Dr Peter Levell

Will Brexit mean more money for the NHS?

We often think of exports and imports as things made in one country and consumed in another – I export cars to you and import socks you’ve made. In fact the majority of UK exports and imports are now made up of goods or services which are themselves inputs into production. I export engines to your car factory and import cotton to make into socks. This sort of trade is particularly important for understanding the UK’s trade with the EU. In this observation we look at the implications this has for the UK’s future trade policies.

A blog piece for UK in a Changing Europe.

We are delighted to announce that IFS Senior Research Economist Peter Levell has been appointed to theONS's Technical Advisory Panel on Consumer Prices. The Advisory Panel on Consumer Prices (Technical) (APCP Technical) provides independent advice to the National Statistician on technical aspects o...

How might Brexit affect food prices?

This presentation was given by Peter Levell at the Public Economics Lecture Day on 6 January 2017.

This morning the Office for National Statistics announced that CPI inflation rose to 0.9% in the year to October, down from an inflation rate of 1.0% in the year to September but still substantially up from 0.6% in the year to August. The Bank of England expect inflation to rise further, to 2.4% in 2017 and 2.8% in 2018 – considerably higher than the 1.5% and 2.1% expected back in May. Most of this forecast increase is driven by the recent devaluation of the pound, which pushes up the price of imports. In this Observation we look at how the overall 2.5% increase in the price level which is likely to result from sterling’s decline since the June referendum will affect the prices of different goods. We then look at whether this is likely to have a bigger effect on poorer or richer households.

A webinar on an article published in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society

In their Correspondence (March 19, p 1162),1 Peter Scarborough and colleagues correctly quote us as saying that “the efficacy of [a sugary drinks tax] will depend on what products [consumers] switch to and how firms change their prices”, stating that we “based [our] conclusions on economic theory without reference to the evidence”. We agree that the magnitude of consumer response is an empirical question. Our Green Budget chapter2 neither supported nor opposed the proposed sugary drinks tax, but rather aimed to highlight some of the complexities surrounding such a tax and where the evidence base should be improved. We also do not dispute the unsurprising finding that consumption of sugary drinks fell in countries in which a sugary soft drinks tax had been introduced. We disagree, however, that concerns about substitution responses can be lightly dismissed.

This presentation was delivered at the 'Redistribution from a lifetime perspective' event held at the Nuffield Foundation on 22nd September 2015.