Paper given at the 32nd Annual Cumberland Lodge Police Conference: The Legitimacy of Policing, 19-21 April 2013

The March Budget forecast that borrowing would fall by £0.1 billion from £121.0 billion in 2011–12 to £120.9 billion in 2012–13. On Tuesday, the Office for National Statistics is due to release its first estimate of public sector net borrowing in March 2013 and, therefore, for the whole of 2012–13. Borrowing could easily end up being higher or lower than it was in the previous year, either due to backwards revisions, the uncertainty inherent in forecasting borrowing even a month in advance, or both. However, whether borrowing is slightly up or down in cash terms is economically irrelevant. Either way, the bigger picture is that having fallen by roughly a quarter between 2009–10 and 2011–12, borrowing is forecast to be broadly constant through to 2013–14.

Employment rates through the recession have been remarkably robust, with today’s ONS figures showing employment remaining close to 30 million. The young have experienced historically low employment rates and high unemployment rates but the employment rate of women aged 60 to 64 has increased as fast since 2010 as it did during the 2000s. An important explanation is the gradual increase in the state pension age for women since 2010, which has led to more older women being in paid work. Without this policy change, the employment rate for 60 to 64 year women would have been broadly flat since 2010.

This paper derives necessary and sufficient conditions for data sets composed of state-contingent prices and consumption to be consistent with two prominent models of decision making under uncertainty: variational preferences and smooth ambiguity.

We examine ill-health retirement of police officers in England and Wales between 2002-3 and 2009-10.

This paper assesses the extent to which correlations in substance use and selling drugs amongst siblings are causal.