M33117 Public Policies and Labour Markets Coursework Sample

M33117 PUBLIC POLICIES AND LABOUR MAKETS

Assignment Details

This coursework asks you to write two blog posts. The blog posts should be written in a professional style as if written by a researcher at a think-tank organization or public agency.

Each blog article should be no more than 1,000 words excluding the title and references.

From the given topics choose one topic from Part A and one topic from Part B to write a total of two 1,000 words blog posts (one blog on a topic from Part A and one blog on a topic from Part B). The blogs should be engaging for the audience while collating information from several sources. Your work should follow the style of the blogs discussed in the seminars.

Part A: Choose one of the following

Topic A.1: Healthcare

How can equity and efficiency be achieved in a healthcare setting? With explicit reference to the relevant lecture notes and the resources covered in the seminars, write a blog on two specific recent healthcare reports/reforms from the last 2 years that discuss how more efficient and equitable healthcare provision could be achieved.

Topic A.2: Education

What are the benefits of tertiary education? With explicit reference to the relevant lecture notes and the resources covered in the seminars, write a blog on two specific reports or academic articles that discuss and quantify the benefits of tertiary education.

Topic A.3: Pensions

What is automatic pension scheme enrolment? With explicit reference to the relevant lecture notes and the resources covered in the seminars, write a blog on two specific reports/reforms from the last 2 years that discuss how increased automatic pension scheme enrolment has evolved in the UK over the years.

Part B: Choose one of the following

Topic B.1: Poverty and Welfare

What is Universal Credit and why does it fall short of covering the basic needs of low-income individuals in the UK in 2023? In what sense does it act as a disincentive to work? Write a blog with reference to the relevant concepts discussed in the lectures and the JRF blog “The poverty trade- off: work incentives and income redistribution in Britain”, which we covered in the seminars.

Topic B.2: Road Congestion

What policy instruments can governments employ to alleviate excessive road congestion in urban areas? Choose any two cities from the list provided in the 'Further reading / extension activity' section at the bottom of the 'Road congestion' section on Moodle. Write a blog detailing the approaches of these two cities to reduce excessive road congestion and assessing the effectiveness of their initiatives. The blog should also compare the policies drawing on the concepts of efficiency and equity, which we covered in the classroom.

Topic B.3: Climate Change

What policy instruments can governments employ to address climate change and what are the pros and cons of each instrument? Write a blog exploring these policies and delving into the main challenges faced by governments in their implementation. The blog should explicitly refer to the graphical analysis covered in the corresponding lecture, providing a comprehensive understanding of the complexities associated with combating climate change.

Solution

Part A: Healthcare

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, healthcare systems across the world were facing excessive pressure with the wide range of challenges. These complexities have affected both quality and accessibility of care being provided to patients across the world that have further varied between countries (Richter, 2023). Despite different approaches being undertaken for funding in healthcare, there have been persistent problems in this industry.

(Source: Richter, 2023)

Shortage of healthcare professionals such as doctors, nurses and medical staff was determined to be one significant major challenge accelerated by the pandemic. based on Ipsos survey, 43% respondents named this staff shortage as the biggest problem of healthcare industry in their country, which made it the top issue internationally as well along with the problems of long waiting times and access to treatment (Richter, 2023). In addition, treatment costs, bureaucracy and lack of investment were identified as other pressing issues in the healthcare system. Thus, this shows the importance of ensuring more efficiency and equity in a healthcare setting for MBA assignment expert.

Healthcare is often considered as a complex investment requiring various stakeholders to generate desired health outcomes (Sorato, et al., 2020). Here, lack of availability of adequate resources for offering healthcare services to the population often poses various questions for the policy makers. Amongst such multitudes of questions, the interplay of efficiency, equity and effectiveness in healthcare requires a balanced trade off (Sorato, et al., 2020). This is because of inefficiency in healthcare and providing equitable care have emerged as global problems.

Balancing Equity and Efficiency in Healthcare

Equity can be referred to by terms of fairness and justice that focuses on balancing various reasonable and competing claims of individuals in a society without the presence of bias and in an objective manner (Asamani, et al., 2021). This equity consideration determines the equality of health in a healthcare setting where healthcare services and benefits need to be distributed equally amongst all individuals in a society. It also indicates am equal distribution of inputs like healthcare, housing, food, potable water and others for attainment of better health (Sandiford, et al., 2018). On the other hand, efficiency refers to the maximisation of health in the population with the use of available resources. This relates to an economic use of such limited healthcare resources amongst people and equity promotes ethical and fair use (Asamani, et al., 2021). Thus, both efficiency and equity are essential in distributing resources in a healthcare setting.

Healthcare systems comprise of two fundamental goals, which are maximising health gains of the overall population and minimising any unfair health inequities (Sandiford, et al., 2018). These goals help policymakers in planning and commissioning effectively for publicly funded health services. Maximising health gain is often considered as an efficiency goal in a healthcare setting. However, often this maximisation of total population health does not run in accordance with maximisation of equity in health (Sandiford, et al., 2018). This is because generating health gains for some population can be more difficult than others. For example, providing health protection access to some new social groups and diverse group of sick persons becomes difficult in countries having poor resources (Paul, et al., 2022). This makes it essential in mobilising adequate quantity of resources to acquire an incremental result. Thus, promoting equity and achieving efficiency are often viewed as conflicting healthcare goals.

(Source: Allen & Shembavnekar, 2023)

Furthermore, another example of inefficiency and inequity in healthcare system has been observed from the report about social care workforce crisis. Various problems facing this social care workforce have been low pay, poor working conditions, high vacancy rates and job insecurity (Allen & Shembavnekar, 2023). Despite these problems being accelerated with the pandemic, focusing on recruitment and retention became utmost important. In this regard, policymakers have undertaken various strategies for handling this social care staffing crisis present in the healthcare setting. The first policy includes the need for national workforce planning inn recognising a wide range of various social care services and providers alongside reviewing contracting employment and public transport availability (Allen & Shembavnekar, 2023). The second policy involves addressing different factors for improving social care staffing. These include secure employment, feeling valued at work, working culture, access to training, managerial support, increase in international recruitment, protection and wellbeing. Lastly, increasing pay and rewards has also been identified as an essential strategy for tackling labour shortage issue in a healthcare setting (Allen & Shembavnekar, 2023). Thus, these policies can be essential for ensuring better efficiency and equity in providing healthcare services.

It has been observed that for ensuring efficiency and equity in a healthcare setting, it is essential to address problems and concerns of the workforce (Karpusheff, 2023). This not only involves addressing the issue of labour shortage in healthcare but also focus on workload, staff investment and staff input. The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan provides various strategies to reduce labour issues and enhance efficiency and equity at healthcare settings (Karpusheff, 2023). These mainly include growing overall numbers of staff, adequate training, investing in people, career development, creating new roles, enhancing interconnectedness, reviewing staff input, effective communication mechanisms and employee engagement and jo satisfaction. Acknowledging and reducing significant labour issues can motivate them in offering better healthcare services (Karpusheff, 2023). Thus, this can help in ensuring efficiency and equity in any healthcare setting.

Besides, health equity must be considered as a strategic priority in healthcare settings. Remedies should not only emphasise on reducing disparities existing in clinical care but also on various social determinants of population and individual health (Mate & Wyatt, 2017). In this regard, healthcare professionals need to play a significant role in improving health outcomes through efficiency and equity. Five strategies for making health equity a core strategy can be making it a leader-driven priority, developing structures and processes for supporting equity, undertaking specific actions for addressing various social determinants of health, confronting any institutional racism within healthcare settings and collaborating with community organisations (Mate & Wyatt, 2017). Thus, these can be helpful in addressing any pressing issues preventing equity in healthcare.

Part B: Climate Change

Climate change has become a global concern, which has taken place because of increased global warming. It involves various side effects of global warming like glaciers melting at rapid rates, rising sea levels, heavier rainstorms, frequent droughts and dying cloud forests (Verma, 2021). Five key signs that are considered as climate change are increased global surface temperature, decrease in land ice, rise in sea level and decline of arctic sea ice. This global warming arising from enhanced emissions of greenhouse gases has been contributing significantly towards the problem of climate change (Verma, 2021). There have been various alarming consequences because of this climate change problem. Based on Morgan Stanley reports, climate-related disasters amounted to around $650 billion between the years 2016 and 2018 (Black, 2022). Variable weather conditions have made it difficult in growing crops, reducing agricultural yield growth, flooding large coastal and delta cities and others. These costs of climate change are further expected to increase in the future with the rising emission of greenhouse gases in the environment (Black, 2022). Thus, this makes it essential for governments across the world in adopting various policies for tackling this climate change issue.

(Source: Black, 2022)

Policy Instruments for Tackling Climate Change

Various policy instruments are now been undertaken for tackling climate change issue. These mainly include carbon pricing, carbon tax and emissions trading system (ETS).

Carbon Pricing is expected to emerge as an important mitigation strategy with the world transitioning to net zero carbon emissions within the next three decades (Black, et al., 2022). It does not only belong to a domestic climate policy but has also become a key feature in multilateral regime for managing climate change. Carbon pricing is considered as a flexible, economical and effective approach for reducing greenhouse gases (Green, 2021). Various countries and states can choose different approaches for carbon pricing, which further help in reducing the use of carbon. These carbon pricing policies are often developed based on various criteria of reducing emissions, economic efficiency and cost effectiveness (Green, 2021). Despite carbon pricing being regarded as an important policy for limiting greenhouse gas emissions, designing ways of putting a price on carbon becomes complicates because countries have multiple choices. Policymakers often find it difficult in introducing or scaling up carbon pricing because of multiple decisions to be undertaken while choosing amongst different policy instruments (Black, et al., 2022). It can be confusing to determine the policy instrument that would work best for a country. In addition, there have been various conflicts and controversies related to this carbon pricing policy across countries.

Carbon Tax is another policy tool for limiting carbon emissions by charging higher prices for carbon-emitting goods. Such high prices can often reduce demand for these harmful goods through carbon tax that reflects social cost of carbon (Islam, 2022). This tax is mainly levied on fossil fuels. Carbon taxation can motivate individuals in using fewer fossil fuels while looking for other energy sources by increasing costs of these fossil fuels for reducing emissions with the help of price mechanisms (Alper, 2017). Some advantages of this policy instrument are its double dividend feature, correcting distortion of externalities from excessive use of environmental resources, incentives for adopting cleaner technology and energy conservation and reducing compliance costs for industry. However, carbon tax on fossil fuels can be regressive because of hurting poor people more than richer individuals (Islam, 2022). Rise in prices can cause a welfare loss for these people because of expensive consumption. Adopting this policy instrument can also be politically difficult for the governments because of entrenched business interests. This restructuring of economies through carbon tax on fossil fuels can take considerable time, thus, resulting in potential disruption in the short-term (Islam, 2022). In addition, carbon tax only targets carbon dioxide emissions by ignoring the harmful consequences of other greenhouse gases.

Emissions Trading System (ETS) is another effective climate policy instrument introduced by the European Union (EU) for reducing greenhouse gas emissions across the world by covering over 11,000 power and manufacturing plants across the world (Joltreau & Sommerfeld, 2019). ETS helps in putting a cap on either total emissions or emissions intensity that is measured by emissions per unit account of the gross domestic product (GDP) of a country. Some of the attributes included under ETS category are cap stringency, stakeholder engagement, abatement cost and improved allocation practices (Narassimhan, et al., 2018). It has been observed that ETS mechanism has been powerful in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from regulated industries. This price mechanism has also proved to be effective because of higher stringency and high allowance prices resulting in faster emission reductions (Böning, et al., 2023). However, companies were found to shift their carbon-intensive activities from inside to outside of the EU. This further led to the rise in global emissions from regulated industries (Böning, et al., 2023). Thus, ETS has resulted in significant carbon leakages across the world.

Challenges of Implementation

International policy actions for constraining carbon emissions create various substantial risks and opportunities for firms (Trinks, et al., 2020). It also generates significant costs for the society and individuals alongside the increased costs of investment in clean energy. Such high costs often make it difficult for the government in combating issues related to climate change.

Organisations come across various practical issues while undertaking policies for reducing carbon emissions. Furthermore, these include increased costs of production from investment in pollution abatement and decreased costs of production from investment in energy-saving technology (Black, 2022). This can further affect consumption in the economy, while pushing firms out of business. Besides, these costs of reducing emissions are also uncertain because of the marginal damage costs, social costs or external carbon costs. These uncertainties often arise from link between carbon emissions and global temperatures, overvaluation of damages, values and costs to people and others across different generations (Trinks, et al., 2020). Moreover, developing countries like China and India often have to spend lots of money in reducing carbon emissions. Additionally, firms can also be forced out of their business, leading to unemployment in the economy.

References

Allen, L. & Shembavnekar, N. (2023, October 13). Social care workforce crisis. The Health Foundation. https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/blogs/social-care-workforce-crisis

Alper, A. E. (2017). Analysis of carbon tax on selected European countries: Does carbon tax reduce emissions. Applied Economics and Finance, 5(1), 29-36. https://doi.org/10.11114/aef.v5i1.2843

Asamani, J. A., Alugsi, S. A., Ismaila, H., & Nabyonga-Orem, J. (2021, September). Balancing Equity and Efficiency in the Allocation of Health Resources—Where Is the Middle Ground?. In Healthcare (Vol. 9, No. 10, p. 1257). MDPI. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare9101257

Black, R. (2022, January 17). Climate economics - costs and benefits. Energy & Climate. https://eciu.net/analysis/briefings/climate-impacts/climate-economics-costs-and-benefits#:~:text=The%20costs%20of%20climate%20change,-The%20impacts%20of&text=The%20UN%20Environment%20Programme%20estimated,billion%20per%20

year%20by%202050%20.

Black, S., Parry, I. & Zhunussova, K. (2022, July 21). More Countries Are Pricing Carbon, but Emissions Are Still Too Cheap. IMF. https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2022/07/21/blog-more-countries-are-pricing-carbon-but-emissions-are-still-too-cheap

Böning, J., Nino, V.D & Folger, T. (2023, June 1). Can EU companies be both green and globally competitive? European Central Bank. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/blog/date/2023/html/ecb.blog230601~529f371a98.en.html

Green, J. F. (2021). Does carbon pricing reduce emissions? A review of ex-post analyses. Environmental Research Letters, 16(4), 043004. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abdae9

Islam, R. (2022, 19 January). What a carbon tax can do and why it cannot do it all. World Bank. https://blogs.worldbank.org/energy/what-carbon-tax-can-do-and-why-it-cannot-do-it-all

Joltreau, E., & Sommerfeld, K. (2019). Why does emissions trading under the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) not affect firms’ competitiveness? Empirical findings from the literature. Climate policy, 19(4), 453-471. https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2018.1502145

Karpusheff, J. (2023, September 27). What one research synthesis tells us is missing from the NHS workforce plan. The Health Foundation. https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/blogs/what-one-research-synthesis-tells-us-is-missing-from-the-nhs-workforce-plan

Mate, K. S., & Wyatt, R. (2017). Health equity must be a strategic priority. NEJM Catalyst, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1056/CAT.17.0556

Narassimhan, E., Gallagher, K. S., Koester, S., & Alejo, J. R. (2018). Carbon pricing in practice: A review of existing emissions trading systems. Climate Policy, 18(8), 967-991. https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2018.1467827

Paul, P., Nguemdjo, U., Ngami, A., Kovtun, N., & Ventelou, B. (2022). Do efficiency and equity move together? Cross-dynamics of Health System performance and Universal
Health Coverage. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 9(1), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01271-9

Richter, F. (2023, April 6). Understaffed & Unavailable: The Biggest Healthcare Problems. Statista. https://www.statista.com/chart/29678/biggest-problems-with-healthcare-systems/

Sandiford, P., Consuelo, D. V., Rouse, P., & Bramley, D. (2018). The trade-off between equity and efficiency in population health gain: Making it real. Social Science & Medicine, 212, 136-144.

Sorato, M. M., Asl, A. A., & Davari, M. (2020). Improving health care system efficiency for equity, quality and access: does the healthcare decision making involve the concerns of equity. Explan Rev J Health Med Econ, 6(1), 45. https://doi.org/10.36648/2471-9927.6.1.45

Trinks, A., Mulder, M., & Scholtens, B. (2020). An efficiency perspective on carbon emissions and financial performance. Ecological Economics, 175, 106632. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106632

Verma, A. K. (2021). Influence of climate change on balanced ecosystem, biodiversity and sustainable development: An overview. International Journal of Biological Innovations, 3(2), 331- 337. https://doi.org/10.46505/IJBI.2021.3213