Publications
All Policy Exchange publications are free to download in .pdf format. You can also purchase hard copies of the majority of our reports – check each individual report page for details.
Recent Publications
A Right to Data: Fulfilling the promise of open public data in the UK
A Right to Data says that all non-personal data held by the public sector should be made available to the public for free. Opening up public data so that it can be linked, analysed and made useful could provide a huge economic and social boost, with some estimates suggesting that the upside for the economy could run into the billions of pounds.
Police Officer Pensions: Affordability of current schemes
Police Officer Pensions: Affordability of current schemes reveals that the cost of police officer pensions has increased markedly over the past 15 years from under £1 billion in 1995/6 to £2.5 billion in 2009/10 and recommends the development of a New Model Police Pension scheme that is more affordable for officers and taxpayers alike.
Gas Works? Shale gas and its policy implications
Gas Works? says that the government is “unnecessarily gambling with billpayers’ money”. It says that the UK’s energy generation plans are based on forecasting future gas prices which is a flawed strategy, potentially resulting in the UK missing out on the potential economic and environmental benefits of shale gas.
Social Enterprise Schools: A potential profit-sharing model for the state-funded school system
This report says that the government should consider allowing private companies to set up and run schools under a social enterprise model. Allowing private providers to take over the running of publicly run schools will create new places at a time when there is a severe shortage in many parts of the country.
The Full Cost to Households of Renewable Energy Policies
This report accuses the Government of not clearly presenting the full impacts and costs of climate and renewable energy policies on households, and outlines how the UK could meet its carbon targets while saving households hundreds of pounds.
Greening the economy – not ‘green economy’
The current policy of subsidising select UK ‘green’ industries is based not on the subsidies for such selected sectors being the best way to reduce carbon emissions, but that a principal objective of these public subsidies is to promote UK growth, exports and employment. This is a big gamble, with renewables policies costing tens of billions of pounds more than necessary to meet 2020 carbon reduction targets.
The Politics of Optimism
Traditional thinking aligns economic growth with happiness. Conclusion: we’re in for a long dose of unhappiness. But the outlook for Britain need not be depressing. If governments, organisations and individuals responded with a new way of thinking, it would boost happiness and well-being.
Financial Policy, Monetary Policy and Macroprudential Regulation
This report makes recommendations for a policy framework that can identify and monitor of early warning indicators that signal increased vulnerability in the financial system, and that can rapidly employ policy tools to address these vulnerabilities.
Further analysis on the public sector pay premium
Read Publication This Research Note updates and extends our previous analysis of the public sector pay gap using three new quarters of Labour Force Survey data. It shows that for the median worker, an hourly pay gap of 8.89% exists when adjusted for age, gender, full...
Looking to the Future of Growth
Looking to the Future of Growth brings together a collection of essays from experts in Policy Exchange as well as from business and industry. Each lays out the author’s views on the blockages to growth and makes suggestions for where Government policy must focus.