Reports

The UK's poor productivity performance relative to the US has been a focus for government policy and analysis in recent Budgets and Pre-Budget Reports. The labour productivity gap fell over the early 1990s, when the UK experienced relatively faster growth in business sector labour productivity than the US, but it has since increased again as productivity growth slowed in the UK and accelerated in the US. This aggregate picture hides considerable variation at the industry level. In some industries the gap has narrowed substantially over the past decade, while in others it has widened. As a result, although the total size of the productivity gap did not change very much over the 1990s, the industries that account for the majority of the gap have changed considerably. An understanding of where the productivity gap arises is essential to be able to target policy effectively.

We survey microeconometric research on investment and emplyment that has used panel data on individual firms or plants.

Many people in the UK do not claim benefits to which they seem to be entitled. Amongst those of working-age, take-up rates for Family Credit.

This paper attempts to uncover the effects of a welfare-to-work programme, that acts as a wage subsidy, on wage growth by exploiting an expansion to this welfare programme in the UK.

The government has a target for child poverty to fall to 3.1 million by 2004-05, measured by the number of children in households with less than 60% median income after housing costs. The latest data showed that 3.8 million children (30% of children in Britain) were in poverty in 2001-02 on this definition. To help achieve the target, increases to means-tested benefits and tax credits need to take effect in April 2004, and therefore need to be announced in the forthcoming Pre-Budget Report.

This paper studies the relationship between demographic change and international capital flows using a large cross-country time-series dataset.

In August 2003 the government issued a further consultation document on reform to the corporation tax system.This consultation continues a process that started in July 2001 with a consultation document on large business taxation, and which appears to have become an annual exercise. This Briefing Note points out that this annual round of reform proposals does little to promote a stable environment for business investment decisions. New proposals on transfer pricing and finance leasing will add to business costs.

This is a response by the Tax Law Review Committee of the Institute for Fiscal Studies to the invitation to comment on the questions raised in the consultation paper on civil partnerships.

On 6 October 2003, the pension credit replaced the minimum income guarantee as the principal means-tested benefit for families containing an individual aged 60 or over. This Briefing Note examines the impact of this reform.

This report contains a summary of quantitative evidence from an evaluation of the Education

This paper shows that the location of economic activity is correlated with the variation in relative wages.

There is a strong consensus that the British general election successes of the Labour Party in 1997 and 2001 owed much to attracting and retaining support from amongst the 'middle-class' voters of 'middle Britain'. But are the supposed residents of middle Britain in the middle of the income distribution? In this briefing note, we look at where we might find the 'middle classes' in the income distribution, and at the pattern of income distribution more generally.

We have compiled a non-technical and relatively brief policy summary of an extensive CEE research programme which has focused on the relative value of different academic and vocational qualifications in the British labour market, how this value differs for different subgroups of the population and how this value has changed over time.

In this commentary, IFS compares the reforms proposed by the two parties, looking at the effect on student and graduate finances, the distributional impact on households with different incomes, and the cost to the Exchequer and taxpayers in general.

Understanding why the UK has performed relatively poorly in terms of R&D is important for predicting whether current policies can halt this decline and ultimately narrow the productivity gap. This Briefing Note documents and disentangles trends in UK R&D over the period 1981-2000.

In this Briefing Note, we discuss whether or not the government's proposed reforms are likely to help individuals to make choices about how to provide for their retirement that are appropriate to their circumstances. We focus particularly on whether or not the proposals might prompt those individuals who are not thought to be providing sufficiently for their retirement to save more each year or to retire at an older age than might otherwise have been the case.

This commentary reviews the government's tax and benefit reforms affecting pensioners to date, and examines the evidence from the latest official low income figures on the government's record on pensioner poverty so far.

The child tax credit and working tax credit were introduced in April 2003. When fully operational, the child tax credit will represent the majority of government financial support for children. It is designed to simplify the system of financial support for parents, and provides support that is means-tested against family income. The working tax credit is designed to make work more financially attractive. It means that people with or without children in work and on a low income may receive extra help from the State. This Briefing Note looks at the changes that have been made and asks why the new tax credits have been introduced, how they work, the cost and distributional impact, the impact on work incentives and what levels of take-up we might expect.