London School of Economics and Political Science

About: London School of Economics and Political Science is a education organization based out in London, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Politics & Population. The organization has 8759 authors who have published 35017 publications receiving 1436302 citations.

Accounting innovation beyond the enterprise: Problematizing investment decisions and programming economic growth in the U.K. in the 1960s☆

Abstract: It has recently been stated that innovations in management accounting have been the preserve of practitioners, and that these innovations which began in the nineteenth century had more or less halted by 1925 (Johnson, H. T. & Kaplan, R. S., Relevance Lost: The Rise and Fall of Management Accounting (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1987)). The most significant exception to this neat model of accounting innovation is held to be the development of discounted cash flow (DCF) procedures as a tool for management in the 1950s. This exception is explained away as an aberration in an otherwise smooth process. It consists, so it is argued, of academics striving for relevance rather than practitioners innovating in the face of practical problems. This paper explores this supposedly aberrant moment of innovation from a different perspective to that of Johnson and Kaplan, and for a particular context. The boundaries of the processes of innovation are drawn differently and more widely, to include various agencies, arguments and mechanisms through which DCF techniques were promoted in the U.K. in the 1960s. The world of the practitioner or the academic is not accorded an a priori explanatory privilege, and the promotion of DCF techniques in the U.K. is interpreted as involving much more than “academics striving for relevance”. Four concepts are suggested as possible ways of posing further questions about the processes of accounting innovation: problematizations, programmes, translation, and action at a distance. The paper seeks to show how concerns about investment decisions within firms came to be posed in terms of a general problematization of economic growth, and how a translatability came to be established between programmes for improving economic growth, and the use of DCF techniques for individual investment decisions. Action at a distance is the term that is used to characterize the possibility of one entity becoming a centre capable of exerting influence over others through such mechanisms. In the context of a political culture which sought economic growth yet wished to avoid direct intervention in the decisions of private enterprise and the nationalized industries, these issues are argued to have attained a particular significance. DCF techniques made it possible for government to seek to act at a distance on the economy without intruding within the private sphere of managerial decisions. Considered together, and for the case of DCF in the U.K. in the 1960s, an examination of these processes is considered to significantly modify the counterposing of practitioners innovating within firms, versus academics striving for relevance. Accounting innovation is argued to occur “beyond the enterprise” as well as within it.

Storylines: an alternative approach to representing uncertainty in physical aspects of climate change

Abstract: As climate change research becomes increasingly applied, the need for actionable information is growing rapidly. A key aspect of this requirement is the representation of uncertainties. The conventional approach to representing uncertainty in physical aspects of climate change is probabilistic, based on ensembles of climate model simulations. In the face of deep uncertainties, the known limitations of this approach are becoming increasingly apparent. An alternative is thus emerging which may be called a ‘storyline’ approach. We define a storyline as a physically self-consistent unfolding of past events, or of plausible future events or pathways. No a priori probability of the storyline is assessed; emphasis is placed instead on understanding the driving factors involved, and the plausibility of those factors. We introduce a typology of four reasons for using storylines to represent uncertainty in physical aspects of climate change: (i) improving risk awareness by framing risk in an event-oriented rather than a probabilistic manner, which corresponds more directly to how people perceive and respond to risk; (ii) strengthening decision-making by allowing one to work backward from a particular vulnerability or decision point, combining climate change information with other relevant factors to address compound risk and develop appropriate stress tests; (iii) providing a physical basis for partitioning uncertainty, thereby allowing the use of more credible regional models in a conditioned manner and (iv) exploring the boundaries of plausibility, thereby guarding against false precision and surprise. Storylines also offer a powerful way of linking physical with human aspects of climate change.

The family gap in pay:evidence from seven industrialized countries

Abstract: In this paper, we use microdata on employment and earnings from a variety of industrialized countries to investigate the family gap in pay – the differential in hourly wages between women with children and women without children. We present results from seven countries: Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Finland, and Sweden. We find that there is a good deal of variation across our sample countries in the effects of children on women’s employment and in the effects of children on women’s hourly wages even after controlling for differences between women with and without children in characteristics such as age and education. We also find that the variation in the family gap in pay across countries is not primarily due to differential selection into employment or to differences in wage structure across countries. We suggest that future research should examine the impact of family policies such as maternity leave and child care on the family gap in pay.

Cost of schizophrenia in England

Abstract: Background: Despite the wide-ranging financial and social burdens associated with schizophrenia, there have been few cost-of-illness studies of this illness in the UK. Aims of the Study: To provide up-to-date, prevalence based estimate of all costs associated with schizophrenia for England. Methods: A bottom-up approach was adopted. Separate cost estimates were made for people living in private households, institutions, prisons and for those who are homeless. The costs included related to: health and social care, informal care, private expenditures, lost productivity, premature mortality, criminal justice services and other public expenditures such as those by the social security system. Data came from many sources, including the UKSCAP (Schizophrenia Care and Assessment Program) survey, Psychiatric Morbidity Surveys, Department of Health and government publications. Results: The estimated total societal cost of schizophrenia was £6.7 billion in 2004/05. The direct cost of treatment and care that falls on the public purse was about £2 billion; the burden of indirect costs to the society was huge, amounting to nearly £4.7 billion. Cost of informal care and private expenditures borne by families was £615 million. The cost of lost productivity due to unemployment, absence from work and premature mortality of patients was £3.4 billion. The cost of lost productivity of carers was £32 million. Estimated cost to the criminal justice system was about £1 million. It is estimated that about £570 million will be paid out in benefit payments and the cost of administration associated with this is about £ 14 million. Discussion: It is difficult to compare estimates from previous costof-illness studies due to differences in the methods, scope of analyses and the range of costs covered. Costs estimated in this study are detailed, cover a comprehensive list of relevant items and allow for different levels of disaggregation. The main limitation of the study is that data came from a variety of secondary sources and some official data publicly available was not the latest. Implications for Health Care Provision: Schizophrenia continues to be a high cost illness because of the range of range of health needs that people have. Despite the shifting balance of care away from hospital-based care, the health care costs of treating and supporting people with schizophrenia remain high. Implications for Health Policies: Decision-makers need to recognise the breadth of economic impacts, well beyond the health system as conventionally defined. For example, as nearly 80% of schizophrenia patients remain unemployed, the cost of lost productivity is especially large. Implications for Further Research: Better measurement of criminal justice services costs, private expenditures borne by families and valuation of lost quality of life could improve the estimates further.