Introduction: globalisation,governance and development

In 1887 Henry Carter Adams produced a study demonstrating that the ownership of government bonds was heavily concentrated in the hands of a ‘bondholding class’ that lent to and, in Adams's view, controlled the government like dominant shareholders control a corporation. The interests of this bondholding class clashed with the interests of the masses, whose burdensome taxes financed the interest payments on government bonds. Since the late nineteenth century there has been plenty of debate about the ownership of the public debt. But the empirical evidence offered to support the various arguments has been scant. As a result, political economists have few answers to questions first raised by Adams over century ago: how has the pattern of public debt ownership changed? Can we still speak of a powerful ‘bondholding class’? Does public debt redistribute income from taxpayers to public creditors? This article develops a new framework to address these questions. Anchored within a ‘capital as power’ approach, the research indicates a staggering pattern of concentration in the ownership of US public debt in the hands of the top one per cent of US households over the past three decades. Accordingly, the bondholding class is still alive and well in contemporary US capitalism.     

An investigative study of adult consumer education and lifelong learning needs in the United Kingdom and Latvia

Consumer education in Latvia is in the early stages of development and should be seen in the context of the rapidly changing society in the post‐Soviet era and the increasing influence of the marketplace, and Latvia's position as a new accession country. The Latvia University of Agriculture is in the process of developing an adult consumer education programme. A comparative study between the UK and Latvia was designed to test the hypothesis that many adult consumers lack knowledge and understanding of their consumer rights and responsibilities. A sample of adults in both countries completed a consumer rights questionnaire investigating attitude, knowledge and critical thinking ability. The UK questionnaire was modified, taking into account the different consumer environment in the two countries, to compare the need for adult consumer education in Latvia and the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom results showed that the group overall were not confident that they knew enough about consumer rights and legislation or to resolve consumer problems and were unsure about their consumer responsibilities. Levels of knowledge were poor, leaving adults vulnerable to exploitation in the marketplace, uninformed about their responsibilities to voice dissatisfaction about goods and services, and unaware of how their consumer behaviour can affect the wider community. Adult participants in Latvia thought that they lacked education in consumer legal rights and responsibilities and did not have the necessary skills, knowledge and understanding to manage consumer problems effectively. Results in both countries indicate that adult consumer education is needed, supplemented by a comprehensive package of adult consumer education. Despite the cultural differences between the two countries, the analysis showed that similar adult consumer skills and attitudes were needed. This joint research has shown that this methodology could be used to determine adult consumer and life‐long consumer education needs in other European countries and internationally.     

The dynamic macroeconomic effects of tax policy in an overlapping generations model

The paper studies the dynamic allocation effects of tax policywithin the context of an overlapping-generations model of theBlanchard-Yaari type. The model is extended to allow for endogenouslabour supply and three tax instruments, viz. a capital tax,labour income tax, and consumption tax. Both analytical expressionsand simple diagrams are used to analyze the impact, transition,and long-run effects of tax policy changes. It is shown thata part of the long-run incidence of capital and consumptiontaxes falls on capital when households' horizons are finitewhereas labour would fully bear the burden of these taxes inan infinite-horizon model.     

Eliciting Subjective Beliefs about Mortality Risk Orderings

We develop an experimental method to elicit subjective beliefs about the ordering of mortality risk over different causes of death. The experimental procedure emphasizes incentive-compatibility, so that the individual has a positive financial incentive to respond truthfully. We also consider the extent to which individuals have subjective beliefs for sub-segments of the population that are more accurate than their beliefs about the risks for the population as a whole. We propose several hypotheses concerning the degree of familiarity of the risks, and find that the evidence supports those hypotheses. The evidence also suggests that there is no discernible difference between beliefs elicited using hypothetical or real financial rewards in the elicitation format we use. Our findings restore some confidence in the ability to elicit beliefs about mortality risks, and therefore to get reliable estimates of the monetary value of a statistical life. We dedicate this paper to the memory of J. Clay Lesley, who assisted us in the design and execution of the experiments and was a valued student, colleague and friend.     

NATIONAL ACCOUNTING AND INCOME DISTRIBUTION

Conventional national accounts are often seen as concentrating on the production process, on how goods and services are produced, rather than on consumption, or who the products serve. Production finances consumption via income generation, distribution and re-distribution. This paper demonstrates this inter-action by elaborating a full economic accounting matrix, and takes both theoretical and practical considerations into account. The aim is to explore how far the revised SNA can and should give emphasis to issues of income distribution and consumption.