The UK experience with sectoral policies

Understand this issue

It’s time to take a firmer grip on companies and competition law

comment

Globalisation, inequality, feeble productivity growth, earnings stagnation, the falling labour share of national income — the most important features of economic life. And one institution binds them together: the firm.

25 April 2022

Spring Budget 2024: What you need to know

podcast

IFS reaction to the Chancellor's Spring Budget.

7 March 2024

If you can’t see it, you can’t be it: role models influence female junior doctors’ choice of medical specialty

comment

Working alongside a greater share of senior women specialists during an early-career placement influences junior women’s own specialty choice.

24 April 2024

Policy analysis

How do the last five years measure up on levelling up?

report

How well – or badly – has the UK fared on the 12 levelling up missions? We examine early progress and the scale of the challenge ahead.

19 June 2024

Freeports: What are they? What do we know? And what will we know?

report

This report analyses the rationale for Freeports and what we can learn about their potential impact from past policies and a planned evaluation.

10 March 2023

Freeports and Investment Zones – what sorts of things should we consider when assessing whether they are good policy?

comment

We discuss the economic issues central to whether Freeports and Investment Zones are a good idea.

10 March 2023

Academic research

Firms and inequality

book chapter

This chapter assesses inequality between firms in the UK.

3 March 2022

Technology, skills, and performance: the case of robots in surgery

working paper

This paper investigates the potential of new technologies to reduce disparities in the provision of healthcare services.

7 November 2022

Overconfidence and technology adoption in health care

working paper

We study the determinants of adoption in the case of implantable cardiac defibrillators, for which we document large differences across hospitals.

31 August 2022