Social Policy Bonds blog: Back in the UK

23 June 2005

Back in the UK

...after a few very pleasant days in Prague. I stayed at a modest hotel in Zizkov, a working class district two tram stops to the east of the city centre. At first I was apprehensive about the area, but it did not take much walking around to realise, or be reminded that, 'working class' does not necessarily mean menacing, nihilistic and drug-ridden as it seems to in the UK and increasingly in New Zealand, but can be synonymous with pride and dignity. Passing through customs at the airport back in the UK there are signs headed 'Assaults on Staff' warning us that anyone who beats up a customs official will be prosecuted. The authorities see no need to translate these into languages other than English.

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Social Policy Bonds in the media

13 June 2018: my short article Make Social Impact Bonds Tradeable, appears on the website of Alliance, a magazine for philanthropy and social investment.

25 May 2018: a short article on Social Policy Bonds and their possible application in India, appears on Market Express (India). It is by Dr Ashok V Desai and titled Incentivizing welfare.

9 October 2015: An article by Greg Bearup on the genesis of the Social Policy Bond idea, and application of a version of it in Australia appears in the Weekend Australian Magazine. (The article can also be downloaded as a pdf from here.)

October 2013: Professor Robert Shiller of Yale University, is named as one of the three winners of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics. His Nobel Prize lecture (pdf) delivered on 8 December, mentions Social Policy Bonds. Professor Shiller has for many years encouraged my work on Social Policy Bonds, beginning in late 1996 when he sent me this letter.

3 May 2012: An audio talk by Nobel Prize winner Professor Robert Shiller at the London School of Economics, in which Social Policy Bonds are briefly mentioned, is available here.

18 April 2012: Robert Shiller, Professor of Economics at Yale University, mentions Social Policy Bonds in his new book Finance and the Good Society. He also mentions the concept in a Huffington Post article. It's the eighth of his Ten Ways Finance Can Be a Force for Good in Society, and is also mentioned in a short profile piece about Professor Shiller.