Next week’s Spending Review is likely to be the most significant domestic policy announcement this Parliament. In the immediate run-up we have published pieces on:

• Lord Hutton’s interim report to public-service pensions;
• the proposed withdrawal of child benefit from families with a higher rate taxpayer;
• the merits of using the CPI rather than the RPI to uprate benefits in line with inflation;
• the impact of Lord Browne’s proposed reforms to Higher Education finance;

The common theme with all these potential reforms is that they would all create significant losers in order to help strengthen the public finances. The need to reduce Government borrowing in the medium-term also led IFS researchers to suggest that an increase in (and restructuring of) alcohol duties would be preferable to the introduction of a minimum price of alcohol of 45p per unit which would instead benefit retailers and producers by an estimated £700 million a year.

Much focus of the Spending Review will rightly be on whom the burden of reducing borrowing is falling and whether or not this is “fair”. We will be assessing the distributional impact of any new tax and benefit reforms and setting out which government departments lost most in a lunchtime briefing the day after the spending review. But it will be important to bear in mind that many of those who benefit from the public services that are to be cut who will ultimately be among the biggest losers. Unfortunately estimating how much they lose, and how these losses vary across the income distribution, is extremely difficult and any estimates produced should be handled with care.

This month will also see the launch of a new five year ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at the IFS. This exciting and challenging programme of research will be the foundation on which all IFS work over the next five years will be built, and will enable us to advance significantly our understanding in broad range of policy areas. The launch will take place between 18.00 and 20.00 today, Thursday 14 October, and we are delighted that Alan Auerbach (Berkeley), Evan Davis, BBC and Dave Ramsden (HM Treasury) will be speaking. You are very welcome to attend.

Finally on November 10th we will launch the findings of the Mirrlees Review. This will set out the characteristics of a good tax system and recommend how the UK tax system might realistically be reformed in that direction.

Carl Emmerson
Acting Director, IFS.

IFS is now recruiting

IFS is recruiting for four types of post: director, research economists, graduate scholars and summer students.

IFS Director: The IFS is seeking to appoint a successor to Robert Chote to provide leadership to this highly successful organisation based in London and to work closely with the Research Director. The successful candidate will be responsible to the IFS Executive Committee for setting the strategic direction of the Institute.

Research Economists: Research Economists can expect to be involved in all aspects of research projects - from empirical analysis to writing final reports and giving presentations.

Graduate Scholarship: IFS runs an annual Graduate Scholarship Programme which finances one or more students to undertake research leading to a degree of PhD.

Summer Students: IFS offers several placements each summer to economics students who are interested in how microeconomics can be applied to public policy issues and are considering a career in economic research.

For more details and how to apply, go to our jobs section.

Volume 31, Number 2, June 2010