Social Policy Bonds blog: Try all else

17 May 2007

Try all else

John Bolton 'who still has close links to the Bush administration':

And if all else fails, if the choice is between a nuclear-capable Iran and the use of force, then I think we need to look at the use of force. Source

My suggestion: try 'all else'. Decide and define what we want to achieve - a bomb-free Iran? a reasonable regime in Tehran? - and contract out that achievement to the market. Issue 'Iran Peace Bonds' that would become valuable in the event of nuclear peace in the Middle East. Give people incentives to achieve such a peace. This may sound radical, but the war alternative on offer would inflict much misery without any guarantee of success. Imporantly too, most in the west appear to be opposed to it. Iran Peace Bonds, depending on who backed them and how much finance they put up, would merely countervail the existing incentives for arms manufacturers and certain government bureaucracies to make war.

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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.