Martin Chick

Electricity and Energy Policy in Britain, France and the United States since 1945

Martin Chick’s book is a major economic and historical study of the development of electricity and energy policy in Britain, France and the United States since 1945. Using newly available archival material the author draws important comparisons between these countries and includes all of the fuel and power industries.

The 3 Rs: Regulation, risk and responsibility in British utilities since 1945

Before privatisation, required rates of return and test discount rates were being applied to utility and other nationalised industries. One effect of this new approach was to promote more marginal-cost based tariffs which could fall particularly heavily on low-income groups. This trend was reinforced by privatisation which, when accompanied by market liberalisation, increased uncertainty about the likely returns on capital investment projects. Both of these issues, the treatment of poverty and coping with uncertainty, were of long-standing concern to the Austrian school of economics. Where Austrian economists differed from liberalising governments was in their locating of responsibility.

Economic planning, 1943-1951 : a guide to documents in the Public Record Office

Cabinet minutes and memoranda cabinet office registered files Lord Presidents committee (wartime) miscellaneous standing committees (wartime) ad hoc Cabinet committees (wartime) reconstruction committees central statistical office reconstruction secretariat Lord Presidents private office and secretariat Lord Presidents secretariat private papers ad hoc Cabinet committees (post-war) Lord Presidents committee (post-war) miscellaneous standing committees Commonwealth and international conferences Prime Ministers private office central economic planning staff economic section treasury board of trade other departmental papers official war histories.

Incentives, inequality and taxation: The Meade Committee Report on the Structure and Reform of Direct Taxation (1978)

Abstract The publication in 1978 of a report on The Structure and Reform of Direct Taxation by a committee headed by the economist James Meade marked the first fundamental study of the UK tax system commissioned by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Many of its main recommendations centred around a shift away from taxing income and towards taxing expenditure. Tax incentives to save and reductions in marginal rates of income tax were designed to improve incentives to earn and to invest income. Such a shift characterised the UK tax system from 1979, albeit without acknowledging the work of the Meade Committee.

The State and Industrial Policy in Britain, 1950–1974

An industrial policy is commonly a blend of normative ambitions allied to scepticism as to the positive efficiency of market mechanisms in achieving those sought outcomes. Those ends are often unsurprising: increased rates of productivity and economic growth are familiarly stated objectives. It is the means to the ends which are often more contentious. The 1945–1951 Attlee governments had sought to maximize production from existing capacity and to effect improvements in the performance of industries sometimes by means which sought to compensate for perceived market failings. The restructuring of major industries such as coal, textiles, and iron and steel was sought respectively through nationalization, subsidies for the withdrawal of excess capacity and the implementation of federation-planned restructuring of the industry. Where development was thought to be stifled by an absence of capital, then, in the case of small-and-medium-sized firms, this ‘Macmillan Gap’ was sought to be filled by the establishment of the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation in 1945. For larger companies whose projects were deemed often to be too politically or technologically risky for conventional markets the Finance Corporation for Industry was created, also in 1945, to provide long-term development capital.