The £600 billion problem awaiting the next government podcastWe speak to David Gauke and Giles Wilkes, two experts who have been at the heart of the spending review process.25 April 2024
Be the Chancellor Our interactive tool lets you be the Chancellor. Change spending plans, set tax policies and see how your choices impact borrowing and debt.
Should we worry about government debt? podcastDavid Miles joins us to discuss high government debt and its impact on the economy. 11 April 2024
IFS Annual Lecture - Innovation and productivity policies: a budgetary perspective event 15 May 2024 Professor Heidi Williams (Dartmouth College) will deliver the 2024 IFS Annual Lecture on innovation and productivity policies.
Higher Education Access and Funding: challenges and policy options conference 14 May 2024 This one-day academic conference will look at access to and funding of Higher Education systems.
Jobs landing pageAt IFS, we recruit and train top-quality economists and professional support staff. We aim to foster a respectful and inclusive working environment.20 July 2022
Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy The Research Centre at the heart of IFS is the CPP.
To invest or not to invest in sanitation: the role of intra-household gender differences in perceptions and bargaining power Working Paper We study how intra-household gender differences in perceptions of costs and benefits of sanitation impact investment decisions. 24 January 2023
Labeled loans and human capital investments Journal article We provide novel evidence that labeled microcredit is effective in influencing household borrowing and investment decisions. 14 January 2023
Parental investments and intra-household inequality in child human capital: evidence from a survey experiment Working Paper This paper studies the role played by parents’ educational investment to explain intra-household inequality and its determinants. 7 December 2022
Father of the bride, or steel magnolias? Targeting men, women or both to reduce child marriage Working Paper We conduct a cluster-randomized control trial of an edutainment intervention aimed at delaying marriage of adolescent children in rural Pakistan. 25 November 2022
Revealed beliefs and the marriage market return to education Working Paper This paper develops a new methodology to analyse how parents in Rajasthan, India make choices about their daughters’ schooling and marriage. 23 November 2022
Inflation, incomes and inequality – how can lower-income countries use fiscal policy to the greatest effect? Comment We outline six ideas to help shield the vulnerable from rising prices while heading towards more sustainable and inclusive economies. 21 November 2022
Firms as tax collectors Working Paper We show that delegating tax collection to large firms can help build tax capacity in weak-enforcement settings. 31 October 2022
Social incentives, delivery agents and the effectiveness of development interventions Journal article We study the use of the local delivery model for development interventions in the context of a standard agricultural extension intervention in Uganda. 6 October 2022
Fiscal policy and income inequality: the role of taxes and social spending Report This report surveys the available evidence on the combined impact of taxes and social spending on within-country income inequality and poverty. 30 September 2022
Gender norms, violence and adolescent girls’ trajectories: evidence from a field experiment in India Working Paper We compare the effectiveness of targeting only adolescent girls with an approach that engages with enforcers of gender norms in the wider community. 26 September 2022
Import tax expenditure report: FY 2018/19 – 2020/21 Report This report uses shipment-level microdata from the Ethiopian Customs Commission to estimate import tax expenditures for 2018/19, 2019/20 and 2020/21. 1 September 2022
When nature calls back: Sustaining behavioral change in rural Pakistan Journal article We implement a randomized controlled trial and a qualitative study to assess whether, and if so how, behavioral change can be sustained. 16 July 2022
Can white elephants kill? Unintended consequences of infrastructure development Working Paper I provide evidence of the severe social costs imposed by infrastructure projects that are being implemented in the context of sewerage in Peru. 12 July 2022
In-kind transfers as insurance Working Paper Using calorie shortfalls as a marginal utility proxy, we find that in-kind transfers are preferred for low-income Indian households. 29 June 2022
Social proximity and misinformation: experimental evidence from a mobile phone-based campaign in India Working Paper We study how social proximity between the sender and the receiver of information shapes the effectiveness of preventive health behaviour campaigns. 8 June 2022
The effect of electronic transactions on tax compliance: Evidence from West Bengal Report A one-off demonetisation led to a shift to electronic payments, which in turn increased tax compliance 26 April 2022
MaiMwana - IFS Economic Survey Internal Dataset The MaiMwana - IFS Economic Survey is a longitudinal dataset of approx. 3200 women aged 17-43 years and their households collected in Malawi. 22 April 2022
Public service delivery and free riding: experimental evidence from India Working Paper This paper provides novel evidence on the trade-off between public service delivery and free riding in low- and middle-income countries. 14 April 2022
Does going cashless make you tax-rich? Evidence from India’s demonetisation Report Leveraging the 2016 demonetisation in India, this article shows that areas that were more impacted by the policy, experienced faster growth in electronic payments and, in turn, average sales reported to the tax authority increased. 31 March 2022
Sanitation and credit constraints – The role of labelled microcredit in India’s Swacch Bharat Mission subsidy scheme Working Paper We provide rigorous evidence of the impacts of labelled microcredit on household sanitation investment and borrowing behaviour. 4 February 2022
