Explainer
Excess Mortality: What It Measures and Why It Matters
How excess mortality is defined and estimated, what it revealed during the COVID-19 pandemic and major heatwaves, and how to read the figures without being misled.
Publications
Research
Everything the Institute publishes follows the same standard: named, checkable sources; explicit definitions; stated scope and limitations; and a stable, citable address. Publications come in four formats — jump to explainers, primers or reviews — or read about how this work is produced.
Explainers
What a concept, measure or system is, how it works, and how to read claims about it.
Explainer
Health System Models Compared: Beveridge, Bismarck, and Beyond
The four classic models of health system financing, which countries use them, why every real system is a hybrid, and what the labels do and do not explain.
Explainer
What Is Evidence-Based Policymaking?
Where the idea came from, what counts as evidence, the institutions built around it, and the honest limits of letting evidence guide public decisions.
Primers
Structured introductions to a whole subject, written for readers starting from zero.
Primer
Randomised Controlled Trials in Public Policy: A Primer
Why randomisation is the cleanest route to causal claims, the landmark policy trials that proved the method’s worth, and the questions RCTs cannot answer.
Primer
Population Ageing in High-Income Countries: A Primer
Why populations are ageing, how ageing is measured, what it means for pensions, health care and labour markets — and what policy can and cannot change.
Reviews
Assessments of the measurement landscape on a question: the sources, what is robust, and what is not.
Review
Measuring Public Trust in Institutions: Surveys, Findings, and Pitfalls
A review of the major surveys that measure trust in government, media and science, the findings that hold up across sources, and the methodological traps that produce misleading headlines.