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This chapter investigates the gender implications of New Labour's macro-economic policy. New Labour policy was bound to have a differential impact across the whole range of gender relationships in the UK, and was bound to do so whether that impact was consciously planned or not. New Labour's Treasury team was sensitive to at least some of those consequences from the very outset of its period in office. New Labour's initial macro-policy stance was focused more on the employment than the gender dimensions of this labour-market transformation. After nearly a decade of New Labour in power, only one full-time worker in five in the UK enjoys even vestigial access to a flexible working week.

Promoters of Islamic finance have argued that it is not only consistent with capitalism, but that it is in many ways suited to a dynamic economy. More specifically, it is believed that Islamic finance could bring about more efficient mobilisation of savings, more equitable and just distribution of resources, more responsible and profitable lending, more stable banking systems and less volatile business cycles. This is of course a theory. The difficult part and the challenge is how to translate the broad principles of Islamic finance into a concrete reality. More specifically, in order to contribute to economic growth and development, banks must learn how to transform savings into real investments, transform small deposits into large loans, act as risk arbitrageurs among investments with different rates of return and risk levels, and devise an attractive mix of financial instruments. Following some comments on Islam and economic liberalism, this chapter discusses four sets of economic issues and challenges: the mobilization of savings; Islamic capital markets; economic development and fund allocation; and macro-economic policies. The rest of the chapter discusses the roles of Islamic finance in project finance and poverty reduction.

This chapter examines key aspects of welfare reform. Macro-economic and social security policies are highly centralised in the UK, with the devolved Scottish, Northern Ireland, and Welsh administrations constrained in respect of independent policy directions. This chapter demonstrates that Labour's reforms contributed to significant increases in employment rates among some groups and a reduction in child poverty. However, in relation to the scale of the problems of poverty, labour market exclusion, employment disadvantage, and social inequalities, Labour's approach was limited. Crucially, limited welfare and equal rights in the UK continue to place families, adults, and children at risk of poverty and employment disadvantage.

This chapter studies the character of contemporary socioeconomic governance in the EU. It draws on empirical evidence capturing the type and extent of regulatory changes in the fields of industrial relations, corporate governance, and the coordination of macro-economic policy in the EU. The effects of these changes are long term, cumulative, and mutually reinforcing and should be seen as integral elements of a relatively coherent project to establish a form of transnational polity in Europe that privileges competition as its regulatory rationale. Indeed, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has been institutionally prioritising market freedoms and competition over labour rights, and especially the right to collective action in an emerging transnational regulatory field in the EU. Meanwhile, the new procedures of European macro-economic coordination construe national wage setting, collective bargaining institutions, and, more generally, social policy as adjustment variables serving primarily the purpose of promoting or restoring member states' economic competitiveness.

This final chapter engages with the questions that were raised in the first chapter. The reinterpretation of the origins of EMU and its effects through the perspective of differences in wage-bargaining systems and underlying models of capitalism more generally in this book on EMU raises several questions regarding the design of macro-economic policy and economic performance. One of these deals with the academic literature on EMU, and challenges some of the central ideas about labour markets in political economy. The other collection of question marks deals with the policy frameworks associated with the design of EMU and the constellation of central banks and wage-setters at its heart. These two form the backbone of this final chapter. The chapter (and book) conclude by looking back at the wider problems of economic integration in Europe, in particular the politics of further economic and monetary integration.

This chapter examines the factors that have driven the changes in Chinese savings, investment, and current account surpluses through the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries; considers recent developments in Chinese economic policy and structure; and seeks insights for future developments from this analysis. The post-2011 changes in China’s macro-economic development are so large that they amount to a new model of economic growth. If sustained under the influence of growing labour scarcity and government policy it would see immense structural change and the moderation of aggregate growth of output from an average of nearly 10 per cent in the 33 years to 2011 to around 7–8 per cent.

Bill had studied some economics in his sociology degree and he became intrigued about using his engineering skills to illustrate this better. With encouragement from James Meade, he managed to persuade the LSE to let him build a hydraulic model of the UK economy, the MONIAC. In this model water acts as money being pumped around a macro-economic system. What looked like a light‐hearted demonstration turned out to be a very sophisticated instrument combining consumption, investment, government, and an international sector. Phillips included such modern elements as floating exchange rates, free capital flows, and modern monetary policy. The machine could solve a complex set of differential equations in a way that no other comparable analogue computer could do at the time. It became a popular university demonstration device, and a number of models were built and sold internationally. It was also much loved by the media and politicians.

There was growing concern among economists about economic growth, and some new models and ideas were being floated. Phillips, now on sabbatical leave in Melbourne, was switching his thinking from stabilization to productivity. Could macro-economic policy speed up growth and would this be destabilizing? He started to build growth models that could show what happened with cyclical under-employment of resources. Back in London, Phillips was senior economics professor at the LSE and obliged to give the Tooke Lecture to a public audience. This showed that economic policy was rather more complicated than had been envisaged, but it also offered a more realistic world for policymakers. But once again estimation would prove to be the problem. The early 1960s also saw Bill on sabbatical at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, during a period of increasing global political disquiet and events such as the Cuban missile crisis.

Reviewing the post-Sachar initiatives of the Ministry of Finance and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in extending credit to minorities, data in this chapter indicates that the credit access for Muslims is in fact still declining in comparison to other groups. The RBI has made slow progress on financial inclusion in minority-concentrated districts and has accumulated an enormous backlog that only vigorous policy implementation will reduce.