E-Book Overview
Higher education rates are increasing throughout the Western world, yet at the same time, government budgets face increasing constraints. This has ensured that the importance of student support is recognized in many countries. In recent years there has been a world-wide movement towards the use of income contingent loans (ICL) for higher education. ICLs are now used in six countries following the Australian innovation of 1989, with the governments of many more countries looking very seriously at the model. This impressive new book by Bruce Chapman analyzes ICLs (particularly their use in supporting students), exploring the experiences of a number of other countries adopting them. Chapman presents analysis of a number of disparate case studies to illustrate how ICLs can aid risk management policy reforming in both progressive and administratively feasible ways. This book describes, examines and promotes an exciting new role for the public sector as a manager of risk, and argues that ICLs have enormous potential to change the extent and nature of social and economic activities. With the author's experience in the design and implementation of the Australian student financial support schemes, this is a knowledgeable, informative and enlightening book that will be useful to researchers, students and policy-makers alike.
E-Book Content
Government Managing Risk
In recent years there has been a world-wide movement towards the use of income contingent loans (ICLs) for higher education. ICLs are now used in six countries following the Australian innovation of 1989, with the governments of many more countries looking very seriously at the model. Government Managing Risk presents an extensive conceptual and empirical analysis of the world’s first national ICL for higher education as well as exploring the experiences of a number of other countries adopting ICLs. Bruce Chapman prescribes an important, new role for income contingent loans, demonstrating the extraordinary potential ICLs have to change radically the nature of social and economic policy interventions. ICLs can be seen as a remarkably flexible government risk instrument. He presents analysis of a number of disparate case studies to illustrate how ICLs can aid risk management policy reform in both progressive and administratively feasible ways. These case studies are: the provision of drought relief, the collection of low-level criminal fines, the imposition of penalties for white-collar crime, the financing of social investment community projects and the provision of housing credits for low-income earners. In all these examples solutions to the important problems of moral hazard and adverse selection are examined, and the nature and form of the associated administrative arrangements for collection are explored. Further ICL policy possibilities are suggested. Bruce Chapman is a Professor of Economics at the Australian National University. In 1988 he was instrumental in motivating and designing the world’s first national income continent loans scheme for higher education: Australia’s Higher Education Contribution Scheme. Over the past decade he has provided advice and analysis of ICLs for the governments of a large number of countries.
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