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This collection of original papers had its origin in a series of annual meetings of the National Association of Forensic Economics (NAFE) held in Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, and the United States from 2004 to 2008.¹ NAFE sponsored these meetings to explore common research areas in the calculation of damages in personal injury and death litigation in Western Europe and the United States. NAFE was founded in 1986 and is the largest association of economists and other damages experts specializing in the calculation of economic damages in litigation in the United States and Canada. The Journal of Forensic Economics (JFE) is the journal of NAFE and has been the primary outlet of peer-reviewed research in forensic economics over the past 22 years. The field of forensic economics has generated a substantial literature on methodologies and empirical research in the calculation of damages in personal injury, death, employment, and commercial litigation; and the use of that literature in the United States and Canadian courts by economists, Certified Public Accounts (CPAs), and actuaries has become commonplace in the past two decades (Thornton & Ward, 1999).²

Examines the main issues currently confronting economists analysing training. Contrasts the human capital and institutional approaches and indicates that both have advantages and disadvantages. Outlines the major methodological issues in the area and concludes that the eradication of bias in evaluations of training is the key problem issue.

It is a common feature of both the English and the US legal systems that any person injured through the fault of another can claim monetary compensation, in the form of damages, for the injuries sustained.¹ The objective and measure of such damages is also the same across the jurisdictions, namely to restore the individual, in financial terms and in as far as it is possible to do so, to their pre-injury position. However, the approaches adopted in the two countries towards determining the level of damages are very different. In the United States, courts make extensive use of economists (called forensic economists), economic data and econometric methods to quantify damages, particularly in the calculation of those which relate to future losses. The courts in Britain do not, favouring instead the routine application of a simplified formula which is populated by figures chosen by judges, albeit with increasing reference to published actuarial averages. There has been a long-standing antipathy on the part of the judiciary towards evidence from financial experts. This has been justified on the grounds that predicting the future is nothing more than crystal ball gazing for which a judge is as well suited as any other profession.²

Examines the link between the institutional structure of the market for training and economic performance. Suggests that the market for training has a major potential for failure and that institutional structures are needed to mitigate this. Outlines the main structures which have been developed in different countries. Concludes that there is no single institutional arrangement which is optimal but that countries performing best internationally seem to be those which take the potential for failure most seriously.

Gary R. Albrecht, Ph.D., North Carolina is an economist at Albrecht Economics located in Winston-Salem. He specializes in economic forecasting and forensic economics. He has been an Assistant and Adjunct Associate Professor at Wake Forest University, and he was the Director of Econometric Modeling at the University of Kansas. He is a past vice president of the National Association of Forensic Economics. His research has been published in the Journal of Forensic Economics, Journal of Legal Economics, Trial Briefs, and The Earnings Analyst, in addition to his authoring various economic research reports and book chapters. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Economics from Indiana University.

In examining the relatively disadvantaged labour market position of women in Britain existing studies have overwhelmingly concentrated on the issues of pay and their occupational distribution in the workforce. The issue of job satisfaction has been scarcely touched upon. To illustrate, in Jain and Sloane's recent book on race and sex discrimination in the U.S.A., Canada, and Britain, which was published in 1981, there is only a single, one page reference to job satisfaction in their index The relative absence of such studies is particularly unfortunate given that job satisfaction is arguably the ultimate aim and hope that many people have with regard to employment. In making this statement we do, of course, acknowledge the potential importance of the distinction between satisfaction in a job and satisfaction with a job; the latter being essentially the perspective of instrumentally orientated workers who view a job as simply the means of obtaining satisfaction elswhere in their life.

The objective of the book is to examine specific public sector reforms in three core Public Administration areas, namely political–administrative relationships, the delegation of authority to senior managers and performance management.

It also locates the relevant public sector reforms within the context of the broader international debate on public sector reform. Each of three chapters on public service reform begins with a comparative perspective on the respective theme.

The period of the study is from the onset of democratic rule in 1994 until 2021. This period covers the Presidencies of Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, Jacob Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa.

This book uses a mixed methods approach that combines quantitative and qualitative analyses. Quantitative data in the form of descriptive statistics were obtained from The Personnel and Information System (PERSAL), the central human resources database for the South African public service. This database is not ‘off the shelf’ information – rather, the data are tailor-made to the specific needs of those who request information. Qualitative sources used include data obtained from virtual recordings of webinars on public sector reform and an examination of written documents. This includes an analysis of government legislation, White Papers and Commission reports.

The approach to the determination of damages for loss of future earnings in Britain is by means of a simple formula in which an annual loss (the multiplicand) is multiplied by a discounted work life expectancy (WLE – the multiplier) to produce a lump sum, the capitalised value of which is intended to provide an ‘assumed annuity’ equivalent to the annual loss. The discounted WLE is calculated with reference to actuarially determined figures which are published in the Ogden Tables. The Ogden Tables provide a set of statistical tables with explanatory notes for use in personal injury and fatal accident cases. These tables are collated by an inter-disciplinary working party comprising lawyers, accountants and actuaries, including the Government Actuary. Their purpose is to provide lawyers in England and Wales with the information that will enable them to undertake the calculation of a future pecuniary loss without recourse to evidence from financial experts. As such it is a requirement that the tables and procedures be readily comprehensible to lawyers.¹

All of the above proposals are realities in Western Europe, and it is suggested that the adoption of such “reforms” would substantially reduce the transaction costs of providing compensation to deserving plaintiffs, improve the efficiency of the tort system, and provide manufacturers and service providers with greater predictability and “fairness” in potential tort damages in the United States.

Scandals are a recurring feature of UK financial services and they were probably more common in the 1840s than they are in the 1990s. There is no overwhelming evidence that general financial practice is less ethical than it was and it appears more likely that ethical standards have risen. They are certainly higher than in the Victorian era, for example the ‘railway mania’ of 1845—46 which structurally established large‐scale financial fraud in Britain. During this period, hundreds of railway schemes were launched as a source of enormous fees for promoters, lawyers, engineers and surveyors. Many were never intended to be built, with some promoters (once they had accumulated substantial funds from investors) actively lobbying for their Railway Bills to be rejected by Parliament. However, this relative rise in the ethical standards of contemporary general financial practice will be of little comfort to the thousands of angry investors who have been mis‐sold pensions, or have been victims of modern scandals perpetrated by Peter Clowes, Roger Levitt or Robert Maxwell. Their anger is understandable because modern society expects increasing levels of security from its industries and institutions, and regulation is the medium for achieving this. Despite general trends towards deregulation, in financial services increasing regulation is inevitable, and politically desirable, because of the rising complexity and elaborate nature of exchange relationships. It is the state which is taking on the role of guaranteeing the security of those relationships. It is this guarantor role of the state which ensures that when scandals happen, the anger of victims is not merely directed at the fraudsters, but also at the regulatory system and the government which is responsible for that system.