Government finances and spending

This paper examines the role of individual and household characteristics in explaining patterns of support for higher public spending on seven of the most important public spending programmes including health, education, the police and defence.

Over the last decade there has been a resurgence of interest in the possibility of some measure of devolution to regional governments for at least parts of the United Kingdom.

The generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation technique is discussed for count data models with endogenous regressors.

In this paper we use data on the Norwegian bus transport industry to investigate the effects of different regulatory mechanisms and their economic implications.

Devolution and regional government are once again at the centre of policy debate in Britain. This reports considers the economic issues in designing a system of regional government, and its fiscal implications for the residents of the regions of Britain.

The basic state retirement pension is payable irrespective of means but it is a contributory benefit, not a universal benefit.

Non-domestic rates are a tax that is formally levied on the occupiers of nondomestic property in the United Kingdom.

This report studies the demand for private health insurance in the UK using data from the British Social Attitudes Survey.

The exact measurement of the welfare costs of tax and price reform requires a detailed knowledge of individual preferences. Typically, first-order approximations of welfare costs are calculated avoiding detailed knowledge of substitution effects.

This report studies the demand for private health insurance in the UK using data from the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey.

The analysis of the expenditure decisions of English local authorities has assumed great importance as central government has sought to exercise increasing control over the activities of local government.

Double taxation of company dividends is reduced in the UK by a partial imputation system of corporation tax, which was introduced in 1973.

The tax treatment of company dividend payments is an area where corporate taxation interacts with the personal income tax.

The national non-domestic rate was introduced in 1990 to replace a system of locally varying business rates which had lasted for almost four centuries. Five years after the. 1990 reforms, this report evaluates the operation of the present system and discusses various options for reform.

This paper contrasts Samuelson's (1964) definition of "true economic depreciation" with the use of this term that has become standard in the more recent literature on neutral business taxes.