This update 17 September 2008

 

15 August 2008: Finished my new book: Market Solutions for Social and Environmental Problems: Social Policy Bonds. It supersedes my previous books, and is much longer, at about 72000 words plus citations. I’m still looking for a publisher, but in the meantime have published it myself via Lulu.com. The book can be purchased here.

 

17 October 2007: My essay applying the Social Policy Bond principle to the problem of illiteracy in Bangladesh fails to win the Quadir Prize. However, it is available as a free download here (pdf).

 

6 January 2006: Mike Linksvayer nominated the Social Policy Bond blog as his best policy blog of 2005.

 

13 December 2005: an article about Climate Stability Bonds appeared in today’s Dominion Post (Wellington). It’s a slightly updated version of that published in the New Zealand Herald on 16 November.

 

16 November 2005: an article about Climate Stability Bonds appeared in today’s New Zealand Herald (Auckland).

 

29 January 2005: my letter about applying Social Policy Bonds to the eradication of third world poverty appears in the online edition of The Economist.

 

20 December 2004: created Social Policy Bonds blog.

 

15 November 2004: new link for social entrepreneurs. If you are thinking of issuing your own Social Policy Bonds, perhaps to raise female literacy in a developing country or to ensure nuclear peace, click on Issue your own at the bottom of the navigation bar.

 

23 September 2003: added short paper on privately-issued Social Policy Bonds to this site. Governments seem wary of the Social Policy Bond concept, so it may be that private individuals or non-governmental organisations are best placed to take the lead. This paper is in pdf format, and describes the issuing of privately backed Social Policy Bonds that would target female literacy in Pakistan.

 

1 July 2003: Robert Shiller, Professor of Economics at Yale University, has included a reference to Social Policy Bonds in his new book the New Financial Order. He has also included a link to Social Policy Bonds, with other links of interest, on his web page for readers of the book.

 

On 28 February 2003 I presented a paper on Climate Stability Bonds to a conference organised by the Institute of Public Affairs, in Melbourne. Click to see my powerpoint presentation.

 

September 2002: the Institute of Economic Affairs, London, published Better than Kyoto: Climate Stability Bonds; an article about applying the bond concept to climate change. Click to see the contents of the journal in which it appeared.

 

2 May 2002: the Wellington, New Zealand, newspaper The Dominion published a short article critical of Kyoto, advocating Climate Stability Bonds.

 

18 April 2002: I presented a paper on Environmental Policy Bonds to a meeting at OECD, in Paris.