applies also to the rest of the UK and to OECD countries. There is no discussion of financing research. The paper addresses three...

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 youngchildren, from welfare to work. Early evidence suggests that, in concertwith a strong...

The new Labour Government in Britain has made the reduction of childpoverty one of its central objectives. This paper describes the specificinitiatives involved in Labour’s approach and weighs them up in termsof their potential impact. After setting out the extent of the problem ofchild...