Visiting the main employment office in Warsaw in late 1989, I asked how many people they were currently paying benefits to. The answer (in a city of 1.6 million people) was five. A year later, unemployment in Poland was more than a million, and by December 1993 was three million. There is no...

This paper discusses how to construct student loans to ensure that, for the most part, they count as private spending. Though the specifics relate to the finance of higher education, the issue has much wider ramifications for flexible combinations of public and private activity, for example in...

This paper sets out the economic analytics of pensions. After introductory discussion, successive sections consider the effects of different pension arrangements on labour markets, on national savings and growth, and on the distribution of burdens and benefits. These areas are controversial and...

The decision to move to a market economy sets in train two major forces. 1. The fall in output has led to a reduction in personal incomes and created a fiscal crisis. 2. A widening earnings and income distribution is a result of wage and price liberalisation, and is an inherent part of the...

The finance of higher education faces a clash between technological advance, driving up the demand for skills, and fiscal constraints, given competing imperatives for public spending. Paying for universities is also immensely politically sensitive. This paper sets out core lessons for financing...

Though directly an assessment of the 2003 White Paper on higher education in England and Wales, this paper offers analysis and strategic conclusions that apply to all advanced countries. After introductory discussion, successive sections weigh up current arrangements (generally unfavourably),...