LSE's contributions to the economics of social policy

Social policy as an explicit intellectual endeavour only began after the Second World War, but themes that are central to it can be found in the work of the LSE Economics Department from its beginning. Taxation and its distributional and incentive consequences is one continuous theme. The appropriate and uncertain boundary line between public and private funding and service delivery, between market competition and public monopoly, is another long-standing interest. While the Department began by generally taking a pro-free market line, the development of theories of market and information failure led to an evolving ‘economics of the welfare state’. Though never central to the Department’s work, individual members specialised in this topic and other areas of social policy, including education, housing, social security and pensions.