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Social Irresponsibility, Actuarial Assumptions, And Wealth Redistribution: Lessons About Public Policy From A Prepaid Tuition Program, Jeffrey S. Lehman

Michigan Law Review

In this article, I shall try to illuminate the question of how governments, as opposed to private insurers, grapple with the problem of intergenerational social irresponsibility. I shall do so by analyzing and criticizing a single public program. That program, the Michigan Education Trust (MET), was the most widely publicized government action in the field of higher education finance during the 1980s. MET allows parents of young children to purchase contracts promising to cover the children's tuition at Michigan public colleges when they enroll up to eighteen years later.

In setting forth this case study, I also attempt to develop …

The Social And Political Challenge Of Inflation: An Economist's View, Harold T. Shapiro

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Special Issue of the Journal of Law Reform has been nourished, at least in an emotional sense, by this same concern. The editors of the Journal apparently share the widespread frustration regarding what seem to increasing numbers of citizens as the largely intractable nature of the country's current economic ills. There is a certain apprehension that we may not be able to develop solutions to our lagging productivity, to our continuing inflation and unemployment, to our energy "problem," or to a host of other "economic" issues currently outstanding on the national agenda: unemployment of young people and minorities, environmental …