In this chapter, we provide an overview of the UK’s recent economic performance and compare it with our and other forecasters’ projections in 2016. We then present our current forecasts, based on our smooth-Brexit base case.
In this part of Citi’s contribution to the Green Budget, we take a prospective look at the international environment for the UK economy. This includes an assessment of the near-term growth outlook of the UK’s major trade partners. But more importantly, it includes a discussion of the UK’s vulnerability to a reversal of economic and financial integration, be it at the global level (reversal of globalisation) or at a regional level (in the form of the UK’s exit from the European Union).
The IFS Green Budget 2018, in association with Citi, ICAEW and the Nuffield Foundation, is edited by Carl Emmerson, Christine Farquharson and Paul Johnson, and copy-edited by Judith Payne. The report looks at the issues and challenges facing Chancellor Philip Hammond as he prepares for his Budget later in October.
This Green Budget chapter sets out the context for the choices facing the Chancellor, considers the necessary trade-offs and describes some of the possible implications for public service spending.
This Green Budget chapter considers where the Chancellor might look if he wanted to increase tax receipts by about 1% of national income – enough to pay for the promised increase in NHS spending. We investigate how various possible tax rises differ in the revenue they would raise, the people who would pay them, and the extent to which they would weaken work incentives and improve or worsen other distortions.
In advance of the progress report expected with the 2018 Autumn Budget, this Green Budget chapter provides an overview of the assets owned by the UK public sector and discusses how the Balance Sheet Review can be used to improve the utilisation of public assets and the prospects for a comprehensive investment and asset management strategy.
This Green Budget chapter considers how the evolving defence and security position may affect defence resources and spending, and the pressure that this could put on the public finances.
In a speech on Tuesday 9th October, the Secretary of State for International Development, Penny Mordaunt, touched upon a number of important issues taking centre stage in current debates on UK aid spending, including Brexit and the role of private sector investment. These two substantive issues are interesting within the context of broader developments in UK aid spending in recent years. A new report by researchers from the IFS and the Center for Global Development (CGD) analyses how UK aid is spent and the potential drivers of these changes.
The UK is committed by law to spending 0.7% of gross national income on overseas aid every year. This fiscal commitment is notable given the significant public spending pressures across government. In this context, the government has overseen some important changes to how its aid is allocated in recent years. These include the pursuit of new strategic objectives, a greater emphasis on a cross-government approach, and an explicit focus on the role aid can play in serving the UK’s national interest.
This paper studies regulatory policy interventions aimed at protecting vulnerable consumers who are disengaged and thus exposed to exploitation. We model heterogeneous consumer switching costs alongside asymmetric market shares.
We examine changes in inequality in socio-emotional skills very early in life in two British cohorts born 30 years apart. We construct socio-emotional scales comparable across cohorts for both boys and girls, using two validated instruments for the measurement of child behaviour.
