The accountability information needs of key charity funders

Government and philanthropic funders are key charity stakeholders, yet we know little about their accountability information needs. This New Zealand study captures these stakeholders’ perceptions of the background, financial and non-financial performance information they need from charities. It also reveals how, in addition to imposing reporting requirements, these key funders engage in ‘institutional work’ to ensure they receive appropriate accountability information.     

The Role of Planning and Workplace Support in Returning to Work after Maternity Leave

The paper reports a longitudinal study of the post‐pregnancy work outcomes for full‐time working women who were pregnant with their first baby. Regression analyses revealed that women who did not return to work as intended were differentiated from those who did return to work by the amount of planning they had done in pregnancy, as well as having lower pre‐natal income and less anti‐cipated support within the workplace. Almost one third of those who returned to work part‐time reported reduced job status. The study shows the importance of workplace planning and support in return to work after maternity leave.     

Toward A Theory on the Reproduction of Social Innovations in Subsistence Marketplaces

Social innovations and their diffusion are critical in bridging the multiplicity of deprivations experienced by those in subsistence contexts. Yet they often do not diffuse as expected. To better understand this prevalent problem, this article develops a theory of diffusion that explains the reproduction (duplication) of social innovations in subsistence contexts. The theory utilizes a bottom‐up perspective that considers what attributes of innovations and capacities of actors matter to reproduction, particularly for subsistence user‐producers. Adopting an inductive, case‐based approach, the authors draw on examples of social innovations in sub‐Saharan Africa. Based on the authors' research and extant literature, this article builds a typology that captures different modes of reproduction. The typology delineates three archetypes of reproduced social innovations: mimetic, facilitated, and complex, and notes how frugal innovations can emerge from these archetypes. These archetypes are based on the interactions of: (1) a product's resource and knowledge complexities, and (2) the knowledge capabilities or resources of various actors, including subsistence user‐producers and bridging agents. The typology thus illuminates the conditions under which subsistence user‐producers might independently reproduce a social innovation (mimetic innovations), when they need assistance from bridging agents (facilitated innovations), and when the mix of resources and knowledge are beyond their capacity (complex innovations). Moreover, by exploring reproduction experiences of subsistence users, this article recognizes the implications of low literary, close social networks, and physical limitations. By examining who controls the knowledge and resources imperative to reproduction, the authors go beyond a focus on the social benefits of innovations to consider how intellectual property and profits matter to different actors. This article pulls together these various insights and identifies key implications that social innovators and intermediaries should consider when working to reproduce social innovations in subsistence contexts and with subsistence user‐producers.     

Is it time to reboot welfare economics? Overview

The contributions of economists have long included both positive explanations of how economic systems work and normative recommendations for how they could and should work better. In recent decades, economics has taken a strong empirical turn as well as having a greater appreciation of the importance of the complexities of real-world human behaviour, institutions, the strengths and failures of markets, and interlinkages with other systems, including politics, technology, culture and the environment. This shift has also brought greater relevance and pragmatism to normative economics. While this shift towards evidence and pragmatism has been welcome, it does not in itself answer the core question of what exactly constitutes ‘better’, and for whom, and how to manage inevitable conflicts and trade-offs in society. These have long been the core concerns of welfare economics. Yet, in the 1980s and 1990s, debates on welfare economics seemed to have become marginalised. The articles in this Fiscal Studies symposium engage with the question of how to revive normative questions as a central issue in economic scholarship.     

Place-Based Policies and Nowcasting

There is a growing need to gauge local economic activity in real time. Localised economic challenges have been emphasised in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Real-time trackers (such as OECD trackers) and other nowcasting applications typically correspond to national or highly aggregated regions. In this discussion paper, we briefly explore how unconventional data might be used to produce nowcasts of local economies. We argue that in the absence of traditional nowcasting metrics, efforts to nowcast local economies need a local perspective, with data capture tailored to address heterogeneity across three domains: (1) resources, (2) people and (3) life.