Markets are the most efficient means yet discovered of allocating society's scarce resources. Unfortunately, many believe that market forces must inevitably conflict with social goals. So it is important to remind ourselves that market forces and self-interest can fulfil social, as well as private, aspirations. This book introduces a radical new financial instrument, Conflict Reduction Bonds, intended to channel the market's incentives and efficiencies into achieving what is perhaps our most urgent and yet remote social objective: the ending for all time of violent political conflict.

Violent political conflict and climate change threaten us all. Governments and international bodies have failed to respond in any meaningful way. They continue to fund activities and institutions that are only tenuously linked to social and environmental goals. Social Policy Bonds are a new financial instrument that could revolutionise policymaking. By issuing them, governments and the private sector could inextricably tie rewards to outcomes, and inject market incentives into the achievement of such universally desired goals as world peace and climate stability. Ronnie Horesh's Social Policy...

Social Policy Bonds are a radical new financial instrument designed to inject market incentives into the achievement of social and environmental goals. These can include global goals such as an end to climate change and violent conflict, or national goals such as improved health and literacy, and lower rates of crime and unemployment. Social Policy Bonds would target agreed, explicit outcomes and reward people for achieving them, however they do so. This book is a thorough and entertaining description of how current policymaking is flawed, and how Social Policy Bonds could put it right.