Smoky mirrors
Stand by for a row about official figures
HAVING showered sackloads of taxpayers' cash on the public services, the government is understandably twitchy about the charge that the results are disappointing. When official figures suggested that public-sector productivity was indeed falling, one of Britain's top economists, Sir Tony Atkinson, of Oxford's Nuffield College, was asked to investigate.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Smoky mirrors”
From the July 24th 2004 edition
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