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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1. Survey responses are always subject to measurement error. In general surveys (and especially longitudinal surveys), there are severe constraints on the time that can be spent eliciting a less noisy response for any target variable. In this paper we consider when it may be better to consider multiple noisy measures of the target measure rather than improving the reliability of a single measure.
2. The Kotlarski result states that if the measurement errors in two measures of the same target variable are mutually independent and independent of the true value then we can recover the entire distribution of the quantity of interest, up to location.
3. We consider designing surveys to deliver measurement error with desirable properties. This shifts the emphasis from reliability (the signal to noise ratio for any given measure) to the joint properties of the multiple measures.
4. To illustrate our ideas, we consider a concrete example: the measurement of consumption inequality. A small simulation study suggests that the approach we propose has promise. The next step in this research agenda is experiments in survey data collection. Search |
View all IFS Working Papers in the series
Recent IFS Working Papers
Identifying the drivers of month of birth differences in educational attainment
This paper is the first to apply the principle of maximum entropy to the month of birth problem.
The drivers of month of birth differences in children's cognitive and non-cognitive skills: a regression discontinuity analysis
This paper uses data from a rich UK birth cohort to estimate the differences in cognitive and non-cognitive skills between children born at the start and end of the academic year.
The impact of age within academic year on adult outcomes
We provide the first evidence on whether differences in childhood outcomes translate into differences in the probability of employment, occupation and earnings for adults in the UK.
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