Market Solutions for Social and Environmental Problems: Social Policy Bonds

Description

Society is now so complex that the best ways of achieving social and environmental goals cannot be dictated from above, nor indeed known in advance. Diversity and adaptation are essential, but governments fail to recognise this. So they are failing to respond in any meaningful way to challenges such as poverty amidst plenty, climate change or nuclear proliferation. At the national and global level, they continue to fund activities, institutions, inputs and outputs - everything except outcomes, in fact. Social Policy Bonds are a new financial instrument that could revolutionise policymaking. By issuing Social Policy Bonds governments or private sector groups could inextricably tie rewards to universally desired outcomes and inject the market's incentives and efficiencies into the achievement of social and environmental goals. Ronnie Horesh’s Social Policy Bond concept has been praised by distinguished economists. He has spoken about it in such fora as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris, Cambridge and St Andrews Universities, and think tanks in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.