Fiscal rules and frameworks

The Labour government has been at pains to stress the importance of public investment. A large portion of Spending Review 2000 was devoted to explaining why we should care about public investment: it provides the infrastructure that is a prerequisite for improvements in output and growth and is necessary both to supply and to enhance public services. This notes looks at public investment over the last 25 years and identifies trends in the various spending areas.

This Briefing Note looks at the current government's record on public spending, borrowing and taxation.

Election 2001: This Briefing Note looks in detail at public spending.

This Election Briefing Note looks at the planned levels of borrowing for the three main parties.

Election briefing note 5 (2001)

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 short paper starts by describing the two fiscal rules and then looks at the latest set of HM Treasury forecasts, which suggest that these rules will indeed be met. We then go on to discuss the level of uncertainty that is implicit in any public finance forecasts.

This Election Briefing Note looks at whether we can see a difference between the parties in their approach to taxes and benefits.

This short note outlines some possible scenarios for the path of public spending beyond March 2004.

Focusing on the distributional consequences, this paper details the changes in the tax and benefit system in the Labour government's Budgets since they came to power in 1997.

This paper introduces a recursive algorithm with which to generate complete and accurate budget constraints using static microsimulation models.

This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical evidence to assess whether a consensus arises as to how taxation affects the rate of economic growth.

Significant change was made to both tax and benefits systems during the period 19972001.