Government finances and spending

After a break of a few years, the European Union has recently again become active in the area of co-ordinating capital income taxes between Member States.

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

In spite of government dominance in financing health care in many countries, the private health care sector remains important.

The report shows what differentiates the individuals in the survey who entered work over a twelve month period from those who remained out of work over the course of a year. It examines how the distribution of hourly wages earned by new entrants into jobs differs from the distribution of wages for those already in work. This `entry wage' information is just used to estimate gains to working for people who are currently unemployed or inactive, and to assess to what extent financial incentives affect entry into work. The report also simulates what the effect of the WFTC, the NI reforms, and the 10p tax rate might be on the numbers of men and women entering work and how these reforms might increase employment.

The demand for certain types of health care services depends on decisions of both the individual and the health care provider.

This commentary looks at the impact of taxing child benefit under a number of scenarios. This involves analysis of the amount of revenue raised, the distributional impact of using this revenue to increase the rate of child benefit and the administrative issues encountered under particular tax treatments. In addition, the commentary examines the implications of taxing child benefit for the future direction of tax system reform.

This commentary assesses the impact of capping on local service provision. In particular it addresses the following questions. What factors determine desired local spending? Did capping constrain spending by local councils? Which local services bore the brunt of any cuts? Did the quality of local services suffer as a result?

This Commentary looks at public pay in detail, tracing its trend relative to the private sector over the 1980s and 1990s and showing how the gap in pay between the public and private sectors differs dramatically across occupations, gender and education groups. These findings illustrate how misleading comparisons of public and private sector pay based on aggregate data can be.

Perceptions of private benefits from hypothecated tax increases may be correlated with income either because individuals with different incomes are more or less interested in public services or because they anticipate bearing different shares of the implied tax burden.

This paper examines the arguments for changing the ways that UK drug prices are regulated.

The 1980s tax reforms and the changing dispersion of wages offer one the best opportunities yet to estimate labour supply effects.

This report provides a response to the government's proposals. Is the current local government system likely to discourage "over-spending" by councils in the absence of capping powers? Will the government's proposals make the link between local spending decisions and Council Tax bills clearer to voters? Can measures to encourage councils to respond to the views of their residents be successful in making councils more accountable to local people?.

This article assesses the merits of using private finance to deliver public services against three criteria: whether it will lead to additional investment in social infrastructure, whether it represents good value for the taxpayer's money and whether the use of private finance will reduce the public sector's flexibility to pursue its public service objectives.

In this commentary, the authors examine public support for more local decision making and increased freedom for local councils to raise council tax levels. They also assess whether local voters would support higher spending on local services such as schools, housing and the police if they had to pay for it directly through higher council tax bills.

The UK experience has been that forecasts of the PSBR have been beset with problems since the

This report looks at how corporate income taxes have changed over the past two decades, what incentives they provide for domestic and international investment, and whether changes in the international economy have helped shape these reforms.

This paper investigates whether tax competition can survive under tax coordination, when information is private or nonverifiable.

This paper examines the role of international tax evasion for the choice of an optimal foreign tax credit by a capital exporting region