We put forward a method for estimating discount rates using wealth and income data. We build consumption from these data using the budget constraint. Consumption transitions yield discount rates by household groups. Applying this technique to a sample of older households, we find a similar distribution to those previously estimated using field data, though with a much lower mean than those found using experiments. Surprisingly, among this older population, patience is negatively correlated with education and numeracy. This goes against the positive correlation found for younger populations in experiments and some field studies. We discuss potential explanations for this result.
David Phillips, Senior research economist, gave this presentation on the implications of the Autumn Statement for local government to a range of council staff and other stakeholders.
Last month, researchers at the Institute for Fiscal Studies launched first paper the from a new programme on local government finance. This paper looked at a range of issues including, changes in councils’ spending and revenues over the last seven years, and issues related to the evolving English business rates retention scheme (BRRS). Today, we publish two spreadsheets with information for individual council areas: a spreadsheet showing changes to councils’ spending on services between 2009–10 and 2016–17; and a spreadsheet showing relative gains and losses from the BRRS since it was introduced in 2013–14.
There is little current information regarding the long-term persistence of health spending in the United States, in particular among the population aged under 65 (pre-Medicare eligibility). We describe and model the extent of persistence over a six-year period (2003–08) using medical and pharmacy claims for over 3 million employees, retirees and dependants derived from the Truven Health MarketScan database.
Since the creation of National Health Insurance (NHI) in 1995, Taiwan's medical spending has been increasing rapidly, as has been the case in most countries worldwide. This paper follows international standards in documenting recent trends in Taiwan's medical spending by category, relying on official statistics, Surveys of Family Income and Expenditure (SFIE) data and administrative reimbursement panel data from the NHI Universal Database (NHIUD).
Health care spending growth in Japan has accelerated in recent years, unlike in most OECD countries. It is thus important to characterise the structure of recent medical spending using individual-level data.
