The evaluation research literature is large and varied. My entry to it was Michael Quinn Patton’s wonderful ‘utilization-focused evaluation’ – now in at least its 3rd edition. The first edition is short and written in one breath with some of the best jokes, quotes etc of any book.
Good sensible UK thinking is by Ray Pawson and Nick Tilley’s ‘Realistic Evaluation’ at amazon at
http://tinyurl.com/99ekmu

The UK Evaluation Society can be found at
http://www.evaluation.org.uk/

The American Evaulation Association is at
http://www.eval.org/
HTH

What they fail to appreciate is that most employment is based on investment made in the prior 10 years. Therefore, the late 90′s and into 2000 growth came from investment and regulation changes in the 1980′s and early 90′s. The impact of Labour’s regulation and tax rises are now being used in the investment analysis of multinational companies as well as domestic. Reduced investment = lower jobs= lower growth.

1. The budget deficit is already ballooning, with a very real prospect of debt running out of control. Committing to endless schemes will mean massive rises in taxes just as a recovery may be getting underway. George Osborne should make a couple of visits to the IMF to get to know the place, and practice shuffling on his knees.
2. Any employment schemes will prove most cost effective when the recovery is underway, not while the economy is still shrinking.

RULES-OF-THUMB need to be used in evaluating policy. At a minimum, any stimulus, business subsidy or job-creation strategy should follow the following criteria.

1. It must have a reasonable chance of generating more economic benefits that costs. Preferably it should have the prospect of having a positive impact on the Exchequer.
2. Each project should be, at most, an annual commitment with limits imposed. Reviews should be stringent and the plug pulled if costs run out of control, or if projected benefits are not materializing.
3. The timing is crucial. If the time is not right existing policies should be pulled. For instance, stamp duty should be re-introduced until the market has started to recover. (Lord Lamont has admitted that it did not work in 1992 and it is not working now) Similarly, if job creation schemes are to be effective, they should only be enacted on a large scale once the economy has bottomed out, when the marginal impact will be greater.
4. The government should be aware of its own limitations. To be effective means to be shrewd, ruthless of failure and focused on realities. As with any elected government, this conflicts with pleasing popular opinion and maintaining an image.
5. Finally, the government should limit the difficulties it is imposing on businesses and individuals. It should critically look at the regulations that have little benefits but impose onerous costs, either temporarily suspending them, or removing them off the statute book.

The tragic thing is that the opposition parties have allowed the government to defraud the nation as to the true nature of unemployment by not holding Labour to account over its many Svengali-Schemes, which appear to be helping people, but in reality are little more than a ruse to massage the unemployment statistics. With Labour’s recession biting hard we can expect far more public money to be wasted on these ‘in-training’ gimmicks.

If public money is available to alleviate unemployment then it must go into creating transient public works programmes, employing manpower to be used in the process of urban renewal. Such jobs, should as a priority go to those with families and mortgages. The opposition parties, for their part, must hold the government to account and ensure that people in training are not allowed to disappear from the official count.

Gee we’re looking forward to the new Mandy/Draper blog site so we can direct remarks to the guilty parties instead of just those who are trying to solve their mess!

When I say shift the balance from Greed to Need, I am saying domestic property is first and foremost built for residential purposes for families ‘to buy’, and they aren’t primarily built ‘for rental’ or for ‘investment purposes’. Large investors have been obtaining large amounts of residential property and helping to inflate prices thus exacerbating the problem of unaffordability.

A removal of stamp duty on a domestic purchase altogether could kick start the market and a tax on the sale of housing could actually slow the sale of properties sufficient to balance the supply and demand of housing stocks naturally. Also, if tax on investment properties was levied correctly, then investment in housing could decline, help to alleviate the need to build the other 3 million houses Labour says we need, and level prices as they become more affordable.

I agree that supply could well exceed demand at present but surely that’s a reflection of the current lack of confidence caused by lack of available credit and fear of job loss. Those things do still have to be put right of course, but I can’t see that people who can’t acquire credit are causing a lack of demand. Confidence yes, but demand no except temporarily. Long term, I feel the majority of people would still want to buy their own home but at the moment they lack confidence and/or credit to do it.

Lastly, I guess we’re faced with Asian Sovereign Wealth Funds buying up our housing stocks en masse unless we get people into them, which could be aided now with an improved programme of part ownership to help get it started, since the government itself has thousands of houses on the books which are standing empty. Why not offer them to families who need them and want to buy them on this kind of arrangement?