Crowding Out Informal Care? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Germany*

This article evaluates the effects of a consumer‐directed home care programme (Personal Budgets) compared with the standard home care programmes of the German long‐term care insurance (LTCI). The evaluation makes use of a random assignment into a treatment group receiving personal budgets and a control group receiving either in‐kind benefits (agency care) or cash payments. Compared with agency care, personal budgets extend the support by independent providers, but leave health outcomes unchanged. Compared with cash payments, personal budgets tend to improve health outcomes, but double LTCI spending due to a strong crowding out of informal care by formal care.     

Rectifying an unconstitutional dispensation? A consideration of proposed reforms relating to no income no asset debtors in South Africa

The South African natural person debt relief system remains heavily procreditor and consequently excludes many deserving debtors from any form of relief. This is despite the fact that such marginalisation amounts to unjustifiable, unfair discrimination on the basis of debtors' financial status. The main aim of this article is to establish whether proposed reforms, and specifically the debt intervention procedure, will rectify the current unconstitutional dispensation and particularly the unreasonable unfair discrimination against “no income no asset” (NINA) debtors, who undoubtedly constitutes the largest part of relegated debtors. The article may benefit developing countries seeking to introduce debt relief measures curtailed to the needs of their ever‐escalating NINA debtors.     

农业基金渐入佳境

25年前,在美国投资农业或许是最具风险的投资之一,但是目前的情况已反转,该领域的投资已经跻身风险最低的投资项目之列。     

Working Across Professional Boundaries: Primary Health Care and Social Care

Effective joint working between health and local authorities, and between health, social services and housing professionals, has long been recognized as vital to the provision of 'seamless' services for the most vulnerable members of society. Unfortunately, the history of formal joint working over the past 20 years has been largely a poor one. In this article the authors outline the findings from a recent study of working alliances across the primary health care/social care boundary. They examine how obstacles are being overcome and how, in some localities, the essential ingredients of inter-professional and inter-organizational trust are leading to the improved integration of services.     

Is There a Public Sector Training Advantage? Evidence from the Workplace Employment Relations Survey

Using matched employer–employee data from the Workplace Employment Relations Survey (2004), we find a significant training ‘advantage’ exists for public sector workers over private sector workers even after accounting for differences in the composition of the two workforces. This finding is robust to all but one change in specification, designed to account for worker sorting effects which can lead to unobserved workplace‐based effects being correlated with individual worker characteristics. Using the average characteristics of workers within an establishment as a control for these sorting effects all but eliminates the estimated public sector training advantage, which has otherwise been an empirical regularity of many individual‐based training models.