Job Opportunity at the SMF - Researcher

The SMF would like to commission a statistician/econometrician/quantitative social researcher to analyse the Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS) as part of our project to explore the financial behaviour of lower-income groups. - Read more...

New reforms welcome but risk people getting stuck in part time work, says think tank

The Government’s announcement today on its benefit reform plans sets out an ambitious agenda for reform but raises questions that must be answered if it is to be successful, says the Social Market Foundation, a leading UK think-tank. Secretary of State for Work & Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, has announced today a consultation on the Government’s plans to simplify the benefit system by rolling all benefits and tax credits into a single Universal Credit. The aim is to make work financially worthwhile for people to work a small number of hours each week, as well as to make the system easier to understand for claimants. - Read more...

Shared decision making in healthcare: working through the implications of the White Paper

Tuesday September 7th, 8:15 - 10:00am
Social Market Foundation, 11 Tufton St, London, SW1P 3QB

The new government’s plans for the NHS place patients at the centre of everything. Putting patients first will be achieved through a firm focus on shared decision making: “nothing about me without me”.

The Social Market Economy Revisited

In The Social Market Economy Revisited, former Chairman of the SMF, Lord Skidelsky, returns to the themes of his seminal 1989 essay that marked launched the Foundation. In the wake of the biggest financial crisis in history, he examines how markets address different types of uncertainty, the role of convention in determining economic behaviour and the limits to the use of econometric analysis in forecasting the future. Read more...

The Market Economy: Twenty-one years after the fall of the Berlin Wall

In the second of a series of essays to mark the 21st anniversary of the Social Market Foundation, John Kay looks back at the triumph of the market economy since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Kay attributes this triumph to the role of the price mechanism, 'markets as a process of discovery', and the diffusion of political and economic power with which markets are associated. Read more...

The commission on long-term care funding – A roundtable summary

Reforming the system for funding older people’s long-term care is one of the biggest public policy challenges confronting the UK. Following the 2010 general election, the new Coalition Government announced in its Programme for Government document that it would: “establish a commission on long-term care, to report within a year. This short brief summarises a roundtable convened by the Social Market Foundation to draw lessons for the new body from previous commissions on both long-term care funding and other policy challenges. Read more...