IFS Online News

In this issue

Gordon Brown's Pre-Budget Report gave some tantalising clues as to the ground on which he wants to fight the next general election. With the public finances again underperforming Treasury forecasts, the Chancellor pencilled in real growth in public spending of just 1.8 percent a year over the three years to be covered by the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review. If he sticks with this, it would mean fighting the next election with public spending falling as a share of national income. This would intensify pressure on Whitehall to deliver efficiency improvements, but also limit David Cameron's room for manoeuvre in offering tax cuts. Our Green Budget next month will examine whether the Pre-Budget Report numbers add up and if further tax increases or spending restraint will be needed to bring about the improvement in the public finances Mr Brown is looking for.

Robert Chote
Director

Pre-Budget Report 2005

Other recent publications

Working papers Unexploited connections between intra- and inter-temporal allocation Thomas Crossley and Hamish Low, 11 November 2005 Booms and busts: consumption, house prices and expectations Orazio Attanasio, Laura Blow, Robert Hamilton and Andrew Leicester, 10 November 2005 Understanding co-operative R&D activity: evidence from four European countries Laura Abramovsky, Elisabeth Kremp, Alberto López, Tobias Schmidt and Helen Simpson, 18 October 2005

Briefing notes and reports Background facts and comments on “Supporting growth in innovation: enhancing the R&D tax credit” Laura Abramovsky, Rachel Griffith and Rupert Harrison, 21 November 2005 Prepared for retirement? The adequacy and distribution of retirement resources in England James Banks, Carl Emmerson, Zoë Oldfield and Gemma Tetlow, 11 October 2005 Fuel taxation Andrew Leicester, 06 June 2005

Research news

The Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice (cemmap) at IFS, in collaboration with five other research institutes across Europe, is taking part in a research programme funded by the European Union under their Sixth Framework Programme. The Microdata Methods and Practice Research and Training Network aims to keep European researchers contributing at the expanding methodological frontier of the subject and to facilitate the take up of these methods by applied researchers in Europe. Network website