Firm-level investment paths are commonly characterised by periods of low or zero investment punctuated by large investment ‘spikes’. We document that such spikes are important for understanding firm and aggregate level investment in the UK.
In the early 1990s, average hourly wages were almost 30% lower for women than for men. The gender wage gap has come down, but it remains at around 20%. There are lots of reasons for the scale and persistence of this gap, but new work funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that one important factor is that mothers spend less time in paid work, and more time working part-time, than do fathers. As a result, they miss out on earnings growth associated with more experience.
With a national roll out of 100 per cent business rates retention unlikely in the next few years, David Phillips from the Institute for Fiscal Studies asks if it is worth looking to the longer term and more radical tax devolution.
Despite some convergence, the gender pay gap remains large. In this study, we use BHPS-USoc data to document the evolution of the gender pay gap in the UK over the past 25 years and its association with fertility. We also investigate the potential role of various differences in career patterns between men and women and how they change with the arrival of the rst child.
Soda taxes aim to reduce excessive sugar consumption. Their effectiveness depends on whether they target individuals for whom the harm of consumption is largest. We estimate demand and account for supply-side equilibrium pass-through. We exploit longitudinal data to estimate individual preferences, which allows exible heterogeneity that we relate to a wide array of individual characteristics. We show that soda taxes are effective at targeting young consumers but not individuals with high total dietary sugar; they impose the highest monetary cost on poorer individuals, but are unlikely to be strongly regressive if we account for averted future costs from over consumption.
The impact of variation in diet quality across individuals on obesity and diet-related disease has received much attention, but variation in individuals’ diet quality over time less so. This column combines British data on food purchases with a model in which individual choice is driven by the influence of a healthy self and an unhealthy self to examine self-control problems in food choice.
IFS Senior Research Economist Kate Smith gives evidence at the Health Select Committeeand the Home Affairs Committee a which are holding a one-off oral evidence session to assess the case for introducing a minimum unit price (MUP) on alcohol in England in the light of developments since the Health C...
