Facts and figures about UK taxes, benefits and public spending.
Income distribution, poverty and inequality.
Analysing government fiscal forecasts and tax and spending.
Analysis of the fiscal choices an independent Scotland would face.
Case studies that give a flavour of the areas where IFS research has an impact on society.
Reforming the tax system for the 21st century.
A peer-reviewed quarterly journal publishing articles by academics and practitioners.
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This paper develops a broad theme about policy choice under ambiguity through study of a particular decision criterion. The broad theme is that, where feasible, choice between a status quo policy and an innovation is better framed as selection of a treatment allocation than as a binary decision. Study of the static minimax-regret criterion and its adaptive extension substantiate the theme. When the optimal policy is ambiguous, the static minimax-regret allocation always is fractional absent large fixed costs or deontological considerations. In dynamic choice problems, the adaptive minimax-regret criterion treats each cohort as well as possible, given the knowledge available at the time, and maximizes intertemporal learning about treatment response. Search |

