Using information collected by the National Audit Office, a comparison of several aspects of performance on recent Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contracts is conducted. The first aspect is a sector by sector comparison of refinancing profits, bearing in mind differential risk levels and in...

Making use of an original dataset we empirically investigate the determinants of state aid to the car industry in the European Union. The EU regulatory system on state aids and the long history of governments' grants to this industry make this an interesting case study. Our findings show that in...

At the time of writing, Irish unions are balloting their members about a new collective bargaining agreement for the public sector (Labour Relations Commission 2013). If a majority of union members in a majority of public sector unions within the Irish Congress of Trade Union (ICTU) endorses the...

Alors qu'en décembre 2012, le Trésor britannique publiait un rapport préconisant une refonte du modèle des PFI et définissant quelques pistes de restructuration pour les futurs partenariats public-privé, proposant une plus forte participation publique au financement des contrats (aux fonds...

Colonial investments impacted long-run political and economic development, but we have little systematic evidence about their origins and spatial distribution. Combining novel data sources, I show that colonial investments were very unequally distributed within 16 British and French African...

Several features of Tanzania's budget system find their roots in the arrangements inherited from the United Kingdom. These include a legal framework that emphasizes accountability' a cabinet of ministers with strong budget decision-making powers' a parliament with very limited budget powers' and...

In recent years, images of United States police wearing helmets and masks, carrying military-style weapons, and riding in armored or even mine-resistant armored vehicles have become increasingly prevalent with media depictions of responses to civil disorder and a purported nationwide trend of...

Did austerity cause Brexit? This paper shows that the rise of popular support for the UK Independence Party (UKIP), as the single most important correlate of the subsequent Leave vote in the 2016 European Union (EU) referendum, along with broader measures of political dissatisfaction, are...

Using estimates of support for Leave across UK local authority areas constructed from a comprehensive 20,000 strong survey, we show that both the level and the geographic variation capturing differential degrees of support for Leave have changed significantly since the 2016 EU referendum. A lot...

This paper analyses the shifting balance between public sector and private sector welfare provision in the United Kingdom over the past two decades. Five sectors - education, health, personal social services, housing, and income maintenance and social security - are examined over three time...