David Phillips

David is an Associate Director and helps lead two main areas of research at the Institute. First is work on devolved and local government finance, with a particular focus on the distribution of funding, and the incentives and risks that different funding regimes entail for sub-national government, as well as responses to these incentives. This includes work on the fiscal frameworks of Scotland and Wales and on the ongoing major changes to English local government finance. Second is work on tax and social protection policy in developing countries, including the joint IFS - ODI Centre for Tax Analysis in Developing Countries (TaxDev) funded by DfID. This centre aims to generate new research, analysis and in-country analytical capacity in the area of tax and social protection policy and administration in (or of relevance to) DfID-priority countries, including Ethiopia, Ghana, Rwanda and Uganda. 

David also has experience of working on a range of other issues including inter-personal and geographical inequalities; labour supply; consumer demand; human capital investment; and social capital. This experience helps inform his ongoing research, especially on tax policy design in developing countries.