Economics and Society - Research

Capitalism only celebrates success, and it can be difficult to know what to do when it is confronted with failure. This book explores what happens when people go broke, and what the experience of bankruptcy and insolvency is like up close.

Carrie Manning’s illuminating book examines how policies to limit taxation at state and local levels in the US have direct and lasting consequences for equity, accountability, and ultimately for democracy.

This book explores tax and social policy and how they interact with each other. It covers key interactions, debates and challenges of tax and social policy and examines how analyses might be combined and policy options developed for effective delivery in both areas.

Positioning social policy within political economy and social contract debates, Wistow draws on empirical evidence to show how the social contract produces longstanding inequitable consequences in relation to health, place and social mobility in England.

Combining robust evidence with real-life stories, this book reveals the shocking impact of austerity policies on life expectancy and offers an optimistic vision of what can be done to restore life expectancy and reduce health inequality.

Drawing on the perspectives of women and children displaced from Ukraine, as well as local authority policy makers and service providers, this book provides a unique view of the direct and indirect consequences of war in Europe and identifies the best responses to these ‘wicked issues’.

A deep exploration on how questions of time and its organisation affect planning practice, this book questions ‘project speed’: where time to think, deliberate and plan has been squeezed. The authors demonstrate the many benefits of slow planning for the key participants, multiple interests and planning system overall.

Many people living in rural areas face hardship but the UK’s welfare system is poorly adapted to meet their needs, with the COVID-19 pandemic, Brexit and cutbacks exacerbating pressures. This book combines person-based and place-based approaches to tackling rural poverty.

This book scrutinises the narratives created around stealing jobs, opening new debates on the role of automation and migration policies. The authors reveal how the advances in AI and demands for constant flow of immigrant workers eradicate political and working rights, propagating fears over job theft and ownership.

Compelling and robust, this book provides an analysis of challenges in public service outsourcing and considers how to avoid failure in the future.

Examining how barriers to implementing this idea within the existing EU and UK legal frameworks may be addressed, the book formulates actionable policy proposals.

UK and US pension policy expects consistently informed decision-making in finance. Deviating from this is often deemed “irrational”, ignoring uncontrollable factors in individuals’ lives.

Challenging existing policy approaches, this book proposes a fresh perspective on rationality when it comes to financial policy and practices.

Critically assessing growth-based models of innovation policy, this book sparks new debate on the role of responsible innovation.

Drawing on insights from economics, politics, and science and technology studies, it proposes the concept of 'responsible stagnation' as an expansion of present discussions about growth, responsibility and innovation.