Tackling Inequality

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Why I am an Economist

   1. Why I am an Economist

      • Richard Layard

      Pages 1-12

3. Education and Inequality

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 13-13

      PDF

   2. Introduction

      • Richard Layard

      Pages 15-19

   3. On Measuring the Redistribution of Lifetime Income (1977)

      • Richard Layard

      Pages 20-50

   4. Family Income Distribution: Explanation and Policy Evaluation (1979)

      • A. Zabalza

      Pages 51-81

   5. Education versus Cash Redistribution: The Lifetime Context (1979)

      • Richard Layard

      Pages 82-90

   6. The Causes of Poverty (1979)

      • D. Piachaud, M. Stewart

      Pages 91-104

   7. The Effect of Collective Bargaining on Relative and Absolute Wages (1978)

      • David Metcalf, Stephen Nickell

      Pages 105-125

   8. Human Capital and Earnings: British Evidence and a Critique (1979)

      • G. Psacharopoulos

      Pages 126-154

   9. The Screening Hypothesis and the Returns to Education (1974)

      • G. Psacharopoulos

      Pages 155-171

   10. Capital–Skill Complementarity, Income Distribution, and Output Accounting (1975)

       • P. Fallon

       Pages 172-197

   11. Married Women’s Participation and Hours (1980)

       • M. Barton, A. Zabalza

       Pages 198-227

   12. Why are More Women Working in Britain? (1985)

       • H. Joshi, S. Owen

       Pages 228-257

   13. On the Use of Distributional Weights in Social Cost-Benefit Analysis (1980)

       • Richard Layard

       Pages 258-265

   14. Human Satisfactions and Public Policy (1980)

       • Richard Layard

       Pages 266-282

   15. Economic Theories of Educational Planning (1972)

       • Richard Layard

       Pages 283-309

   16. University Efficiency and University Finance (1973)

       • R. Jackman

       Pages 310-331

   17. The Cost-effectiveness of the New Media in Higher Education (1974)

       • M. Oatey

       Pages 332-353

   18. The Pool of Ability (1963)

       • Richard Layard

       Pages 354-367

Richard Layard is one of Britain's foremost applied economists, whose work has had a profound impact on the policy debate in Britain and abroad. This book contains his most influential articles on education, equality and income distribution and on the lessons of economic transition in Eastern Europe. It is published along with a companion volume. Inequality argues that lifetime inequality is the basic inequality we should worry about. In this context education is a powerful instrument of redistribution, as well as a national investment. Cash redistribution has efficiency costs which can be calculated, but it may also serve to discourage inefficient over-work arising from each person's efforts to earn more than his neighbour. A final series of essays is based on Layard's recent work on reform strategies in Russia and Poland. The book opens with Richard Layard's personal credo 'Why I became an economist'.

• education
• efficiency
• employment
• income distribution
• inequality
• lifelong learning
• participation
• poverty
• strategy
• transition
• unemployment

• Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

  Richard Layard

RICHARD LAYARD is Director of the LSE's Centre for Economic Performance. He has worked for many years on the problems of unemployment and inflation and is co-author of the influential book Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market. In 1985 he founded the Employment Institute and was its Chairman from 1987-92. During the 1970s he worked on income distribution, co-authoring The Causes of Poverty for the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and was a part-time consultant to the Treasury. During the 1980s he was chairman of the European Commission's Macroeconomics Policy Group, and then co-chairman of the World Economy Group set up by the UN University. He was a member of the Commission on Public Policy and British Business whose report Promoting Prosperity was published in 1997. Following the General Election of 1997, he has worked as a consultant to the Department of Education and Employment.

In November 1991 Yegor Gaidar invited him to become an adviser to the Russian government's economic staff. He has acted in that capacity ever since and heads a team of 3 Westerners and 3 Russians working in Moscow with the economic staff of the government. The team produces Russian Economic Trends, a comprehensive monthly review of the Russian economy.

Policies and ethics