 Facts and figures about UK taxes, benefits and public spending.
Analysing government fiscal forecasts and tax and spending.
Find out where you are in the income distribution.
ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy.
Reforming the tax system for the 21st century.
A peer-reviewed quarterly journal publishing articles by academics and practitioners.
Resources for schools and students.
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Understanding how consumers make decisions and what affects their behaviour is of key importance across a wide range of policy issues, from the analysis of indirect taxation to the assessment of competition policy. For example, the most recent developments in industrial organisation focus on how firms in imperfectly competitive markets interact, taking the structure of consumer demand as given. The nature of the equilibria that prevail in different markets depends crucially on the nature of consumer decisions.
Past research at IFS has played a leading role in the development of policy-relevant empirical models of consumer behaviour. Looking forward, our research will put the consumer at the heart of competition analysis by providing a rigorous characterisation of consumer behaviour. This is crucial for designing regulatory structures and the implementation of consumer and competition policy across many markets, from retailing to telecoms. Our research aims to develop the analysis of consumer decision-making in conjunction with the analysis of newly available Consumer Panel data. We study behaviour in Britain in detail but also engage in comparative research on similar data in Europe and North America. Price indices and measures of consumer welfare are fundamental inputs into many areas of policy, influencing benefit and state pension levels, and monetary policy, as well as private sector wage bargaining. Price indices vary for many reasons, including the types of goods purchased, where the purchases are made and the extent to which firms have market power. Obtaining useful price indices requires estimates of substitution possibilities and the value placed on new goods by consumers at different points in the income distribution. Demand responses are essential inputs in the design of indirect and environmental taxes. Price discrimination and the effective cost of living across different types of consumers are important for understanding the adequacy of levels of welfare benefits and pensions. The new Consumer Panel data open up an exciting new research agenda. Search
The taxation of savings in the UK is in a mess and the IFS Capital Taxes Group, set up in 1987 and chaired by Malcolm Gammie of Linklaters & Paines, makes proposals which would considerably simplify the system. Its two principal proposals, which are outlined in this report, are for an extension of the current PEP and TESSA regimes to all personal savings and the introduction of an allowance for the cost of equity finance.
James Banks and Paul Johnson
Measures of average inflation like the RPI cannot, by definition, capture the true cost-of-living increases faced by individual households. This report looks at the extent to which a range of households have had different experiences of inflation over the last 15 years.
James Banks, Andrew W Dilnot and Hamish Low
Very little is known about how households hold their savings, if they have any at all. This study shows how the amount and nature of household saving and wealth vary across different household types.
The only circumstance under which one can speak accurately about the cost-of-living index is one in which household expenditure patterns do not vary.
James Banks and Paul Johnson
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