Since the mid-1990s the term and phenomenon of “social exclusion” has attractedmuch academic attention in the UK, and since 1997 has been an explicit focus ofgovernment policy. In a new book, CASE members examine the debate around themeaning of the term, and the extent and nature of problems...

John Hills and Orsolya Lelkes have analysed results from the National Centrefor Social Research’s 1998 British Social Attitudes survey on public attitudes toredistribution and social security benefits and at how these relate to currentgovernment policies.There is a persistent public appetite...

The last year has seen a transition inCASE’s activities, with the completionof our long-term programme for theEconomic and Social Research Council(ESRC) in January, results from whichwere brought together in a conferenceto celebrate the Centre’s tenthanniversary in January, with...

When economists study incentives in organizations,the main focus has been on using monetary paymentsin exchange for performance on specific measurabledimensions. But organizations use a wide varietyof means to motivate their workers. One suchmethod which has not been studied much to date, isthe...

This paper explores the feasibility and desirability of CorporateSocial Responsibility (CSR). We identify CSR with creation of publicgoods or curtailment of public bads. Using a model with pro…t-maximizing …firms, the paper shows that there is a direct parallel be-tween CSR and traditional...

This paper proposes a simple framework to study incentives and matching in the marketfor teachers. The framework is used to investigate the consequences of introducing incentivepay for teachers when contracts have both a matching and an incentive effect. Our analysissuggests that school...

A unifying theme in the literature on organizations such as public bureaucraciesand private nonprofits is the importance of mission, as opposed to profit, as anorganizational goal. Such mission-oriented organizations are frequently staffed bymotivated agents who subscribe to the mission. This...

We show that the effect of eviction threats on unobservable investment effort can be positive. Wedemonstrate this apparently counter-intuitive result in a model of tenancy where investment by atenant in the current period raises the chances of doing well in the next period, and...

The experience of West Bengal under the panchayat system stands in sharp contrast withthat of other states and, together with land reform, it has been credited for playing animportant role in the impressive economic turnaround of the state since the mid 1980s. WestBengal is the first and the...