Martin is a Research Fellow of IFS and Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin. He was previously Deputy Research Director of IFS, and head of the Industrial Organisation and Demand sector. His research interests include empirical IO, public economics and applied microeconometrics.
Education
PhD Economics, University College London, 2015
MSc (Distinction) Economics, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2008
MA (Hons) Financial Economics, University of St Andrews, 2007
We study consumer spending dynamics during one such time, the first infection wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, using household scanner data covering fast-moving consumer goods in the United Kingdom.
In this briefing note, we use comprehensive real-time data on grocery purchases and prices in Great Britain to show how inflation and promotional activity has evolved up until the beginning of August 2020.
We study consumer spending dynamics during the first infection wave of the COVID-19 pandemic using household scanner data covering fast-moving consumer goods in the United Kingdom.
We use real-time scanner data in Great Britain during the COVID-19 pandemic to investigate the drivers of the inflationary spike at the beginning of lockdown and to quantify the impact of high-frequency changes in shopping behaviours and promotions on inflation measurement.
We characterize inflation dynamics during the Great Lockdown using scanner data covering millions of transactions for fast-moving consumer goods in the United Kingdom. We show that there was a significant and widespread spike in inflation.
Soda taxes aim to reduce excessive sugar consumption. We assess who are most impacted by soda taxes. We estimate demand using micro longitudinal data covering on-the-go purchases, and exploit the panel dimension to estimate individual specific preferences. We relate these preferences and counterfactual predictions to individual characteristics and show that soda taxes are relatively effective at targeting the sugar intake of the young, are less successful at targeting the intake of those with high total dietary sugar, and are unlikely to be strongly regressive especially if consumers benefit from averted internalities.
