Kate Smith
Senior Research Economist
ORCID
Education
2012-2014 MSc. Economics (Distinction), University College London.
2008-2011 BA. Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (First Class Honours), University of Oxford.
Kate is a senior research economist at the IFS and a PhD student at University College London. Her research interests are in public economics and applied microeconometrics. Her recent work studies the design of tax policy, with applications to optimal alcohol and soda taxes, and the taxation of closely held business owners. She joined the IFS in 2011.
Academic outputs
Journal article | Journal of Public Economics
Alcohol consumption is associated with costs to society from anti-social behaviour, crime and public costs of policing and health care. These externalities are non-linear in alcohol consumption, with a small number of heavy drinkers creating the majority of the costs. Governments attempt to reduce ...
Journal article | Journal of Industrial Economics
We analyse a simple Hotelling model in which retailers and manufacturers endogenously advertise their respective brands; we account for the impact of advertising on retailer–manufacturer bargaining and downstream competition. The model predicts that retailers advertise their store brands less ...
Reports and comment
External publication
Advertising of high fat, salt or sugar (HFSS) food and drink during children’s television programmes has been banned in the UK since 2007. The Government has recently announced that they will consult on further advertising restrictions for products high in fat, salt and sugar on TV.
Observation
The government has launched a consultation on whether to ban the advertising of food and drink high in fat, salt or sugar on television before the 9pm watershed. But the impact of such restrictions would depend on how firms change their advertising strategies following the ban.
Presentations
Presentation
40% of the growth in the UK’s workforce since 2008 has come from people working for their own business. IFS researchers are using administrative tax records to learn more about the self-employed and company owner-managers, including their characteristics, how these groups have been changing in ...