IFS Online News

In this issue

Since our last newsletter, we and research colleagues at University College London have secured valuable new funding streams for two exciting areas of work: the theory and practice of micro-econometrics, and the evaluation of human development and poverty reduction policies in developing countries.

Our Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice (cemmap) was successful in the Economic and Social Research Council’s annual Research Centres competition. The ESRC will provide funding from 2007, building on the original support of the Leverhulme Trust. This will allow cemmap to expand its research and training in a number of areas, including identification in models with multiple unobservable variables, dynamic models with heterogeneity and non-convexities, empirical models with feedback effects and multiple topics in applied health and labour economics.

Our Centre for the Evaluation of Development Policies (EDePo) has secured three years of funding in a competition organised by the ESRC and the Department for International Development. We will use data on a range of programmes in Colombia, Mexico, Nepal and India to look at the environment of poor families in developing countries and investigate what factors influence an individual's nutrition, health and cognitive skills from childhood to later life.

Meanwhile, there has been much else to keep us busy. For example, we have been commenting on the Government’s pension reform white paper (as well as being cited in the document itself) and on the Liberal Democrats’ draft tax reform proposals. On 6 July the Joseph Rowntree Foundation will publish its report on how to achieve the Government’s child poverty targets, which draws extensively on modelling work co-ordinated by IFS researchers. The cost of meeting the child poverty target will have important implications for Gordon Brown’s 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review.

Robert Chote
Director

Recent publications

Working papers The U-shaped relationship between vertical integration and competition: theory and evidence Philippe Aghion, Rachel Griffith and Peter Howitt, 27 June 2006 The long-term educational cost of war: evidence from landmine contamination in Cambodia Ouarda Merrouche, 26 June 2006 The social cost-of-living: welfare foundations and estimation Tom Crossley and Krishna Pendakur, 25 June 2006

Briefing notes and reports Poverty and inequality in Britain: 2006 Mike Brewer, Alissa Goodman, Jonathan Shaw and Luke Sibieta, 13 March 2006 How many lone parents are receiving tax credits? Mike Brewer and Jonathan Shaw, 12 March 2006 The effect of the working families’ tax credit on labour market participation Mike Brewer and James Browne, 24 February 2006