Think Tank Library

In tackling climate change, policy makers often overlook the role of the natural world in regulating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere: specifically, the unique role that forests and peatlands have to play in the battle against rising emissions. Changing approach would significantly reduce the cost of tackling climate change and deliver a variety of other benefits.

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The general objective of the paper is to examine a specific reform policy toward real sector enterprise restructuring in Serbia after 2000 from the perspective of political economy. The specific objective of this paper is to examine the links between political support to real sector enterprise restructuring in Serbia and a government decision regarding the policy of their restructuring. There is no evidence that relative employment in the firms slated for restructuring influences the election results. Enterprise restructuring did not result in a decline in support for pro-reform parties. It was demonstrated that demographic factors have a crucial effect on the behavior of voters in Serbia.

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The UK is missing the opportunity to be a world leader in tackling climate change due to Government inaction.
This report argues that Carbon Capture and Storage is essential to meet UK CO2 targets and deliver clean electricity and that the UK is ideally placed to spearhead a new movement to cutting carbon emissions internationally. This however is not happening: The UK CCS effort is slowing down, whilst other countries are speeding up, innovation by industry is stifled by over-management of a £1.5bn white elephant project. The UK can use electricity market finance to deliver new technology to slow climate change.

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All types of postal items are set under EU impetus to be opened to competition not later than 2011. However, the potential benefits to consumers and to employment from this liberalisation are threatened by new social legislation such as the institution in December 2007 of a legal minimum wage in Germany’s postal market.

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Green Dreams looks at the Government’s “green” targets over the last ten years highlighting a worrying high failure rate with little to show for hundreds of targets set. Examining the issue in more detail the report looks at exactly what has gone wrong over the last decade. Based on the lessons learnt the report suggests ways to ensure that targets be an effective tool of government, deployed simply and clearly to motivate change, rather than as a political tool that can hinder good governance as much as promote it.

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Is Britain Ready For Carbon Capture and Storage? introduces an innovative technology with worldwide potential for helping to solve our climate change problems. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) involves capturing up to 95% of the CO2 emitted from fossil fuel power stations, transporting it via pipeline or container before storing it securely underground in depleted oil or gas fields, coal seams or deep saline aquifers. Globally introduction of this technology could slash emissions by 28-50% by 2050 without which efforts to combat climate change will be significantly more expensive. Until recently the UK led the world in this critical technology.
Yet 2007 saw the loss of Peterhead, a project that would have been the world’s first full scale demonstration plant, and the number of commercial CCS propositions in the UK halved. This report examines exactly what happened and where the UK can go from here if we wish to maintain our lead in developing this technology. In the meantime with several new fossil fuel plants already on the drawing board, the report looks at how to ensure that any plants built before CCS is ready are compatible with it when it comes and so do not lock us into another generation of high emissions.

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Across the political spectrum, politicians have realised that reducing costs to business and putting money back in the hands of consumers is vitally important to help them through the economic crisis. One way of doing this is to reduce the burden of regulations that push up costs for businesses and families. This paper will show that scrapping the expensive and ineffective EU renewables policy would provide a significant and welcome break for British taxpayers.

The rapid advances in medical technologies has been accompanied by the increased use of Health Technology Assessments (HTA). The questions underlying almost every item of spending are: "Is it worth it?" What do we mean by worth? Are short term costs likely to be long term costs, too, or will they save money over the long term?

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Sun Microsystems sent a letter to Microsoft on September 15, 1998. It requested that Microsoft “provide complete information” that would enable Sun’s operating system to interoperate with Windows operating systems. Four months later Sun lodged a complaint with the European Commission,1 which initiated an investigation. The Commission issued a decision on March 24, 20042 which found that Microsoft had abused its dominant position in client operating systems3 in two ways.4 First, the Commission found that since October 1998 Microsoft had unlawfully refused to provide certain computer protocols that would enable competing server operating system vendors to interoperate with Microsoft’s Windows client and server operating systems.5 This abuse focused on server operating systems that perform “work group” tasks6 and arose out of Sun’s initial complaint. Second, the Commission found that since May 1999 Microsoft had tied Windows Media Player7 to Microsoft’s Windows client operating system. This abuse arose out of a self-initiated investigation by the Commission. Microsoft made an application to the European Court of First Instance8 for annulment of the Commission
Decision. On September 17, 2007 the Luxembourg-based court rejected all of Microsoft’s grounds for annulling the abuse findings.9 Microsoft decided not to appeal to the European Court of Justice (the “ECJ”) on October 22, 2007 thereby ending this almost decade-old case.10

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Childcare requirements are most intensive during the first three years of a child’s life and these years are the focus of this report. Little Britons assesses research on parental preferences and reviews how State childcare is currently funded, how it supports individual families and its impact on the private and voluntary sectors. The report establishes that present arrangements, although a great improvement on the past, are not flexible enough to meet the needs of today’s varied family structures and working hours.

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