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IEA

February 1, 2017
Published by IEA on February 1, 2017
Categories

Getting the State Out of Pre-school & Childcare

Decisions on childcare arrangements were largely a private matter until the 1990s. A political consensus has since arisen that government action is needed to raise the quality of provision, to make it more affordable and to support parental labour market attachment.
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January 1, 2017
Published by IEA on January 1, 2017
Categories

Balancing the Economy: the Hand of Government or the Invisible Hand?

The past record of industrial policy in the UK is a catalogue of waste and ineffectiveness. By the end of the 1970s it was widely accepted that the strategy of attempting to pick winners and promoting national champions was fundamentally flawed.
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January 1, 2017
Published by IEA on January 1, 2017
Categories

Obesity and the Public Purse

This is the first study to estimate the annual savings that overweight and obese people bring UK taxpayers by dying prematurely (in 2016 prices). Ignoring these savings leads to substantial overestimation of the true burden of elevated body mass index (BMI) to the taxpayer.
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November 4, 2016
Published by IEA on November 4, 2016
Categories

Hire Authority

In recent years, smartphone-enabled applications such as Uber have gone a long way to resolve the market imperfections which gave rise to taxi regulation in the past. GPS technology and Big Data have spurred market innovations which reduce informational asymmetries, facilitating transactions between passengers and drivers.
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February 2, 2015
Published by IEA on February 2, 2015
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Brexit: Directions for Britain Outside the EU

It is quite possible that there will be a referendum on whether Britain should leave the European Union in the next few years. However, few people have well-formed views on what they believe should happen if we leave the EU.
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September 1, 2014
Published by IEA on September 1, 2014
Categories

Advertising in a Free Society

In practice it is impossible to distinguish between advertising that is intended to be persuasive and advertising that is intended to be informative. Persuasive advertising normally has information content and even basic information provided by a company about its products will normally be intended to make consumers more interested in the product.
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June 1, 2014
Published by IEA on June 1, 2014
Categories

Punishing the Majority: Problems With Alcohol Policy in UK

Alcohol policy in Britain and many other countries aims to reduce per capita alcohol consumption in the belief that this will inevitably reduce heavy and harmful drinking. The cornerstone policies of this approach are advertising bans, licensing restrictions and higher taxes.
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March 1, 2014
Published by IEA on March 1, 2014
Categories

The Government Debt Iceberg

Western governments have developed unfunded social insurance programmes where retiree benefits are paid for from the taxes of the working-age population. This means that an ageing population leads to 
rising expenditures that cannot be covered without increasing taxes on the young.
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EPICENTER publications and contributions from our member think tanks are designed to promote the discussion of economic issues and the role of markets in solving economic and social problems. As with all EPICENTER publications, the views expressed here are those of the author and not EPICENTER or its member think tanks (which have no corporate view).

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EPICENTER publications and contributions from our member think tanks are designed to promote the discussion of economic issues and the role of markets in solving economic and social problems. As with all EPICENTER publications, the views expressed here are those of the author and not EPICENTER or its member think tanks (which have no corporate view).