Monetary analysis has been out of fashion lately. However recent economic and inflation dynamics call for renewed attention. Since 2021, broad money growth has been associated with high inflation and overheated production. Central banks and academia should pay more attention to monetary analysis to understand the economic dynamics and formulate better monetary policy. This article briefly reviews the monetary analysis practices of major central banks and then focuses on China as a case study. We set out the features of the balance sheet of depository corporations, and use it as a basic framework for monetary analysis. There are seven money-supply channels of broad money, which fluctuate because of seasonality, demand conditions, regulation, and financial institutions micro-managing indicators. Any change of broad money will be reflected through the balance sheet. Applications include analysing long-term evolution of money supply channels, analysing and predicting monetary growth, recording major financial incidents, and so forth.
{"title":"Using the balance sheet framework for monetary analysis: The case of China","authors":"Wenzhe Li","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12669","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12669","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Monetary analysis has been out of fashion lately. However recent economic and inflation dynamics call for renewed attention. Since 2021, broad money growth has been associated with high inflation and overheated production. Central banks and academia should pay more attention to monetary analysis to understand the economic dynamics and formulate better monetary policy. This article briefly reviews the monetary analysis practices of major central banks and then focuses on China as a case study. We set out the features of the balance sheet of depository corporations, and use it as a basic framework for monetary analysis. There are seven money-supply channels of broad money, which fluctuate because of seasonality, demand conditions, regulation, and financial institutions micro-managing indicators. Any change of broad money will be reflected through the balance sheet. Applications include analysing long-term evolution of money supply channels, analysing and predicting monetary growth, recording major financial incidents, and so forth.</p>","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"44 3","pages":"501-526"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142435225","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The road to freedom: Economics and the good society By Joseph E Stiglitz. Allen Lane. 2024. pp. 356. £25.00 (hbk). ISBN: 978–0241687888. £13.99 (ebk). ISBN: 978-1802065367","authors":"Cento Veljanovski","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12661","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12661","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"44 3","pages":"640-642"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142435047","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We examine the potential secondary impacts of raising the minimum wage in a jurisdiction on the efficiency of its foster care placement system. We employ the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) restricted-access dataset representing all children in the US foster care system for the years 2000–21. We calculate placement efficiency as the number of yearly moves experienced by a child in the foster care system, with a decrease in the number of placements interpreted as benefitting children both psychologically and behaviourally. This increase in stability benefits the foster parents and corresponds to a smaller financial strain on the public. After including various controls and state-year fixed effects, our Tobit and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) analyses find that increased minimum wages are significantly associated with lower levels of placement disruption. We take this as promising initial descriptive evidence for the secondary effects of the minimum wage on reducing the financial burden, and increasing the placement efficiency, of the foster care system.
{"title":"Minimum wages and foster care placement disruption","authors":"Florence Neymotin, William Hawks","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12671","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12671","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We examine the potential secondary impacts of raising the minimum wage in a jurisdiction on the efficiency of its foster care placement system. We employ the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) restricted-access dataset representing all children in the US foster care system for the years 2000–21. We calculate placement efficiency as the number of yearly moves experienced by a child in the foster care system, with a decrease in the number of placements interpreted as benefitting children both psychologically and behaviourally. This increase in stability benefits the foster parents and corresponds to a smaller financial strain on the public. After including various controls and state-year fixed effects, our Tobit and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) analyses find that increased minimum wages are significantly associated with lower levels of placement disruption. We take this as promising initial descriptive evidence for the secondary effects of the minimum wage on reducing the financial burden, and increasing the placement efficiency, of the foster care system.</p>","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"44 3","pages":"540-560"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142435570","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The reckoning: From the second slavery to abolition, 1776–1888 By Robin Blackburn. Verso. 2024. pp. 544. £35.00 (hbk). ISBN: 978-1804293416. £15.00 (ebk). ISBN: 978-1804293430","authors":"Stephen Wilkinson","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12667","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12667","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"44 3","pages":"632-634"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142435216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>There is extensive evidence of the negative effects of the fiscal size of government – the spending, taxing, and ownership roles of the state – on economic performance (Bergh & Henrekson, <span>2011</span>). But how do governments get big? As the size of government is measured as part of the Fraser Institute's <i>Economic Freedom of the World</i> index, we observe a wide variety of countries as having very large governments. We see the Nordic countries, which are among to be the most democratic in the world. We see a variety of autocracies. We see small countries like Lesotho, Eswatini, and Timor-Leste. When governments spend and own a large proportion of the economy, is there any ready explanation as to why?</p><p>The approach here is narrative-based, though informed strongly by data. It is likely that that a large number of variables influence the size of government, and many of them may influence different aspects of government size. Factors that cause a government to begin nationalising industries may be different from the factors that cause it to expand its pension system, for example. In the academic literature, there are many explanations that very plausibly tell us why some states are a bit bigger or a bit smaller, on the margin.<sup>1</sup> What we wish to do instead is to identify commonalities among groups of countries with very large governments, where the commonality plausibly has a direct pathway to the countries' size of governments. For simplicity's sake, we are considering the top quartile of countries with the largest governments, or 42 countries.</p><p>Again in contrast to the academic literature, we are not even making a claim to the ‘average treatment effect’ of the three variables we eventually identify. None of them is a mechanical law and each narrative has a counter-example. Rather, we wish to establish certain basic descriptive facts concerning the size of government. A great deal of confusion has arisen as a result of the lack of clarity regarding such basic descriptive facts; for instance the suggestion that the size of government should be removed from <i>Economic Freedom of the World</i> because of its lack of positive correlation with the rest of the index (Ott, <span>2018</span>; cf. Murphy, <span>2022a</span>). And although the issue is beginning to get rectified, there has long been confusion about the sustainability of Nordic ‘socialism’ (Lawson & Powell, <span>2019</span>, pp. 5–14; Christensen et al., <span>2023</span>). In this article, we hope to similarly facilitate improved discourse concerning the nature of the size of government.</p><p>Today, <i>Economic Freedom of the World</i> scores 165 jurisdictions. Of those, the top quartile of countries in terms of the size of government includes countries that are wealthy and countries that remain undeveloped. Jurisdictions rarely have uniformly low or high measures when it comes to the size of government as some components and subcomponents are negati
有大量证据表明，政府的财政规模--国家的支出、税收和所有权作用--会对经济表现产生负面影响（Bergh & Henrekson, 2011）。但政府是如何变大的呢？由于政府规模是弗雷泽研究所世界经济自由度指数（Economic Freedom of the World index）的衡量指标之一，我们发现许多国家的政府规模都非常大。我们看到北欧国家是世界上最民主的国家之一。我们看到各种专制国家。我们看到莱索托、埃斯瓦提尼和东帝汶这样的小国。当政府支出并拥有经济的大部分时，是否有现成的解释来说明原因？影响政府规模的变量可能很多，其中许多变量可能会影响政府规模的不同方面。例如，导致政府开始将工业国有化的因素可能不同于导致政府扩大养老金制度的因素。1 我们要做的是找出政府规模非常大的国家群体之间的共性，这些共性可能与这些国家的政府规模有直接的联系。为简单起见，我们考虑的是政府规模最大的国家的前四分位数，即 42 个国家。同样，与学术文献不同的是，我们甚至没有对我们最终确定的三个变量的 "平均治疗效果 "提出要求。它们都不是机械的定律，而且每种说法都有一个反例。相反，我们希望确定一些有关政府规模的基本描述性事实。由于对这些基本描述性事实缺乏清晰的认识，产生了大量的混乱；例如，有人建议将政府规模从《世界经济自由度》中删除，因为它与该指数的其他部分缺乏正相关性（Ott，2018 年；参见 Murphy，2022a）。尽管这一问题正开始得到纠正，但长期以来，人们对北欧 "社会主义 "的可持续性一直感到困惑（Lawson & Powell, 2019, pp.5-14；Christensen et al.，2023）。在本文中，我们希望同样促进有关政府规模性质的讨论。其中，政府规模排名前四分之一的国家包括富裕国家和不发达国家。在政府规模方面，各辖区的衡量标准很少一致地偏低或偏高，因为某些组成部分和子组成部分之间存在负相关。1A 和 1B（政府消费以及转移支付和补贴）往往同时存在（R = 0.41）。西欧富裕国家的高消费以及广泛的转移支付和补贴通常意味着这些国家在这些组成部分中得分较低。成分 1C 和 1E（政府投资和政府对资产的所有权）也趋于一致（R = 0.46）。从历史上看，我们可能会发现一些国家涉足社会主义，但现在这两项得分较低，表明一个国家以自然资源开采为主。此外，和平基金会的脆弱国家指数（Fund for Peace's Fragile States Index）和《经济学家》资料处的民主指数（Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index）提供了直观的分类方法，使我们能够对有关国家的国家和政治体制进行定性。脆弱国家指数将国家划分为 "可持续"、"稳定"、"警告 "和 "警戒 "等不同等级（特纳等人，2023 年）。民主指数将国家划分为 "完全民主"、"有缺陷的民主"、"混合政权 "和 "专制政权"（EIU，2023 年，第 4 页）。我们可以利用这些指数来描述每个国家的制度特征。正如下文所示，政府发展壮大的两个主要途径主要是瓦格纳定律和资源诅咒。瓦格纳定律（Karceski & Kiser, 2020; Lamartina & Zaghini, 2011; Murphy, 2022b）指出，随着经济表现的改善，政府支出在经济中所占的份额也会增加。这就是欧洲大型福利国家的现成解释。自然资源诅咒有几种不同的说法（如
{"title":"Accounting for large fiscal government size","authors":"Ryan H Murphy","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12677","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12677","url":null,"abstract":"<p>There is extensive evidence of the negative effects of the fiscal size of government – the spending, taxing, and ownership roles of the state – on economic performance (Bergh & Henrekson, <span>2011</span>). But how do governments get big? As the size of government is measured as part of the Fraser Institute's <i>Economic Freedom of the World</i> index, we observe a wide variety of countries as having very large governments. We see the Nordic countries, which are among to be the most democratic in the world. We see a variety of autocracies. We see small countries like Lesotho, Eswatini, and Timor-Leste. When governments spend and own a large proportion of the economy, is there any ready explanation as to why?</p><p>The approach here is narrative-based, though informed strongly by data. It is likely that that a large number of variables influence the size of government, and many of them may influence different aspects of government size. Factors that cause a government to begin nationalising industries may be different from the factors that cause it to expand its pension system, for example. In the academic literature, there are many explanations that very plausibly tell us why some states are a bit bigger or a bit smaller, on the margin.<sup>1</sup> What we wish to do instead is to identify commonalities among groups of countries with very large governments, where the commonality plausibly has a direct pathway to the countries' size of governments. For simplicity's sake, we are considering the top quartile of countries with the largest governments, or 42 countries.</p><p>Again in contrast to the academic literature, we are not even making a claim to the ‘average treatment effect’ of the three variables we eventually identify. None of them is a mechanical law and each narrative has a counter-example. Rather, we wish to establish certain basic descriptive facts concerning the size of government. A great deal of confusion has arisen as a result of the lack of clarity regarding such basic descriptive facts; for instance the suggestion that the size of government should be removed from <i>Economic Freedom of the World</i> because of its lack of positive correlation with the rest of the index (Ott, <span>2018</span>; cf. Murphy, <span>2022a</span>). And although the issue is beginning to get rectified, there has long been confusion about the sustainability of Nordic ‘socialism’ (Lawson & Powell, <span>2019</span>, pp. 5–14; Christensen et al., <span>2023</span>). In this article, we hope to similarly facilitate improved discourse concerning the nature of the size of government.</p><p>Today, <i>Economic Freedom of the World</i> scores 165 jurisdictions. Of those, the top quartile of countries in terms of the size of government includes countries that are wealthy and countries that remain undeveloped. Jurisdictions rarely have uniformly low or high measures when it comes to the size of government as some components and subcomponents are negati","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"44 3","pages":"589-600"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecaf.12677","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142435054","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>The successful Apollo programme, which achieved the first (and later five more) moon landings in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was followed by several lost decades for manned space travel. Despite NASA's accomplishments in unmanned space exploration such as the development of the Webb Space Telescope, progress in manned space exploration ground to a halt for decades. The shuttle programme, which ran from 1981 to 2011, failed to live up to expectations. A new study from Matthew H. Hersch arrives at a sobering conclusion: “By every measure, the shuttle had fallen short of even the modest hopes that had surrounded it. And the shuttle remained flying only because every effort to replace it with a better-winged, reusable craft also failed” (<span>2023</span>, p. 7).</p><p>Only the emergence of private space companies such as Elon Musk's Space X and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has brought a new dynamic to the space industry. According to a study by the World Economic Forum (<span>2024</span>), the space economy is expected to grow to US$1.8 trillion by 2035. Chad Anderson from the US investment firm Space Capital estimates: “Over a quarter of a trillion dollars has been invested into nearly 2,000 unique space companies over the past decade alone” (<span>2023</span>, p. xx).</p><p>However, with the emergence of a new, dynamic private space industry, criticism is also growing.</p><p>Elon Musk argues that mankind essentially has a duty to colonise other planets because sooner or later an asteroid impact could lead to the extinction of our species. Researchers today widely concur that the dinosaurs – along with 75 per cent of other life on Earth – were wiped out by a meteorite strike 66 million years ago. There is plenty of evidence of past asteroid collisions; our planet Earth bears the visible scars of countless impacts in the form of craters that can still be seen today. An asteroid with a diameter of 30–50 metres hit Arizona 50,000 years ago with 150 times the force of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Asteroids are often smaller, such as the one that hit the Pacific Ocean on 1 October 1990, although even that had the same explosive power as a Nagasaki bomb. If it had hit a populated area, such as a city, tens or even hundreds of thousands of people would have died.</p><p>It's not a question of whether another asteroid capable of causing mass extinction will hit the Earth at some point, but when. While science fiction movies such as <i>Armageddon</i> depict scenarios in which asteroids are successfully destroyed or diverted from their paths, the reality of such a feat would be far more complex. For Elon Musk, the human settlement of Mars is a life insurance policy against the extinction of our species and a first step on our journey towards becoming an interplanetary civilisation.</p><p>The feasibility of colonising Mars remains a topic of debate throughout the scientific community. Robert Zubrin, founder and president of the Mars Society, and
{"title":"Anti-capitalists, post-colonialists, and the controversy about the ‘colonisation of space’","authors":"Rainer Zitelmann","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12672","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12672","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The successful Apollo programme, which achieved the first (and later five more) moon landings in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was followed by several lost decades for manned space travel. Despite NASA's accomplishments in unmanned space exploration such as the development of the Webb Space Telescope, progress in manned space exploration ground to a halt for decades. The shuttle programme, which ran from 1981 to 2011, failed to live up to expectations. A new study from Matthew H. Hersch arrives at a sobering conclusion: “By every measure, the shuttle had fallen short of even the modest hopes that had surrounded it. And the shuttle remained flying only because every effort to replace it with a better-winged, reusable craft also failed” (<span>2023</span>, p. 7).</p><p>Only the emergence of private space companies such as Elon Musk's Space X and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has brought a new dynamic to the space industry. According to a study by the World Economic Forum (<span>2024</span>), the space economy is expected to grow to US$1.8 trillion by 2035. Chad Anderson from the US investment firm Space Capital estimates: “Over a quarter of a trillion dollars has been invested into nearly 2,000 unique space companies over the past decade alone” (<span>2023</span>, p. xx).</p><p>However, with the emergence of a new, dynamic private space industry, criticism is also growing.</p><p>Elon Musk argues that mankind essentially has a duty to colonise other planets because sooner or later an asteroid impact could lead to the extinction of our species. Researchers today widely concur that the dinosaurs – along with 75 per cent of other life on Earth – were wiped out by a meteorite strike 66 million years ago. There is plenty of evidence of past asteroid collisions; our planet Earth bears the visible scars of countless impacts in the form of craters that can still be seen today. An asteroid with a diameter of 30–50 metres hit Arizona 50,000 years ago with 150 times the force of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Asteroids are often smaller, such as the one that hit the Pacific Ocean on 1 October 1990, although even that had the same explosive power as a Nagasaki bomb. If it had hit a populated area, such as a city, tens or even hundreds of thousands of people would have died.</p><p>It's not a question of whether another asteroid capable of causing mass extinction will hit the Earth at some point, but when. While science fiction movies such as <i>Armageddon</i> depict scenarios in which asteroids are successfully destroyed or diverted from their paths, the reality of such a feat would be far more complex. For Elon Musk, the human settlement of Mars is a life insurance policy against the extinction of our species and a first step on our journey towards becoming an interplanetary civilisation.</p><p>The feasibility of colonising Mars remains a topic of debate throughout the scientific community. Robert Zubrin, founder and president of the Mars Society, and","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"44 3","pages":"572-581"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecaf.12672","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142435055","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We examine the relationship between industry-specific regulations and startup birth rates (entry) and startup ‘deaths’ (closings) in the United States and Canada during 2012–19. Our sample contains data on thousands of active and closed technology startups in the United States and Canada that were founded between January 2012 and June 2019. We use the Mercatus Center's RegData database to capture the intensity of national-level regulations. Our findings suggest that more regulated industries may exhibit lower rates of entry and that more regulated industries are associated with a greater likelihood of a startup closing. These findings seem more robust for the US than for Canada. We discuss startup funding as a potential mechanism by which regulation may impact startup closings, using our fieldwork interviews with over 100 technology startup executives and venture capital investors.
{"title":"What is the relationship between industry-specific regulation and technology startups?","authors":"Liya Palagashvili, Paola A Suarez","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12674","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12674","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We examine the relationship between industry-specific regulations and startup birth rates (entry) and startup ‘deaths’ (closings) in the United States and Canada during 2012–19. Our sample contains data on thousands of active and closed technology startups in the United States and Canada that were founded between January 2012 and June 2019. We use the Mercatus Center's RegData database to capture the intensity of national-level regulations. Our findings suggest that more regulated industries may exhibit lower rates of entry and that more regulated industries are associated with a greater likelihood of a startup closing. These findings seem more robust for the US than for Canada. We discuss startup funding as a potential mechanism by which regulation may impact startup closings, using our fieldwork interviews with over 100 technology startup executives and venture capital investors.</p>","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"44 3","pages":"465-486"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecaf.12674","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142435913","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p> <span>Peter Dwyer</span>, <span>Lisa Scullion</span>, <span>Katy Jones</span>, <span>Jenny McNeill</span> & <span>Alastair B. R. Stewart</span>, <span><i>The Impacts of Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, Support and Behavioural Change</i></span>. Policy Press. <span>2022</span>. pp. <span>218</span>. £80 (hbk). ISBN: 978-1447320111. £26.99 (pbk). ISBN: 978-1447343738. £26.99 (ebk). ISBN: 978-1447343745</p><p>Behavioural conditions have always been attached to the receipt of social security benefits for the UK's unemployed. These conditions have increased in number and scope in recent decades, alongside heavier sanctions for non-compliance, as part of a trend across OECD countries (Watts & Fitzpatrick, <span>2018</span>). The UK Welfare Reform Act <span>2012</span> was a landmark in this process. Its “work search requirement” obliges claimants of unemployment benefit – now Universal Credit (UC), previously Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) – to take “all reasonable action” and “any particular action specified by the Secretary of State, for the purpose of obtaining work” (s. 17). In practice this means that a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) ‘Work Coach’ can now compel an unemployed UC claimant, under threat of a financial penalty, to apply for a job of their choosing. Those who leave a job voluntarily and then apply for UC can now also face a “sanction” (s. 49).</p><p>Heralding the 2012 Act, its architect, the then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith (<span>2010</span>), argued in a speech that “reinforced conditionality” to ensure claimants “take reasonable offers of work” was necessitated by the benefit system's regrettable drift towards one that “Beveridge warned against”, in which “idleness” had become “institutionalised” (see Beveridge, <span>1942</span>, p. 58). In the same speech, he claimed that in the 2000s British companies had been “unable to get British people to fill” some job vacancies, so “workers from overseas stepped in”. Around this time, Duncan Smith referred to a television documentary in which some unemployed benefit claimants would not get “on a bus” to a nearby city to widen their job search (BBC, <span>2010</span>). The issues Duncan Smith referred to may be persisting; there were 5.6 million UK people of working age on out-of-work benefits in December 2023, just below the record high of 5.9 million in 1993, despite 0.9 million unfilled job vacancies (see Andrews, <span>2024</span>).</p><p>This review article focuses on the £2 million Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded ‘Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, Support and Behaviour Change’ research programme (often abbreviated to ‘WelCond’). Led by Peter Dwyer, a Professor of Social Policy at the University of York, and involving academics from six universities, it ran from 2013 to 2018, just as the 2012 Act's new policies were being slowly rolled out across the country. The project's main purpose was to test
{"title":"Red flags but no yellow cards: The ‘WelCond’ research on welfare conditionality and unemployed people","authors":"Andrew Dunn","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12663","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12663","url":null,"abstract":"<p>\u0000 <span>Peter Dwyer</span>, <span>Lisa Scullion</span>, <span>Katy Jones</span>, <span>Jenny McNeill</span> & <span>Alastair B. R. Stewart</span>, <span><i>The Impacts of Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, Support and Behavioural Change</i></span>. Policy Press. <span>2022</span>. pp. <span>218</span>. £80 (hbk). ISBN: 978-1447320111. £26.99 (pbk). ISBN: 978-1447343738. £26.99 (ebk). ISBN: 978-1447343745</p><p>Behavioural conditions have always been attached to the receipt of social security benefits for the UK's unemployed. These conditions have increased in number and scope in recent decades, alongside heavier sanctions for non-compliance, as part of a trend across OECD countries (Watts & Fitzpatrick, <span>2018</span>). The UK Welfare Reform Act <span>2012</span> was a landmark in this process. Its “work search requirement” obliges claimants of unemployment benefit – now Universal Credit (UC), previously Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) – to take “all reasonable action” and “any particular action specified by the Secretary of State, for the purpose of obtaining work” (s. 17). In practice this means that a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) ‘Work Coach’ can now compel an unemployed UC claimant, under threat of a financial penalty, to apply for a job of their choosing. Those who leave a job voluntarily and then apply for UC can now also face a “sanction” (s. 49).</p><p>Heralding the 2012 Act, its architect, the then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith (<span>2010</span>), argued in a speech that “reinforced conditionality” to ensure claimants “take reasonable offers of work” was necessitated by the benefit system's regrettable drift towards one that “Beveridge warned against”, in which “idleness” had become “institutionalised” (see Beveridge, <span>1942</span>, p. 58). In the same speech, he claimed that in the 2000s British companies had been “unable to get British people to fill” some job vacancies, so “workers from overseas stepped in”. Around this time, Duncan Smith referred to a television documentary in which some unemployed benefit claimants would not get “on a bus” to a nearby city to widen their job search (BBC, <span>2010</span>). The issues Duncan Smith referred to may be persisting; there were 5.6 million UK people of working age on out-of-work benefits in December 2023, just below the record high of 5.9 million in 1993, despite 0.9 million unfilled job vacancies (see Andrews, <span>2024</span>).</p><p>This review article focuses on the £2 million Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded ‘Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, Support and Behaviour Change’ research programme (often abbreviated to ‘WelCond’). Led by Peter Dwyer, a Professor of Social Policy at the University of York, and involving academics from six universities, it ran from 2013 to 2018, just as the 2012 Act's new policies were being slowly rolled out across the country. The project's main purpose was to test ","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"44 3","pages":"602-613"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecaf.12663","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142435563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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