Western governments usually are sent about 30% of GDP for social purposes. Financing is carried out due to tax payments through the system of taxes from current revenue (hereinafter - PAYGO, pay-as-you-go). How effective such transfers, and whether the market or other mechanisms to improve this...

Body weight has risen in defiance of health and appearance norms. The social epidemics of overeating and slimming were driven by market forces and the psychology of eating: restrained eating is easily disinhibited by stress. For men, the rise in body weight was associated with the decline of...

Victorian-style public/private standoffs in the United Kingdom have emerged again, with prudential crises in pensions, education, health, communications, and transport. Professor Offer's text constitutes a timely intervention in current debates about the role of the private sector in providing...

This is a completely new interpretation of the First World War. Dr Offer weaves together the economic and social history of the English-speaking world, the Pacific Basin, and Germany, with the development of food production and consumption. He argues that the roots of Germany's defeat went back...

Since the 1940s Americans and Britons have come to enjoy an era of rising material abundance. Yet this has been accompanied by a range of social and personal disorders, including family breakdown, addiction, mental instability, crime, obesity, inequality, economic insecurity, and declining...

During the last three decades, obesity has emerged as a big public health issue in affluent societies. A number of academic and policy approaches have been taken, none of which has been very effective. Most of the academic research, whether biological, epidemiological, social-scientific, or in...

Among affluent countries, those with market-liberal welfare regimes (which are also English-speaking) tend to have the highest prevalence of obesity. The impact of cheap, accessible high-energy food is often invoked in explanation. An alternative approach is that overeating is a response to...

Adam Smith rejected Mandeville's invisible-hand doctrine of ‘private vices, publick benefits'. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments his model of the ‘impartial spectator' is driven not by sympathy for other people, but by their approbation. The innate capacity for sympathy makes...

The recent era of economic turbulence has generated a growing enthusiasm for an increase in new and original economic insights based around the concepts of reciprocity and social enterprise. This stimulating and thought-provoking Handbook not only encourages and supports this growth, but also...