Overview

The Centre as a place of international excellence

The value of ESRC core funding to the Centre

Academic impact

Some major contributions to academic work in the UK and overseas

Policy and practice

Five important impacts on policy and practice

Use of the Centre's work by policymakers and practitioners

Research capacity

The Centre's contribution to UK research capacity [Hide]

The ESRC Centre and IFS have contributed to the UK's research capacity through: training researchers who go on to carry out research at IFS or at other institutions in the public, private and voluntary sectors; creating research resources that can be used by other researchers or in education and training across the country; offering teaching and training in our areas of expertise.

The Centre has been instrumental in developing a large number of micro-data resources and software. These are used by social science researchers internationally. Examples include software to estimate dynamic panel data models and matching estimators in Stata, data documenting households below average income (HBAI), lifetime employment histories in BHPS, pension wealth estimates in ELSA, and matching administrative data on patents to firm accounts data.

The Centre provides funding for a number of PhD scholars who work alongside research teams and are supervised by senior Centre staff. These include UK and international scholars, who help develop our international networks and bring new perspectives to our work.

IFS encourages staff to take on teaching commitments, both to enhance their own skills and to stimulate interest in economics and its applications amongst the student population. IFS operates an annual summer student scheme. Students work on a discrete project, which could include data work, writing up results and working as part of a team; this is designed to give them a flavour of the work they would do as a research economist.

With help from Centre funding, we have developed resources on the IFS website that are used by academics, teachers and students in universities and schools for research and learning, including Fiscal Facts and Virtual Economy.

Staff development in the Centre