• Income inequality: how and why has it changed, and should governments care? | Starts at 01:44 | Download slides
  • The economics of health inequalities | Starts at 54:45 | Download slides
  • Pensions and savings | Starts at 1:54:16 | Download slides
  • Why tax corporate income, and what can go wrong when we do? | Starts at 4:51:55 | Download slides
  • How can we design taxes to discourage harmful behaviour? | Starts at 5:51:53 | Download slides

This event is part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science. Click here for information on other festival events.

Each year early career economists at IFS deliver a day of public economics talks, aimed at A-level and undergraduate students who have an interest in economics or might want to pursue a career in public policy research. As part of this year’s Festival of Social Science, we will be live streaming a selection of lectures from the series.

These webinars are primarily aimed at final year undergraduates studying economics, but should be useful to anyone interested in the subject. There will be time allowed for Q&A on each topic.

9:00 - 9:45: Income inequality: how and why has it changed, and should governments care?

This lecture will look at what is meant by income inequality and how we can measure it, why governments should care about it, as well as how it has changed over the past decades and why.

10:00 - 10:45: The economics of health inequalities

How unequal is health in the UK and why economists care? This lecture will explain what exactly is meant by health inequality, why it may matter and what could be done to help. We will also discuss how COVID may affect health inequalities in the UK.

11:00 - 11:45: Pensions and savings

Why should people save for retirement and why do governments intervene in people's pension saving decisions? How has the UK pension system changed over time? This lecture will discuss key themes around pension saving, specifically discussing the UK policy context.

14:00 - 14:45: Why tax corporate income, and what can go wrong when we do?

Why do governments tax corporate profits? And what are the policy challenges associated with doing so? The lecture explores whether the burden of corporation tax falls on shareholders or workers and asks why so many large companies appear to pay so little tax.

15:00 - 15:45: How can we design taxes to discourage harmful behaviour?

This lecture will look at what the rationale for sin taxes is, what economic theory tells us about how we should set them, some of the challenges of doing this in practice and the potential role of economic analysis in helping us to overcome these challenges.


This event will be free to watch online. To sign up to receive a reminder before the event starts, please click here.