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Health economics took off in 1970 or thereabouts, just after the take-off date for the economics of education. Although early health economics made use of human capital theory as did the economics of education, it soon took a different route inspired by Arrow's work on medical insurance. The economics of education failed to live up to its promising start in the 1960s and gradually ran out of steam. The economies of health, however, has made steady theoretical and empirical progress since 1970 principally in coming to grips with the implications of supplier-induced demand and the difficulties of evaluating health care outcomes. Some of the best work on British health economics has been in the area of normative welfare economies, defining more precisely what is meant by equity in the delivery of health care and measuring the degree of success in achieving equity. Recent efforts to reform the NHS by the introduction of "quasi markets" have improved the quality and quantity of health care in Britain. In short, British health economics has been characterized by the use of Pigovian piecemeal rather than Paretian global welfare economics, retaining a distinctive style that sets it apart from American health economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This was a study of the UK labour market for professional economists. As we started to analyse the demand and supply of economists in the United Kingdom, we soon discovered that published data were inadequate for the purpose. We therefore decided to mount a survey of staff and students in all departments/schools/faculties/divisions of economics in universities, polytechnics, colleges of higher education and Scottish Central Institutions to obtain information about the supply of economists. On the demand side, we used published and unpublished data on the `First Destinations' of economics graduates and we also conducted structured interviews with a non-random sample of leading employers of economists and careers officers. From both the survey and the interviews we gained indications of salaries; in addition, we looked at what little work has been done by others on the earnings of economists. It was on the basis of this evidence that we reached our conclusions. This is a summary of a report commissioned by the Royal Economic Society in 1987 and published by the RES in 1989. Page references in the text refer to the published report. The opinions expressed in it are ours and not those of the RES. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a series of abstracts on various topics of economics published in the June 1964 issue of the periodical 'The Journal of Economic History.' Assessment of economic thought before the period of economist Adam Smith; Appraisal of relative prices in the 19th century; Problems in the development of industries in Hungary; Analysis of the 'Poor Law Report of 1834,' in Great Britain.

This paper summarizes the results of two recent efforts to estimate rates of return to educational investment in Great Britain. Because there is no basic source of age-education-income data such as is available in the U.S., the analysis employs data which are by-products of several surveys conducted for other reasons. Consequently, rather extensive adjustments in the data were required. The rate-of-return results indicate that, while there is little evidence of social overinvestment in higher education, some social underinvestment appears to exist at the secondary level. However, the private rates of return tend to exceed those for alternative investment forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a debate among economists on the Factory Acts in 19th century Great Britain. The author asserts that there is a need for a reconsideration of the economists' viewpoints. He suggests that the classical economist generally favored regulation of child labor while disapproving of legislation for adults. The author discusses the phases of the debate, history of factory legislation in Great Britain, the Ten Hours Bill of 1847 and an evaluation of the classical analysis that British historians of the Industrial Revolution held the opinion that early factory reform was achieved in the face of strong hostility from the economic experts of the day.