Assessing relative spending needs of devolved government: the case of healthcare spending in the UK

The system used to allocate resources to the UK's devolved territories, known as the Barnett formula, takes no account of the relative expenditure needs of the territories. In this paper we investigate the prospects of developing a needs based model for allocating healthcare resources to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We compare the method used by the National Health Service in England to allocate resources geographically within England with the method used by the NHS in Scotland to allocate resources to territorial Health Boards. By applying both approaches to the UK's devolved territories, we are able to examine similarities and differences in the two methods, and explore implications for an assessment of the relative healthcare expenditure need of each territory. The implications for the way in which revenue is distributed to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are discussed

Mark Carney and the gendered political economy of British central banking

In this article we explore Mark Carney’s place in the gendered political economy of British central banking. We document the gendered narratives surrounding Carney around the time of his appointment as Governor of the Bank of England, suggesting that they worked to naturalise certain gender constructions in finance. We show how Carney seemingly had the ability to successfully embody a combination of two ideal-types of masculinity: both ‘transnational business masculinity’ and ‘traditional bourgeois masculinity’. We argue this contributed to three depoliticising moves, each of which gain their strength in part from the naturalisation of masculinities in finance, while obfuscating important questions of gendered finance. To elucidate the latter, we highlight some of the gendered outcomes that are obscured by the furore surrounding Carney’s character, suggesting that the monetary and financial stability concerns of the Bank under his stewardship are likely to reproduce the uneven and exploitative relations of gendered finance

Debunking the myth of shareholder ownership of companies: Some implications for corporate governance and financial reporting

The shareholder primacy model is dominant in Anglo-Saxon corporate governance and financial reporting even though it is considered to be dysfunctional and a source of crisis. The possibilities of reforms are routinely stymied with the claims that shareholders are the owners of large corporations and management should promote their interests. This paper seeks to debunk such claims. It shows that a corporation is a distinct legal person and cannot be owned by its shareholders. It argues that shareholders in contemporary corporations are owners of ?fictitious? capital which is very distinct from ?real? capital. The systemic pressures require the holders of fictitious capital to constantly buy/sell shares in pursuit of short-term gains. The paper further shows that in a globalised economy, the shareholding duration in major UK companies has shrunk and shareholders are more dispersed than ever before. They are not in any position to control or direct corporations for the benefit of other stakeholders and society generally. The paper calls for abandonment of the shareholder model of governance and calls for empowerment of stakeholders with a long-term interest in the wellbeing of corporations

The welfare state sources of bank instability : displacing the conditions of welfare state fiscal crisis under pressures of macroeconomic

The post-financial crisis decision-making of Britain's Labour Government represents an interesting case of the more general tensions embedded in welfare reform strategies under macroeconomic pressures of financialization. It continued to find additional sources of funding out of current taxation to finance enhanced levels of short-term frontline services, yet this was always against the backdrop of attempting to facilitate greater long-term affordability through negotiating the switch to increasingly self-sufficient welfare citizens. These twin policy objectives provided the backdrop for New Labour's opposition to the Bank of England's post-financial crisis arguments for forcibly separating banks' trading practices from their depository business. It was in this way that increasing welfare state sources of future bank instability became apparent. In Britain at least, attempts to juggle conflicting short-term and long-term policy priorities have resulted in the displacement of the most obvious manifestations of welfare state fiscal crisis into other areas of the public finances

Accelerating the transformation to a low carbon passenger transport system : the role of car purchase taxes, feebates, road taxes and scrappage incentives in the UK

Acknowledgments This research was funded by the UK Research Councils (Grant No: NERC NE/G007748/1) as part of the Energy Demand Theme of the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC). We want to thank the two anonymous reviewers for the constructive comments and suggestions which were a great help to improve the manuscript.Peer reviewedPreprin