Working papers

Over the past 20 years the incidence of relative poverty among Britain's children has tripled.

n this paper the assumption of i.i.d. income innovations used in previous empirical studies is removed and the focus of the analysis placed on models for the conditional variance of income shocks, that is related to the approporiate measure of risk emphasized by the theory.

The approximate effects of measurement error on a variety of measures of inequality and poverty are derived.

In this paper we study the sources of wage growth.

This paper examines the history of the Labout government elected in 1974, using it as a test-case for various 'New Right' economic and political theories that suggest that government expansion eventually hits structural limits.

This paper presents a unified model that integrates the theoretical literatue on Schumpeterian endogenous growth, the microeconometric literature on R&D and productivity, and the empirical literature on productivity convergence.

In this report, the Committee considers the issue of tax equity between the employed and self-employed. This complex topic raises many questions, one of which relates to the way in which the tax system classifies workers. Do changing work patterns indicate the need for a new approach to classification for tax purposes? Is the case law that currently governs the area sufficiently robust and clear, especially in the light of the new burden placed upon it by the so-called IR35 legislation on personal service companies? What is the relation between classification of workers for taxation and their classification in other areas of law, particularly employment law? These are some of the issues addressed in this paper.

In this paper we examine the properties of a simple criterion-based, likelihood ratio type test of parameter restristions for standard GMM estimators in autoregressive panel data models.

This paper investigates the impact of pupil-teacher ratios on later life earnings. We find no impact on the earnings of men, but a lower pupil-teacher ratio does increase the earnings of women – particularly low ability women.

In this paper we describe the IFS-Leverhulme patents dataset that we have constructed by combining information from the US Case-Western Patent database with UK company accounts and share price information from the London Stock Exchange.

In this paper we describe the household wealth distribution in the US and UK, and compare both wealth inequality and the form in which wealth is held.

In a Monte Carlo study of a panel data model it is shown that the corrected variance estimate approximates the final sample variance well, leading to more accurate inference.

Analysts should correct for distributional differences before undertaking local progressivity comparisons between income tax or tax and benefit schedules. A transplant-and-compare procedure is advocated, involving 'importation' of the schedule from one regime into another, or from both into a reference scenario. The residual progression ordering over transplanted schedules then assures a global ordering of original regimes by Lorenz or Suits curves. The algorithm is advocated for use only when transplantation functions are isoelastic, and is illustrated for the Canadian, Israeli and UK tax and benefit systems.

We explore the role that economic incentives, particularly changes in wages at the bottom end of the wage distribution, play in determining crime rates.

This paper examines how capital tax competition affects jurisdiction formation.

The goals of income transfer systems in the US and the UK for low-income families are to reduce poverty and welfare dependency and encourage work.

This paper shows that, contrary to common beliefs, the real options effect of uncertainty plays no role in the long run rate of investment.

This paper presents a detailed analysis of the composition of household portfolios, using both aggregate and micro-data.