Government finances and spending

This presentation was delivered as part of an invited session at the 10th World Congress of the Econometric Society in Shanghai.

This presentation was delivered as part of an invited session at the 10th World Congress of the Econometric Society in Shanghai.

This presentation was delivered as part of an invited session at the 10th World Congress of the Econometric Society in Shanghai.

The Department of Work and Pensions today published a consultation paper called 21st Century Welfare which sets out ideas for fundamental reforms to the benefits system. The report presents a number of options for integrating different existing benefits.

Last week the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Vince Cable, suggested a graduate tax as a 'fairer' replacement for tuition fees in higher education. All the Labour leadership candidates - with the exception of David Miliband - have expressed support for this idea, as has the National Union of Students; the leading universities, meanwhile, have opposed it. This Observation examines whether the rationale for such a policy and the practical implications of it have been fully considered.

These slides were presented at a Westminster Education Forum Keynote Seminar: 'Building school for the future - next steps'.

This presentation was given to a 'Citizens' Jury' run by BritainThinks and PriceWaterhouseCoopers on 16 July 2010 at the University of Warwick.

The Coalition agreement reiterated the Conservative's manifesto pledge to "increase the proportion of tax revenue accounted for by environmental taxes". Past experience suggests that this is easier said than done: environmental taxes fell sharply as a share of total receipts during the Labour Government's period in office despite a similar ambition to shift taxes from 'goods' to 'bads'. Unless the Coalition announces new increases in environmental taxes, the latest forecasts show they are unlikely to meet their pledge either.

This article was published in the Public Finance Magazine on 10th July 2010.

This presentation was given at the University of Oxford's CBT summer conference, July 2010.

Presentation at ECFIN country seminar

As part of an international collaboration funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Australian Research Council, researchers at the IFS and the Australian National University have sought to compare the nature of private schooling in both Australia and the UK.

We draw upon the Mirrlees Review of the tax system to examine how the Government might want to think about raising extra revenue.

Now that the Office for Budget Responsibility has delivered its judgement that the structural hole in the public finances is slightly larger than Alistair Darling claimed in his final Budget in March, attention turns to how George Osborne might go about filling it in his first Budget next week.

This I was given to the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group.

The coalition government has announced ambitious plans for a new generation of schools inspired by the Swedish model of "free schools." Creating these new schools will clearly involve a capital cost. However, capital spending is likely to be significantly cut across most departments over the next four years, education included. Unless the new schools programme is to be very modest, plans for overall capital spending will need to be revised upwards or the cuts to investment spending elsewhere will be extremely deep.