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Public spending in the UK in 2008/9 amounted to over £10,000 per person or about 43% of national income (Crawford, Emmerson and Tetlow 2009) while net receipts from tax and social security contributions exceeded £8,000 per person or about 35% of national income. These transfers of resources between individuals and the state, either as cash payments or as supply of goods, affect individual standards of living and do so in ways that differ markedly between different households. Assessing the impact of government activity on the distribution of household living standards is essential to the evaluation of public service provision but raises challenging conceptual issues that we discuss in this report.

This paper develops an approach to studying how bias in favor of one party due to the pattern of electoral districting affects policy choice. We tie a commonly used measure of electoral bias to the theory of party competition and show how this affects party strategy in theory. The usefulness of the approach is illustrated using data on local government in England. The results suggest that reducing electoral bias leads parties to moderate their policies.

This paper develops a new approach to studying how electoral bias in favor of one party due to the pattern of districting a¤ects policy choice. We tie a commonly used measure of bias to the theory of party compe- tition and show how this a¤ects policy choice. The usefulness of the approach is illustrated using data on local government in England. The results suggest that reducing electoral bias leads parties to moderate their policies.

This paper examines data on the racial composition and financial and sporting performance of professional English soccer teams between 1974 and 1993. In an earlier paper, Szymanski showed that teams with an above average proportion of black players would tend to perform better on average that would have been expected given the aggregate wage bills of these clubs. Since players are more or less freely traded in soccer this presents strong market‐based evidence of discrimination. In the present paper we explore the source of such discrimination. In particular we are concerned to test the hypothesis that discrimination is attributable to the fans rather than the owners. If fans were racially prejudiced then the owners of a team might expect to generate a smaller marginal revenue product from a black player compared to an equally skilled white player. We assess the presence of fan discrimination by examining relationships between attendance, revenues, performance and the proportion of black players in the team. We also incorporate evidence regarding statements of racial prejudice (from the British Social Attitudes Survey) in particular regions. We find little evidence that the discrimination against black players has its source in fan discrimination.

The authors make use of a data set, collected by one of them, on characteristics of nongovernment organizations (NGOs) in Bombay, to develop a data-based typology for urban NGOs. Application of statistical classification techniques points to three main dimensions of variation in the features of urban NGOs, which are interpreted as reflecting scale, scope, and stance towards local involvement and funding sources. These factors are used to interpret a clustering of Bombay NGOs into four relatively homogeneous groupings. In the arising typology the sector is divided into three types of service-delivery NGO, which are distinguished mainly by scale of operation and funding source, and a fourth group of NGOs which are involved more in policy advocacy.

This paper examines data on the racial composition & financial & sporting performance of professional English soccer teams between 1974 & 1993. In an earlier paper, Szymanski showed that teams with an above average proportion of black players would tend to perform better on average than would have been expected given the aggregate wage bills of these clubs. Since players are more or less freely traded in soccer, this presents strong market-based evidence of discrimination. In the present paper, we explore the source of such discrimination. In particular, we test the hypothesis that discrimination is attributable to the fans rather than the owners. If fans were racially prejudiced then the owners of a team might expect to generate a smaller marginal revenue product from a black player compared to an equally skilled white player. We assess the presence of fan discrimination by examining relationships between attendance, revenues, performance, & the proportion of black players on the team. We also incorporate evidence regarding statements of racial prejudice (from the British Social Attitudes Survey) in particular regions. We find little evidence that the discrimination against black players has its source in fan discrimination. 10 Tables, 1 Figure, 24 References. Adapted from the source document.

Abstract
In this paper we distinguish between three channels that determine attitudes to further immigration: labour market concerns, welfare concerns, and racial or cultural concerns. Our analysis is based on the British Social Attitudes Survey. A unique feature of the survey is that it includes questions on attitudes towards immigration from different origin countries, with populations differing in ethnic similarity to the resident population. It also contains sets of questions relating directly to the labour market, benefit expenditure and welfare concerns, and racial and cultural prejudice. Based on this unique data source, we specify and estimate a multiple factor model that allows comparison of the relative magnitude of association of attitudes to further immigration with the three channels, as well as comparison in responses across potential immigrant groups of different origin. Our results suggest that, overall, welfare concerns play a more important role in determination of attitudes to further immigration than labour market concerns, with their relative magnitude differing across potential emigration regions and characteristics of the respondent. In addition, we find strong evidence that racial or cultural prejudice is an important component to attitudes towards immigration; however, this is restricted to immigration from countries with ethnically different populations.

The measurement of household welfare is one of the most compelling yet demanding areas in economics. To place the analysis of inequality and poverty within an economic framework where individuals are making decisions about current and lifetime incomes and expenditures is a difficult task, made all the more challenging by the complexity of the decision-making process in which households are involved and the variety of constraints they face. This 1994 book examines the conceptual and practical difficulties of making inferences from observed behaviour. It addresses the problems of making comparisons across a range of very different households and discusses how data for such comparisons should be collected. The contributions, from experts from Europe, North America and Australia, have the unifying theme that there is a strong relationship between theoretical concepts from microeconomics and the appropriate use of micro data in evaluating household welfare