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A symposium on tax and welfare policy – new perspectives on old issues: preface Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2024-03-12
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Landfill tax and recycling Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2024-03-01 Jordi Jofre‐Monseny, Pilar Sorribas‐Navarro
This paper provides new empirical evidence on the role of landfill taxes in reducing landfill waste and promoting recycling. We focus on the impacts of the 2017 landfill tax law reform in Catalonia, a Spanish region, which increased the tax rate from 18 to 47 euros per tonne over the period 2017–20. Using municipality‐level data for Catalonia from the 2013–20 period, we contrast municipalities that
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Beyond tax credits and the minimum wage: the challenge of labour market inequality Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Richard Blundell
Since the turn of the millennium, the UK has relied almost exclusively on two policies to address the adverse consequences of low pay and labour market inequality: in-work tax credits and the minimum wage. Successful as these policies have been at supporting family incomes and propping up hourly wages at the bottom, increasing numbers of less-educated workers find themselves in low-quality jobs with
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Willingness to pay for improved public education and public healthcare systems: the role of income mobility prospects Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Rasmus Wiese, Steffen Eriksen
Income mobility prospects affect individuals’ willingness to pay higher taxes, or give part of their income, to improve the public healthcare and public education systems. In line with the prospects of the upward mobility hypothesis, risk-willing individuals who expect to move far up the socio-economic ladder are less willing to pay compared with individuals who expect no upward transition. Consistent
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Understanding Society: minimising selection biases in data collection using mobile apps Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-12-23 Annette Jäckle, Jonathan Burton, Mick P. Couper
Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study has a programme of research and development that underpins innovations in data collection methods. One of our current focuses is on using mobile applications to collect additional data that supplement data collected in annual interviews. To date, we have used mobile apps to collect data on consumer expenditure, well-being, anthropometrics and
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Sample composition and representativeness on Understanding Society Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-12-23 Peter Lynn, Pablo Cabrera-Álvarez, Paul Clarke
In this paper, we provide an overview of the sample design of Understanding Society and the consequent nature of design weights as well as a description of procedures that are implemented in order to maximise participation by sample members and procedures that are implemented to produce non-response adjustments to the design weights. We then present some indicators of sample representativeness at the
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Understanding Society: health, biomarker and genetic data Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-12-23 Michaela Benzeval, Edith Aguirre, Meena Kumari
Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study includes a wide range of health measures, and in particular biomarker and genetic data. This makes it a unique resource for research on the economics of health. We review the main features of the biomarker data, how they are collected, and evidence on data quality. We also discuss examples of how these data have been used in economic research
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Understanding Society: the income data Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-12-23 Paul Fisher, Omar Hussein
We introduce the income data of Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study. First, we show that the data are widely used in academic and policy research. We then discuss the pros and cons of different types of data on household incomes. We go on to describe the income content of Understanding Society, emphasising key details of data collection and data processing – specifically the
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Using Understanding Society to study intergenerational wealth mobility in the UK Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-12-23 Peter Levell, David Sturrock
Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study enables researchers to track individuals as they grow up and form new households, making it invaluable for studying the intergenerational persistence of outcomes including income, health and wealth. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of Understanding Society relative to other datasets, and document patterns of attrition as individuals
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A symposium on Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study: introduction Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-12-23 Michaela Benzeval, Thomas F. Crossley, Edith Aguirre
Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study began in 2009, and built on and incorporated its predecessor the British Household Panel Survey. It is the largest survey of its kind in the world and provides rich opportunities for economic research and policy analysis. In this introduction to a symposium on Understanding Society, we review the main features of the study, how it is conducted
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Saving by buying ahead: stockpiling in response to lump-sum payments Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-11-20 J. Michael Collins, Amrita Kulka
By purchasing larger quantities of goods and saving them for future consumption households are able to reduce transaction costs and acquire goods at a lower price per unit, presuming they can manage the transportation and storage costs. This study uses variations in state income tax refunds over time to estimate consumption responses to lump-sum payments. Households purchase around 20 per cent more
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Financing UK democracy: a stocktake of 20 years of political donations disclosure Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-10-05 Mirko Draca, Colin Green, Swarnodeep Homroy
Political donations in the UK have been subject to comprehensive disclosure since 2001. We study the data produced as part of this disclosure policy to evaluate the role of private and public political finance over time. Total political donations have grown by nearly 250 per cent since 2001, reaching over £100 million in real terms for the first time in 2019. This increase has been driven by donations
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Editorial announcement Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-09-22
The Editors are pleased to welcome Pierre Cahuc, who is joining the Board of Editors at Fiscal Studies. He is Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at Sciences Po, which he joined in 2018. He is a Research Fellow at CEPR as well as at IZA, where he directs the ‘Labour Markets’ research programme. He also directs Sciences Po's Chaire ‘Sécurisation des parcours professionnels’. James
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Globalisation, taxation and inequality Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-08-31 Gabriel Zucman
Today's tax systems, in which value-added taxes and payroll taxes play a prominent role, are largely creations of the 1950s. We need to invent modern tax systems adapted to the reality of the 21st century: the growing importance of capital and the rise of inequality. This article reviews some of the challenges involved with increasing the progressivity of tax systems in a globalised world and discusses
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Behavioural normative economics: foundations, approaches and trends Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-08-29 Malte Dold
This article summarises the theoretical foundations, main approaches and current trends in the field of behavioural normative economics. It identifies bounded rationality and bounded willpower as the two core concepts that have motivated the field. Since the concepts allow for individual preferences to be context-dependent and time-inconsistent, they pose an intricate problem for standard welfare analysis
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Moral economics Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-08-28 Samuel Bowles
An adequate normative economics – one that is consistent with recent developments in our discipline (and in philosophy and psychology) and that resonates with widely held moral intuitions – will have to address the following challenges. First, utility cannot be both the basis of our predictions of economic behaviour and the evaluation of the outcomes of this behaviour. Second, we need to conceive of
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Money matters: consumption variability across the income distribution Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-08-27 Jonathan Fisher, Bradley L. Hardy
Using the Consumer Expenditure Survey, we document the level and variability of quarterly consumption across the socio-economic distribution. While the measurement of well-being is focused on income, the secular and policy discourse prioritises income-adequacy to meet family needs. This concern over income-adequacy centres on the capacity of families to predictably consume minimally acceptable levels
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Is it time to reboot welfare economics? Overview Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-08-25 Diane Coyle, Mark Fabian, Eric Beinhocker, Tim Besley, Margaret Stevens
The contributions of economists have long included both positive explanations of how economic systems work and normative recommendations for how they could and should work better. In recent decades, economics has taken a strong empirical turn as well as having a greater appreciation of the importance of the complexities of real-world human behaviour, institutions, the strengths and failures of markets
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Teaching economics as though values matter Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-08-24 Erik Angner
Economics is permeated with value judgements, and removing them would be neither possible nor desirable. They are consequential, in the sense that they have a sizeable impact on economists’ output. Yet many economists may not even realise they are there. This paper surveys ways in which values influence economic theory and practice and explores some implications for the manner in which economics –
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New approaches to measuring welfare Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-08-24 Kristen Cooper, Mark Fabian, Christian Krekel
Economics has traditionally understood ‘welfare’ (what makes a life go well) as the satisfaction of preference. This conceptualisation of welfare is typically measured using revealed preferences, proxied through income and prices or stated in willingness-to-pay surveys. Recent decades have seen growing challenges to this paradigm. The climate crisis, among other phenomena, has called into question
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On the marginal cost of public funds: the implications of charitable giving and warm glow Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-08-22 Zhiyong An
This paper highlights the important impact of charitable giving and warm glow on the identification of the marginal cost of public funds (MCF). We employ the warm glow model of charitable giving to describe taxpayer behaviour, whereas we employ the standard model to evaluate social welfare. We first identify the impact theoretically. Then we conduct simulations to quantify its size numerically. The
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Pension benchmarks: empirical estimation and results for the United States and Germany Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-08-17 Christian Dudel, Julian Schmied
Benchmark replacement rates are a key parameter for retirement plans. Often, a pension level of around 70 per cent of net income during working life is considered as an adequate choice. However, this heuristic value is left unjustified, and data-based benchmarks are limited. In this paper, we propose to estimate a pension-level benchmark based on keeping the living standard achieved during working
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Comment on ‘What taxpayers, governments and tax economists do – and what they should do’ Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-08-10 Paul Johnson
1 TAX REFORM Many economists working on tax policy, including my colleagues at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), advocate for reforms which we believe will improve the efficiency and equity of the tax system. Equalising tax rates across different forms of income rather than treating self-employment and business income more favourably than income earned by employees, a uniform VAT rate rather
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Correction to ‘Mortality inequality in England over the past 20 years’ Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-07-28
Banks, J., Cattan, S., Kraftman, L. and Krutikova, S. (2021), Mortality inequality in England over the past 20 years. Fiscal Studies, 42, 47–77. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-5890.12266 In the above article, the legend on Figure 7 needs to be changed to the following: • Deaths of despair, Neoplasms, Disease of the respiratory system • Diabetes, Ischaemic heart disease, Stroke (cerebrovascular) • Other
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Twenty-five years of income inequality in Britain: the role of wages, household earnings and redistribution Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-07-19 Jonathan Cribb, Robert Joyce, Thomas Wernham
We study earnings and income inequality in Britain over the 25 years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus on the middle 90 per cent of the income distribution, within which the gap between top and bottom in 2019–20 was essentially the same, after taxes and transfers, as a quarter-century earlier. This has led to a narrative of ‘stable inequality’, which we argue misses important nuances and key
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The unusual French policy mix towards labour market inequalities Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-06-30 Antoine Bozio
This short paper presents an overview of the French policy mix towards labour market inequalities, consisting of a high minimum wage together with targeted payroll tax cuts around the minimum wage. It reviews the recent literature documenting the impact of that policy mix on employment and wage inequality. The main takeaways are that pre-tax wage inequality has been increasing in France rather like
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What taxpayers, governments and tax economists do – and what they should do Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-05-13 Joel Slemrod
The distinction between positive economics – describing economic programmes, situations and conditions as they exist – and normative economics – prescribing policies – has a long history. It is an especially important distinction in public economics, which by its nature concerns the actions of government. In this essay, I consider how two relatively recent developments in tax economics alter, blur
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Correction to ‘The gendered division of paid and domestic work under lockdown’ Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-04-18
Andrew, A., Cattan, S., Costa Dias, M., Farquharson, C., Kraftman, L., Krutikova, S., Phimister, A. & Sevilla, A. (2022), The gendered division of paid and domestic work under lockdown. Fiscal Studies, 43, 325–340. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-5890.12312 In the above article, the following sentence needs to be inserted in the acknowledgement section: ‘Monica Costa Dias is grateful to the Economic and
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The use of accounting information in the tax base in the Pillar 2 global minimum tax: a discussion of the rules, potential problems, and possible alternatives Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-02-26 Michelle Hanlon
In this paper, I provide a high-level, non-technical review of how accounting information is used in Pillar 2 and what this means for the tax base. In addition, I discuss potential problems of using accounting data explicitly in a minimum tax and then, specifically, as the starting point for the computation of the income measures in Pillar 2. I then discuss several alternative solutions that may be
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Reducing complexity and compliance costs: a simplification safe harbour for the global minimum tax Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-02-14 Deborah Schanz
I present a simplification safe harbour based on tax administrative guidance for Pillar Two, the global minimum tax, developed together with Cedric Döllefeld, Joachim Englisch, Simon Harst and Felix Siegel. It aims at reducing unnecessary compliance costs by avoiding effective tax rate (ETR) calculations if a minimum tax of 15 per cent has already been paid. The simplification safe harbour consists
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Empirical evidence on the global minimum tax: what is a critical mass and how large is the substance-based income exclusion? Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-02-11 Michael P. Devereux, Johanna Paraknewitz, Martin Simmler
This paper presents empirical evidence on the proposed global minimum tax (GMT) of the OECD's Pillar 2. First, it addresses how many, and which, countries or country groups can be seen as constituting a ‘critical mass’ for its successful implementation; given such a critical mass, remaining jurisdictions worldwide will have an incentive to implement the GMT as well. Second, it assesses the generosity
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A balance-sheet approach to fiscal sustainability Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-02-09 Eduardo Levy Yeyati, Federico Sturzenegger
This paper proposes an alternative methodology to assess fiscal sustainability. Our balance-sheet approach (BSA) relies on estimating separately all of a government's assets and liabilities as opposed to focusing only on the burden of explicit liabilities. In our approach, assets are primarily the present discounted value of taxes, and liabilities include explicit liabilities but also the present discounted
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Value added tax non-compliance in the car market Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2023-01-23 Silvia Fedeli, Luisa Giuriato
We examine value added tax (VAT) non-compliance in the European Union (EU) car market. This issue is of paramount importance because of the loss of VAT revenue, the profound distortion of market mechanisms, and the dangerous variety of fraudulent schemes employed. In addition to the usual VAT fraudulent schemes on intra-community trade, the special regimes, and the different regulations for the sale
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Projecting the fiscal impact of immigration in the European Union Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2022-12-17 Michael Christl, Alain Bélanger, Alessandra Conte, Jacopo Mazza, Edlira Narazani
The increasing flow of immigrants into Europe over the last decade has generated a range of considerations in the policy agenda of many receiving countries. One of the main considerations for policymakers and public opinion alike is whether immigrants contribute their ‘fair’ share to their host country's tax and welfare system. In this paper, we assess the net fiscal impact of intra-EU and extra-EU
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The gendered division of paid and domestic work under lockdown Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2022-11-21 Alison Andrew, Sarah Cattan, Monica Costa Dias, Christine Farquharson, Lucy Kraftman, Sonya Krutikova, Angus Phimister, Almudena Sevilla
This paper provides novel empirical evidence on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the division of labour between parents of school-aged children in two-parent opposite-gender families. In line with existing evidence, we find that mothers’ paid work took a larger hit than that of fathers, and that mothers spent substantially longer doing childcare and housework than their partners. We go further
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Understanding the rising trend in female labour force participation Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2022-11-21 Nicolas Hérault, Guyonne Kalb
Female labour force participation has increased tremendously since World War II in developed countries. Prior research provides piecemeal evidence identifying some drivers of change but largely fails to present a consistent story. Using a rare combination of data and modelling capacity available in Australia, we develop a new decomposition approach to explain rising female labour force participation
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Did subsidies included in the 2009 Stimulus Package encourage enrolment in COBRA? Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2022-11-15 David M. Zimmer
The 2009 Stimulus Package in the US introduced a 65 per cent subsidy for COBRA coverage for individuals who experienced employment separation between 1 September 2008 and 2 June 2010. This paper provides evidence that the subsidy led to statistically significant and non-trivial increases in the probability that job separators enrolled in COBRA, but only among those who qualified for the subsidy. Specifically
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Cash thresholds, cash expenditure and tax evasion Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2022-11-13 Francesco Flaviano Russo
Using data for Italy, I show that cash thresholds that forbid the use of cash for big transactions are effective tools to reduce cash income and cash circulation. Less cash income, in turn, hinders tax evasion. I present an estimate of the increase in tax revenue implied by the empirically estimated reduction of cash income determined by the thresholds.
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Symposium: perspectives on carbon taxes – introduction Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2022-10-19 Monica Costa Dias, James P. Ziliak
With this issue of Fiscal Studies, we inaugurate a new section entitled ‘Symposia’. This new section will publish commissioned papers from leading scholars and policy analysts on issues of topical importance to public economics and microeconomic policy. In some cases these symposia will emphasise policy issues, while in other cases contributions will emphasise methodological issues, and sometimes both
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Tax policies to reduce carbon emissions Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2022-09-05 Stuart Adam, Isaac Delestre, Peter Levell, Helen Miller
Carbon taxes or similar pricing instruments could play a crucial role in helping countries decarbonise their economies. No country has a single carbon price that applies to all greenhouse gas emissions. The UK is typical in having adopted a complex patchwork of policies that raise the cost of different polluting activities to different degrees, resulting in implied carbon taxes that vary greatly across
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Border carbon adjustments: rationale, design and impact Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2022-08-31 Michael Keen, Ian Parry, James Roaf
This paper assesses the rationale, design and impact of border carbon adjustments (BCAs). Large disparities in carbon pricing between countries raise concerns about competitiveness and emissions leakage. BCAs are potentially the most effective domestic instrument for addressing these challenges – but design details are critical. For example, limiting coverage of the BCA to energy-intensive, trade-exposed
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Does labour income react more to income tax or means-tested benefits reforms? Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2022-08-24 Michaël Sicsic
I provide estimates of compensated elasticities of labour income with respect to the marginal net-of-tax rate on the 2006–15 period for France, exploiting not only income tax reforms but also means-tested benefits reforms. I use semi-parametric graphical evidence and a classic two-stage least-squares estimation applied to a rich data set including both financial and socio-demographic variables. I obtain
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Editorial announcement Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2022-06-17
The Editors are pleased to welcome Jonathan Colmer and Egbert Jongen to join the Board of Associate Editors at Fiscal Studies.
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The socio-economic gradient of cognitive test scores: evidence from two cohorts of Irish children Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2022-06-06 David Madden
There is a well-established socio-economic gradient in child cognitive test scores. This gradient emerges at early ages, with some evidence that it can widen as children age. We investigate this phenomenon with two longitudinal cohorts of Irish children who take such tests at ages ranging from 9 months to 17 years, using maternal education and equivalised income as our measure of socio-economic resources
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Intergenerational wealth transfers in Great Britain from the Wealth and Assets Survey in comparative perspective Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2022-04-06 Brian Nolan, Juan C. Palomino, Philippe Van Kerm, Salvatore Morelli
Wealth surveys that collect information on intergenerational transfers provide new scope for comparative study of those transfers and their relationship with wealth across rich countries. However, this is problematic in the case of Great Britain, due to specific features of the Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS), the central source of survey-based household wealth data, in particular the extent of missing
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The decline of home-cooked food Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2022-04-01 Rachel Griffith, Wenchao (Michelle) Jin, Valérie Lechene
The share of home-cooked food in the diet of UK households declined from the 1980s. This was contemporaneous with a decline in the market price of ingredients for home cooking relative to ready-to-eat foods. We consider a simple model of food consumption and time use that captures the key driving forces behind these apparently conflicting trends. We show that observed behaviour can be rationalised
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Editorial announcement Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2022-03-22
We are pleased to welcome the two new managing editors of Fiscal Studies, James Banks (Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester, Co-Director of the ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Co-Principal Investigator of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing) and Kimberley Scharf (Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the
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Editorial announcement Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2022-03-22
As of March 2022, Ingvild Almås, Timothy Beatty, John Creedy, Mariacristina De Nardi, Guyonne Kalb, Clare Leaver and Helen Simpson have stepped down from the Editorial Board of Fiscal Studies. James Cloyne, Monica Costa Dias, Matthias Parey and James Ziliak would like to thank them for their enormous contributions to the journal. The Editors are pleased to welcome Anne Brockmeyer, Eric French, Sonya
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Reducing the income tax burden for households with children: an assessment of the child tax credit reform in Austria Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2022-02-20 Michael Christl, Silvia De Poli, Janos Varga
In this paper, we analyse the impact of the implementation of a child tax credit in Austria in 2018. We combine microsimulation techniques, labour supply modelling and dynamic general equilibrium modelling to make an ex ante evaluation of the reform, accounting also for behavioural responses of individuals. We show that although the macroeconomic effect of the Austrian reform is expected to be relatively
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Why a labour market boom does not necessarily bring down inequality: putting together Germany's inequality puzzle Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2022-02-16 Martin Biewen, Miriam Sturm
After an economically tough start to the new millennium, Germany experienced an unprecedented employment boom after 2005, only stopped by the COVID-19 pandemic. Persistently high levels of inequality despite a booming labour market and drastically falling unemployment rates constituted a puzzle, suggesting either that the German job miracle mainly benefitted individuals in the mid- or high-income range
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The impact of management on hospital performance Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2021-12-09 Miqdad Asaria, Alistair McGuire, Andrew Street
There is a prevailing popular belief that expenditure on management by health-care providers is wasteful, diverts resources from patient care, and distracts medical and nursing staff from getting on with their jobs. There is little existing evidence to support either this narrative or counter-claims. We explore the relationship between management and public sector hospital performance using a fixed
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The UK's wealth distribution and characteristics of high-wealth households Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2021-10-25 Arun Advani, George Bangham, Jack Leslie
We show that wealth inequality in the UK is high and has increased slightly over the past decade as financial asset prices have increased in the wake of the financial crisis. But data deficiencies are a major barrier in understanding the true distribution, composition and size of household wealth. The most comprehensive survey of household wealth in the UK does a good job of capturing the vast majority
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Public attitudes to a wealth tax: the importance of ‘capacity to pay’ Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2021-10-25 Karen Rowlingson, Amrita Sood, Trinh Tu
In this paper, we present findings from the first ever study, to our knowledge, to focus in detail on public attitudes to an annual wealth tax. We start with a brief review of relevant recent studies before outlining the mixed methods used, which involved a nationally representative survey of 2,243 members of the general public and four focus groups conducted during the summer of 2020. The study aimed
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The economic arguments for and against a wealth tax Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2021-10-25 Stuart Adam, Helen Miller
This paper asks when a wealth tax would, in principle, be a desirable part of the tax system, setting aside the practicalities and politics that would be crucial in reality. The case for a one-off wealth tax is simple. If it were unexpected and credibly one-off – a major challenge in practice – this would be an efficient way to raise revenue and could be used to address existing wealth inequality.
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Ways of taxing wealth: alternatives and interactions Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2021-10-25 Andy Summers
In this paper, I examine the role of a wealth tax in the context of the UK's existing taxes on wealth. First, I discuss several ways in which the UK could be said to tax wealth already, and I set out two possible directions for reforming these taxes, highlighting policies that are merited under either approach. Second, I consider whether and under what circumstances a broad-based tax on the ownership
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Behavioural responses to a wealth tax Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2021-10-25 Arun Advani, Hannah Tarrant
In this paper, we review the existing empirical evidence on how individuals respond to the incentives created by a net wealth tax. Variation in the overall magnitude of behavioural responses is substantial: estimates of the elasticity of taxable wealth vary by a factor of 800. We explore three key reasons for this variation: tax design, context and methodology. We then discuss what is known about the
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Why were most wealth taxes abandoned and is this time different? Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2021-10-25 Sarah Perret
Wealth taxes are increasingly being considered as an option in policy and academic circles to collect additional revenue and address inequality. One objection that is often raised, however, is that they seem to have failed in countries that tried them, with most OECD countries abandoning their wealth taxes in recent decades. This paper gives an overview of OECD countries’ experiences with wealth taxes
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One-off wealth taxes: theory and evidence Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2021-10-25 Nick O'Donovan
In periods where the national public debt has grown rapidly beyond ‘normal’ levels, the idea of drawing on the stock of national private wealth in order to pay down that debt, whether in whole or in part, has gained currency. ‘Capital levies’ or ‘one-off wealth taxes’ involve a one-time charge based upon wealth, normally assessed across a broad range of asset classes (such as savings, investments,
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Who should pay a wealth tax? Some design issues Fiscal Studies (IF 6.19) Pub Date : 2021-10-25 Emma Chamberlain
Any wealth tax design needs to resolve the question of who should pay it it How wide should the net be cast? Setting high or low exempt thresholds affects avoidance behaviour and may influence whether one should tax by reference to the household (and if so how that should be defined) or simply on each individual who owns wealth over a certain threshold. Typically, wealth taxes in other countries have