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About

Impact

See our impact over the past year.

Our academic impact

Hosting one of the UK’s only two prestigious UKRI-funded social science Research Institutes, IFS economists carry out cutting-edge empirical research on a par with our leading universities.

In 2025, IFS Sure Start research won the ONS Research Excellence Award, two award at the Smart Thinking awards and IFS Research Fellow Phillippe Aghion was jointly awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. 

IFS authors published 74 journal articles and 68 working papers in 2025. Over the past decade we have had 48 articles in the top five economics journals.

Our policy impact

Our research and expertise is drawn upon by national, regional and local policymakers in the UK and overseas, as well as MPs from all parties. We publish high quality, policy-relevant research:

  • In 2025, IFS was mentioned 224 times in parliamentary debates (Source: Hansard).
  • IFS and IFS research was cited 614 times in UK government documents (Source: Overton).
  • Our annual flagship Green Budget report, setting out options and challenges for the Chancellor, was launched over a series of events and video streams. In total, over 1,000 people watched at least one of these events live.

“When I worked in the Treasury, we knew the IFS would keep us honest...and we knew that having an independent check on our costings and analysis was an excellent discipline.”

Lord Gus O’Donnell, former Cabinet Minister and IFS President

Our impact on society

We inform public and policy debates on issues such as education, health, inequality and the public finances. We significantly increased engagement and reach in 2025.

  • In 2025, we received over 3 million website visits.
  • We held more events in 2025 (47) than in any year apart from 2021 (49), with record total numbers watching them live (7,946 vs 7,570 in 2024) and on YouTube afterwards (over 116,000 total views, almost half again as many as the previous record of 78,000 in 2024).
  • We had over 530,000 listens to our podcast episodes in 2025.

Our media impact

IFS staff regularly engage with journalists from print, online and broadcast media. Our research, analysis and reactive commentary earned us over 44,871 UK media mentions in 2025. We also published 139 press releases.  

“For decades, Westminster has looked to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) to cast the definitive judgement on tax and spending policies.”

George Eaton, The News Statesman

Find Out More

About Us

The Institute for Fiscal Studies was founded in 1969. Established as an independent research institute, IFS was launched with the principal aim of better informing public debate on economics in order to promote the development of effective fiscal policy.

Inequalities in the 21st century

One of the fruits of IFS’s national and international collaboration with leading academics and policymakers is the Review of Inequalities in the 21st century, led by Novel Prize-winner, Sir Angus Deaton. The review involves over 100 academics from around the world, including Penny Goldberg (World Bank), Thomas Piketty (Paris) and Nobel-Prize winner Jean Tirole (Toulouse).

Impact acceleration

Impact acceleration account

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has been awarded £1.25 million in flexible Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) over the next five years.