Social Policy Bonds blog: Letter from America

12 June 2006

Letter from America

Somtimes the government machine just seems to be way of obscuring flows of funds. Vested interests, adept at pleading their cause, talk about government funding in the abstract, as if it's inexhaustible. The notions of trade-offs and opportunity costs seldom enter political debate, and it takes an outsider to remind us that they are basic.

This letter from Mr Paul DeRosa in New York appeared in the Financial Times on 12 June:

Europe sacrificing the young to their elders

Sir, Richard Lambert's
prescription for the failures of European universities is to have them charge tuition fees .... But from where will the money come? In nations that take fifty cents of every dollar earned in taxes, money that might otherwise be available to pay fees is taken away and used for pensions, healthcare, and subsidies for loss-making rail systems. The future of European youth is, in effect, being sacrificed so that their elders can retire young with free healthcare.

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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.