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Increased life expectancies and decreased birthrates have placed enormous financial pressure on the Social Security system. Because significant reforms are needed to ensure its financial solvency, our study examines the acceptability of proposals to reform the system. Given the potentially divergent views suggested by prior research, we selected participants from the following four groups (1) younger black taxpayers, (2) younger white taxpayers, (3) older black taxpayers, and (4) older white taxpayers. While there was agreement among the groups on several of the proposals, in general, the differences between the generations were more pronounced than the differences between the racial groups.

After the end of the Napoleonic War, few issues of public policy dominated discussions in England as fervently as the issue of currency and the national debt. A time of civil unrest and social radicalisation, the circulation of ideas and pamphlets was prolific. The difficulties of post-war reconstruction sparked a long debate on issues of monetary reform and repayment of the national debt. The growth of national debt increased the size of the financial market and had important consequences for a changing class dynamic in domestic political affairs. The distributional aspects of the conflict were present, as was the satirical mockery of mishandling of public affairs. In much of the subsequent scholarship the organisation of taxation and expenditure, and the financial system and the issue of currency have been analysed as separate. This chapter brings them together. In particular, it focuses on Ricardo’s monetary thought and his views on public finance and contextualises them in light of his contemporaries.

Purpose – To discuss, from the perspective of developing countries, recent proposals for reforming international standards for bank capital requirements.

Methodology/approach – After evaluating, from the viewpoint of developing countries, the effectiveness of capital requirements reforms and progress in implementing existing regulatory accords, the chapter discusses the procyclical effects of Basel regimes, and suggests a reform proposal.

Findings – Minimum bank capital requirements proposals in developing countries should be complemented by the adoption of an incremental, size-based leverage ratio.

Originality/value of chapter – This chapter contributes to enlarge the academic and policy debate related to bank capital regulation, with a particular focus on the situation of developing countries.

This chapter examines the rise and fall of the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations (Dunlop Commission) in the early 1990s. It uses the events surrounding the Commission to provide an insight into the dynamics of the struggle over federal labor law reform. The inability of the Dunlop Commission to get labor and management representatives to agree on proposals for labor law reform demonstrated, yet again, that employer opposition is the greatest obstacle to the protection of organizing rights and modernization of labor law. For the nation's major management associations, labor law reform is a life and death issue, and nothing is more important to them than defeating revisions to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) intended to strengthen organizing rights. The failure of labor law reform in the 1990s also demonstrated that the labor movement would never win reform by means of an “inside the beltway” legislative campaign – designed to push reform through the US Senate – because the principal employer organizations would always exercise more influence in Congress. Instead, unions must engage with public opinion, and convince union and nonunion members about the importance of reform. Thus far, however, they lack an effective language with which to do this.

Thailand continuously has had administrative reforms in spite of periods of military regime and democratic government. This chapter describes the leadership of administration reforms coming from issue experts and senior civil service officers described as a ‘jazz-banded’ leadership model of different actors. Political parties pick up reform packages consistent with their policy platforms, while the military looks for ready-to-deliver policy packages. The author discusses the example of education and health care reforms and the role of the Office of Public Sector Development Commission (OPDC). In Thailand, resistance usually occurred during the implantation stage rather than at the formulation stage. The chapter discusses that OPDC initiatives were implemented with bonuses of up to 12-month salary for some senior officers and department heads. In health care, success came from concerted efforts of health care experts who transcend their ideas from one generation to another and who kept convincing politicians running the Ministry of Public Health. However, in other instances, budget allocations may bump up against financial procedures that are detailed and tight due to anti-corruption practices. In education reforms, teachers were placed at different school districts that lacked commitment. In the decentralization of reforms, resistance comes from line ministries wanting to secure their authority, although local authorities are very active. Resistance often requires negotiation of many parties; rarely do politicians step in to overcome and assist.