Arun is a Research Fellow in TAXDEV at IFS, working on issues of tax administration in developing countries, as well as a Researcher in TARC studying tax compliance in the UK. Previously his work at IFS focused on environmental taxation and energy use.
Arun is also an Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick. He has a PhD in Economics from University College London. From 2011-13 he was an Associate Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, where he taught microeconomics.
Education
PhD Economics, University College London, 2017
MRes (Distinction) Economics, University College London, 2011
MPhil (Distinction) Economics, University of Cambridge, 2010
BA (First Class Honours) Economics, University of Cambridge, 2009
Carbon pricing can be a powerful tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. What are the risks and opportunities from such policies in developing countries?
We show that wealth inequality in the UK is high and has increased slightly over the past decade as financial asset prices have increased in the wake of the financial crisis.
In this paper, we model the revenue that could be raised from an annual and a one-off wealth tax of the design recommended by Advani, Chamberlain and Summers in the Wealth Tax Commission's Final Report (2020).
October 5th is the deadline for big companies to report their gender pay gaps. In 2019 – before the pandemic disrupted data collection – women were paid 16% less per hour than men on average. The gap in average annual earnings was even larger, at 37%, since women are much more likely to work part-time.
Dame Angela Eagle MP and leading experts in tax discussed whether the UK should make more use of taxes on wealth. Even if the overall tax take doesn’t rise, should more be raised from wealth for distributional reasons? And, if we are to tax wealth more, should this be achieved by reforming current taxes, such as those on property, capital gains and inheritances?
The economics profession – and the current student population studying economics – is not representative of society, with women, some ethnic minorities, and state school students underrepresented. Recent data shows that while more than 7% of private school boys who went on to an undergraduate degree were studying economics, this was true of less than 1% of state school girls.
In this briefing note, we examine the ethnic diversity of academic economists who provide much of the research that ultimately feeds into policymaking. We use data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) to look at which groups are more or less well represented as academic economic researchers.
In this paper we study the contribution of migrants to the rise in UK top incomes. Using administrative data on the universe of UK taxpayers we show migrants are over-represented at the top of the income distribution, with migrants twice as prevalent in the top 0.1% as anywhere in the bottom 97%.
Event
2 July 2020 at 11:00<p>Please see above for details on how to watch this event online.</p>
The COVID-19 crisis has exposed growing inequalities and provoked a debate about the rebuilding of public finances. This event will launch a new project investigating the desirability and feasibility of a wealth tax in the UK.
