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Tax relief and partnership pensions
- Authors:
- LE GRAND Julian, AGULNIK Phil
- Publisher:
- London School of Economics. Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion
- Publication year:
- 1998
- Pagination:
- 2p.
- Place of publication:
- London
The government is currently reviewing pension provision. This monograph examines the current system of state support including tax relief for private pensions (occupational and personal). The authors estimate the costs of these reliefs, point out their weakneses as instruments of social policy and propose an alternative 'partnership' scheme.
Knights, knaves or pawns? Human behaviour and social policy
- Author:
- LE GRAND Julian
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Social Policy, 26(2), April 1997, pp.149-169.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Place of publication:
- Cambridge
There are two fundamental changes currently under way in the welfare state. These are the development of quasi-markets in welfare provision, and the supplementation of 'fiscal' welfare by 'legal' welfare: policies that rely on redistributing income through regulation and other legal devices, instead of through the tax and social security system. This article argues that these changes are in part the result of a fundamental shift in policy-makers' beliefs concerning human motivation and behaviour. People who finance, operate and use the welfare state are no longer assumed to be either public spirited altruists (knights) or passive recipients of state largesse (pawns); instead they are all considered to be in one way or another self-interested (knaves). Argues that since neither the 'new' nor the 'old' set of assumptions are based on evidence, policies based on the new set are as likely to fail as those based on the old. Concludes that what is needed are 'robust' policies that are not dependent on any simple view of human behaviour.