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Mike Brewer

Mike Brewer

Research Fellow

CV
Alternative webpage
ORCID
0000-0003-0759-0384
Education

MSc Economics and Econometrics (Distinction), University of Bristol, 1997
BA Economics and Mathematics (1st class), University of Cambridge, 1996

Mike is a Professor of Economics at the University of Essex. His main research interests are in how welfare benefits, labour market programmes and the tax system affects decisions made by households. He has written widely about welfare reform, and especially the changes to social security benefits and tax credits proposed by the current UK Government. He has been a long-time proponent of a simpler and more integrated welfare system, and his work on an integrated benefit system has been acknowledged as having informed current government policy.

Academic outputs

IFS Working Paper W18/27
The return to work and how it is taxed: a dynamic perspective
This paper provides an empirical account of the dynamic return to work, and how this is affected by taxes and benefits.
Journal article | The Economic Journal
Why are Households that Report the Lowest Incomes So Well-off?
We document that households in the UK with extremely low measured income tend to spend much more than those with merely moderately low income. This phenomenon is evident throughout three decades worth of microdata and across different employment states, levels of education and marital statuses.

Reports and comment

Briefing note
Universal credit and its impact on household incomes: the long and the short of it
In this research we investigate who wins and loses from universal credit, and by how much. For the first time, we also look at the effects of universal credit on people’s incomes over eight years of their lives, rather than just at a point in time. This lets us look at the impact on those that ...
Briefing note
Progression and retention in the labour market: what have we learned from IWC and ERA?
We examine the effectiveness of two time-limited in-work benefits. These were introduced in Great Britain in the early to mid 2000s and were known as ‘in work credit’ (IWC) and the ‘Employment Retention and Advancement demonstration’ (ERA).

Presentations

Presentation
A look back at In Work Credit and ERA: do financial incentives encourage retention?
This presentation was given by Mike Brewer at "Retention and progression in work: What do we still need to know?" on 24 May 2017.
Presentation
Lifetime inequality and redistribution
This paper was presented at the EEA-ESEM conference in Toulouse (25th August 2014).