Economic and Social Research Council awards over £10 million for Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at the Institute for Fiscal Studies

The UKRI Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has renewed its support for the Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy (CPP) at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), awarding over £10 million in funding over five years from October 2025.  

The CPP sits at the heart of the IFS and aims to promote integration of its internationally leading microeconomic research and policy analysis to increase understanding of how individuals and businesses behave – and how they react to government policy decisions. In doing so, it aims to ensure that the IFS’ work has sustained impacts on public policy and practice while contributing to informing high-quality public debate.  

Receiving ESRC Research Institute-status in 2018, the CPP has long been influential on economic and fiscal policy – in the UK and internationally – including in the fields of taxation, the labour market, education, welfare, pensions, and public finances. It has also made a vital contribution to building technical and policy capacity among a new generation of highly skilled researchers.

The CPP’s impact and authority is evident from the level of profile it receives across academia, public policy and the media. In 2024 alone, its work was:

• published as 102 articles in academic and policy journals
• mentioned 270 times in UK parliamentary debates  
• presented as evidence to UK government committees 23 times  
• mentioned in over 71,000 items of UK media coverage, including 301 front-page articles.

The vision for the next phase of the CPP’s development remains centred on its longstanding core objectives but also involves a firm focus on innovation, including:

• expanding research into new areas of pressing importance
• deepening and widening stakeholder connections to ensure research has policy impact
• developing new data and methods and making these available to the research community
• expanding international collaborations with governments, NGOs and like-minded research organisations
• and building additional training opportunities for early-career researchers.

Welcoming the new funding, Imran Rasul, IFS Research Director and CPP Director, said:

‘We are delighted to receive this continued support from ESRC for the CPP. This core funding is critical to our work, enabling us to pursue research in longstanding areas of importance for public policy in the UK and overseas, as well as develop new agendas in emerging areas. It also underpins all of our work on wider engagement with non-academic stakeholders, and to build capacity within the UK to continually strengthen ties between economic research and policy. We look forward to working with ESRC as we take forward our plans.'

ESRC executive chair Stian Westlake said:

““For over thirty years, the CPP’s invaluable work has helped us understand the impact of economic policy on the behaviour of individuals and businesses. The insights it has gleaned have been of vital importance to policymakers at local, national and international levels.

“CPP has an exemplary track record of improving lives and livelihoods through their rigorous, impactful research. Understanding the economic underpinning of public policy is an essential basis for restarting growth, reviving the public finances, and promoting human flourishing.

“This continued investment shows ESRC has every confidence that the CPP is up to the task.”

Examples of the CPP’s previous work include:  

Sure Start – The CPP’s research into one of England’s highest profile early years programmes has defined public debate in this area. Initially focused on the health impacts of the initiative, later analysis examined its influence on educational outcomes and youth offending levels. This has been accompanied by direct engagement and collaboration with a wide range of senior civil servants and policymakers across both education and health and has generated multiple citations in government and parliamentary reports.

Health and social care – Beginning in 2021, the CPP’s work in this area has examined productivity and waiting lists within the NHS and led to sustained engagement with the UK Treasury to inform the NHS component of its Public Services Productivity Review. The CPP’s NHS waiting lists calculator – an interactive tool to explore how different scenarios impact waiting lists – won the prestigious Harding Prize for Trustworthy Communication and was used by the Office for Budget Responsibility to inform their 2023 Fiscal Sustainability Report.  

Local and devolved government – Since 2020, the CPP’s work looking at local and devolved government has hugely expanded and includes annual analysis of the Scottish Budget – research which is increasingly influential in informing fiscal policy in Scotland. This work led to the CPP being commissioned to undertake an independent review of the options for reforming the fiscal frameworks of the devolved nations, post-pandemic. Similarly, research into the Welsh Government's council tax reforms helped lay the groundwork for subsequent plans to revalue and reform council tax in Wales and for CPP researchers to assist with the Welsh Government in designing and analysing the options for reform.  

The IFS Deaton Review of Inequalities – In 2019, the CPP launched this major review (co-funded by the Nuffield Foundation) to better understand how inequalities arise and how they should be addressed across areas including income, health, wealth, political participation and opportunity. Bringing together a multidisciplinary panel of world-renowned experts, the programme produced a wealth of systematic empirical evidence on previously undocumented inequalities and trends in the UK, including published articles on race and ethnicity, gender, disability, geography and social mobility.  

Lively Minds – CPP research informed the development of low-cost, scalable and high-quality early childhood care and education programmes, informed by research in low and middle-income contexts – including Ghana, the West Bank, Bangladesh and India – and in partnership with policymakers and NGOs. In 2021, CPP researchers began developing such a programme in Ghana – Lively Minds. Further research demonstrated the programme’s positive impacts on children’s health and cognitive and socio-emotional development. Based on this evidence, the Ghana Ministry of Education has begun a phased four-year expansion of Lively Minds, reaching 1.3 million children.