Government finances and spending

This paper received the 2017 Atkinson Award. The award is named Tony Atkinson, who was the founding editor of JPubE in 1972 and served as editor for 26 years, and is given every other year to the best paper published in the Journal of Public Economics.

David Phillips discusses IFS research on how welfare policy might be funded in an independence scenario, drawing our attention to potential funding challenges.

This article considers the implications of independence for the design and functioning of Scotland’s tax system.

This working paper looks at the role taxes and transfers play in redistributing resources and providing insurance across individuals and across the lifecycle.

In this paper, we use detailed data on households’ histories of employment, earnings and contributions to the National Insurance (NI) system to examine the degree of intragenerational redistribution achieved by the UK state pension system for the cohort born in the 1930s.

This paper studies the impact on employment over the period when the female state pension age rose to age 62.

We investigate necessary and sufficient nonparametric conditions for the quasi-hyperbolic consumer.

The authors study the impact of financial education on intertemporal choice in adolescence, their findings suggesting that the effect of such educational programs is to increase comprehension and decrease bracketing in intertemporal choice.

This paper evaluates a novel form of fiscal stimulus: a temporary cut in the rate of Value Added Tax (VAT).

This report assesses what options are available for evaluating the labour market impacts of Universal Credit, and considers whether a credible quantitative evaluation is feasible and worthwhile based on a hypothetical roll-out scenario provided by DWP.

This report is one of a series of research papers that form the final outputs from the independent evaluation of the recent changes to Local Housing Allowances (LHAs) and Housing Benefit in the private rented sector in Great Britain.

This report is an updated analysis of the personal tax and benefit reforms implemented, or due to be implemented, by the UK’s coalition government from when it was elected in May 2010 up to and including April 2015.

The OECD has launched a project to tackle tax avoidance by companies. Helen Miller looks at how it will work and its chances of success. This article was published in 'Financial World' magazine.