Results

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

Only the super rich need fear the farmers' inheritance tax

Protesters and high-profile individuals like James Dyson argued that ending the inheritance tax exemption for farmers will spell the end of the family farmer. Paul Cheshire argues that's not the case, and that the introd...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Good management practices are great for productivity ... as well as profit shifting

Following the release of the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers, there has been renewed research into profit shifting by multinational firms. This column utilises a novel dataset to show that well-managed subsidiaries...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Asymmetric pass-through and competition

We study the retail price pass-through of four major tax changes in petroleum products using daily pricing data from gas stations on small Greek islands. We find that (i) the pass-through of the tax hikes is five times h...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

How could the UK's education system be reformed to equalise opportunities?

Nine out of ten respondents to a recent UK poll by More in Common for the Sutton Trust agreed that it is important for young people to have equal opportunities, regardless of their background. While recent YouGov pollin...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Labor Economics:

The Employment and Distributional Impacts of Nationwide Minimum Wage Changes

We estimate the effect of the introduction of the UK’s National Living Wage in 2016, and increases in it up to 2019, using a new empirical method. We apply a bunching approach to a setting with no geographical variation ...Read more...

External publication

The state of the UK economy 2024

The state of the UK economy is always an important matter, but it is all the more so in what looks likely to be an election year. This UK in a Changing Europe report takes stock of the UK economy in order to assess how i...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Low investment Britain: policies to promote foundations for growth

The UK investment ecosystem needs rewiring across the board to increase firms' desire to invest in productive and sustainable assets, and to enhance their ability to do so. Paul Brandily, Mimosa Distefano, Krishan Shah, ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Left-behind versus unequal places: interpersonal inequality, economic decline and the rise of populism in the USA and Europe

Economic change over the past 20 years has rendered many individuals and territories vulnerable, leading to greater interpersonal and interterritorial inequality. This rising inequality is seen as a root cause of populis...Read more...

Blog

Africa at LSE:

Public disclosure policies don't improve tax collection in Uganda

Public disclosure policies are designed to raise tax compliance where alternative enforcement capacity is limited. But they can also have negative consequences by showcasing the true extent of tax compliance, write Priya...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Public disclosure and tax compliance: evidence from Uganda

Public disclosure policies have potential to raise tax compliance where alternative enforcement capacity is limited. We study the effects of reporting delinquents and recognizing compliers and provide evidence on the soc...Read more...

Blog

Trade Talks:

Industrial policy and the rise of Romania's Silicon Valley (podcast)

In 2001, Romania gave an income tax break to a select group of software programmers. Isabela Manelici explains how this particular industrial policy helped stem Romania's "brain drain" problem, transformed the country's ...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Competition and pass-through: lessons from the Greek islands

Although theoretical analysis shows that competition is a key determinant of how firms pass through changes in tax rates to consumers, empirical evidence is scant. This column explores changes in the excise duty on petro...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

VAT pass-through and competition: evidence from the Greek Islands

We examine how competition affects VAT pass-through in isolated oligopolistic markets as defined by the Greek islands. Using daily gasoline prices and a difference-in-differences methodology, we investigate how changes i...Read more...

Blog

Harvard Business Review:

The UK economic crisis might not be a one-off

Markets have reacted poorly to the UK government's new "mini-budget" combining energy price caps with tax cuts for the well off. The government's search for a quick fix to economic growth is a mistake. In fact, restartin...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics :

Competition and pass-through: evidence from isolated markets

We measure how pass-through varies with competition in isolated oligopolistic markets with captive consumers. Using daily pricing data from gas stations on small Greek islands, we study how unanticipated and exogenous ch...Read more...

Blog

Banque de France:

Ten years on from the business tax reform: how has it affected companies' behaviour?

In 2010, the French corporation tax known as the local economic contribution or CET (contribution economique territoriale) replaced the business tax (TP - taxe professionnelle). This latter tax on production had come und...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management:

Searching for carbon leaks in multinational companies

Does a unilateral climate change policy cause companies to shift the location of production, thereby creating carbon leakage? In this paper, we analyze the effect of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) o...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics:

A natural experiment on job insecurity and fertility in France

Job insecurity can have wide-ranging consequences outside of the labour market. A 1999 rise in the French layoff tax paid by large private firms when they laid off older workers made younger workers less secure; this ins...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

The progressive quandary: how to design an immigration policy that balances competing objectives

There is a tension between strong employment rights, a supportive welfare state, equal rights for migrants and locals, and an open, non-selective immigration policy that creates hard decisions for progressive politicians...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Will the US child tax credit reduce poverty and improve outcomes for children and parents?

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 temporarily increased the value of the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,000 for children aged 6-16 and to $3,600 for younger children. To date, the Biden administration has been una...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

How might an independent Scotland build fiscal capacity?

Tim Besley and Chris Dann explain how developing a sense of common purpose is critical for nation-building - and would be a key issue for an independent Scotland....Read more...

Blog

LSE Covid-19:

A sense of mutual obligation means that even the rich should see the point of paying their taxes

Creating a strong sense of reciprocity between the state and its citizens makes it more likely they will pay taxes willingly, says Timothy Besley (LSE). As we emerge from a pandemic that emphasised the importance of mutu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Organizational capacity and profit shifting

Good organizational capacity drives productivity and potential taxable profits but may also enable multinationals (MNEs) to more efficiently re-allocate profits across tax jurisdictions, lowering actual taxable profits. ...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Corporate taxes: views of leading economists on profit-shifting, tax base and a global minimum rate

Romesh Vaitilingam reports on economists' responses to the IGM Forum poll on issues surrounding the G7 global deal on corporate taxes....Read more...

Blog

Grantham Institute blogs:

The answer to housing's stubborn carbon emissions problem: green offsets

Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber propose 'green offsets' to reduce property taxes in a way that is strictly scaled to energy efficiency, as a simple intervention to address the UK's urgent need to reduce its residentia...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

How to improve tax compliance: Evidence from population-wide experiments in Belgium

Tax compliance lies at the heart of well-functioning societies, but the US and Europe spend vast sums annually to enforce it. This column discusses the results of population-wide experiments run in collaboration with the...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

How to improve tax compliance? Evidence from population-wide experiments in Belgium

We study the impact of simplification, deterrence, and tax morale on tax compliance. We ran four natural field experiments varying the communication of the tax administration with the universe of income taxpayers in Belg...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Innovation and human capital policy

If innovation is to be subsidized, a natural place to start is to increase the quantity and quality of human capital. Innovation, after all, begins with people. Simply stimulating the “demand side” through R&D subsidies ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Innovation policy to restore American prosperity

The new US administration has the opportunity to reset an economic model that has failed to deliver prosperity for millions of Americans for decades. John Van Reenen calls for a Grand Innovation Challenge Fund – federal ...Read more...

Blog

LSE US Centre:

Trade protection along supply chains: how antidumping measures against China hurt downstream industries

Production processes are often no longer confined to a single country; supply chains can be fragmented across great distances. By contrast, tariffs are often used by individual countries to protect certain industries. In...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Climate change policy: the case for a Covid-19 carbon tax

Ralf Martin and John Van Reenen explain how taxing emissions could help to meet the costs of the crisis and encourage investment in clean innovation....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A natural experiment on job insecurity and fertility in France

Job insecurity can have wide-ranging consequences outside of the labour market. We here argue that it reduces fertility amongst the employed. The 1999 rise in the French Delalande tax, paid by large private firms when th...Read more...

Journal article

Fiscal Studies:

Financing Local Police Spending in England and Wales: Fiscal Federalism in Practice

Since 1995, police forces in England and Wales have been able to raise revenues locally to supplement grants from central government. We analyse the variation across police force areas in locally raised police revenues o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Competition and pass-through: evidence from isolated markets

We measure how pass-through varies with competition in isolated oligopolistic markets with captive consumers. Using daily pricing data from gas stations on small Greek islands, we study how unanticipated and exogenous ch...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A toolkit of policies to promote innovation

Economic theory suggests that market economies are likely to under-provide innovation due to the public good nature of knowledge. Empirical evidence from the US and other advanced economies supports this idea. We summari...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Joseph Schumpeter Lecture, EEA Annual Congress 2017: Do Tax Cuts Produce more Einsteins? The Impacts of Financial Incentives VerSus Exposure to Innovation on the Supply of Inventors

Many countries provide financial incentives to spur innovation, ranging from tax incentives to research and development grants. In this paper, we study how such financial incentives affect individuals' decisions to pursu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How to improve tax compliance? Evidence from population-wide experiments in Belgium

We study the impact of deterrence, tax morale, and simplifying information on tax compliance. We ran _ve experiments spanning the tax process which varied the communication of the tax administration with all income taxpa...Read more...

Journal article

Quantitative Economics:

Incidence, salience, and spillovers: the direct and indirect effects of tax credits on wages

Tax credits are a popular way to alleviate in-work poverty. A common empirical assumption is that the benefit of the tax credit is borne solely by the claimant workers. However, economic theory suggests no particular rea...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do tax cuts produce more Einsteins? The impacts of financial incentives vs. exposure to innovation on the supply of inventors

Many countries provide financial incentives to spur innovation, ranging from tax incentives to research and development grants. In this paper, we study how such financial incentives affect individuals' decisions to pursu...Read more...

Journal article

Regional Science and Urban Economics:

The bedroom tax

Housing subsidies for low income households are a central pillar of many welfare systems, but an expensive one. This paper investigates the consequences of an unusual policy aimed at reducing the cost of these subsidies ...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Location, Search Costs and Youth Unemployment: Experimental Evidence from Transport Subsidies

Do high search costs affect the labour market outcomes of jobseekers living far away from jobs? I randomly assign transport subsidies to unemployed youth in urban Ethiopia. Treated respondents increase job search intensi...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... The bedroom tax

The ‘bedroom tax’ – a UK government policy introduced in 2013 that cut housing benefits for social tenants deemed to have a ‘spare’ bedroom – saved some public money, according to research by Steve Gibbons and colleagues...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The bedroom tax

Housing subsidies for low income households are a central pillar of many welfare systems, but an expensive one. This paper investigates the consequences of an unusual policy aimed at reducing the burden of these subsidie...Read more...

CEP industrial strategy paper

Investing in People: The Case for Human Capital Tax Credits

It is now widely recognised that human capital accumulation and research and development (R&D) are key drivers of economic growth, as is documented in most standard textbooks (e.g. Acemoglu, 2007; Romer, 1996). Estimates...Read more...

CVER Briefing Note

Investing in People: The Case for Human Capital Tax Credits

Read more...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

Reference-dependent job search: Evidence from Hungary

We propose a model of job search with reference-dependent preferences, with loss aversion relative to recent income (the reference point). In this model, newly unemployed individuals search hard since consumption is belo...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Stamp duty, mobility and the UK housing crisis

The UK’s stamp duty land tax raises substantial revenues for the government, but it also contributes to the UK’s housing crisis by preventing households from moving to more suitable homes. That is the central conclusion ...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Brexit as Climate Policy: The Agenda on Energy and the Environment

The Great Recession and a sluggish economic recovery were instrumental in meeting the legally binding climate change targets that the UK has set for itself. But without more drastic policy interventions, it is unlikely t...Read more...

Journal article

The Scandinavian Journal of Economics:

A Characteristics Approach to Optimal Taxation: Line Drawing and Tax-Driven Product Innovation

Real-world tax legislation assigns goods to different categories of tax rates on the basis of observable characteristics, allowing the tax system to handle a constantly evolving set of available goods. We recast the theo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Special and differential treatment for developing countries

Special and Differential Treatment for Developing Countries (SDT) constitutes a central feature of the GATT/WTO system. Its formal goal is to foster export-led growth in developing countries. Its theoretical foundations ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do tax incentives for research increase firm innovation? An RD design for R&D, patents and spillovers

We present evidence of the positive causal impacts of research and development (R&D) tax incentives on a firm's own innovation and that of its technological neighbors (spillovers). Exploiting a change in the assets-based...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

Carbon taxes, path dependency, and directed technical change: Evidence from the auto industry

Can directed technical change be used to combat climate change? We construct new firm-level panel data on auto industry innovation distinguishing between “dirty” (internal combustion engine) and “clean” (e.g., electric, ...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Top Rate of Income Tax

The main political parties disagree about the appropriate rate of income Tax on the highest incomes. This note lays out the economic principles surrounding the top rate of income tax and considers the evidence that high ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Exploring the Geography of China's Airport Networks: A Hybrid Complex-Network Approach

Air networks are normal examples of transportation systems among ubiquitous big data networks in the dynamic nature. This is particularly the case in developing countries with rapid airport network expansions. This paper...Read more...

Journal article

The World Bank Economic Review:

The political economyof trade policy: Gone for good? Subsidies with export share requirements in China: 2002-13

This paper presents a simple model of subsidies with export share requirements (ESR) in a heterogeneous firm environment. A two-country general equilibrium version of the model with a single 100% ESR is calibrated using ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

The impact of a carbon tax on manufacturing: Evidence from microdata

We estimate the impact of a carbon tax on manufacturing plants using panel data from the UK production census. Our identification strategy builds on the comparison of outcomes between plants subject to the full tax and p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Eliciting taxpayer preferences increases tax compliance

Two experiments show that eliciting taxpayer preferences on government spending?providing taxpayer agency--increases tax compliance. We first create an income and taxation environment in a laboratory setting to test for ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Concentration versus re-matching? Evidence about the locational effects of commuting costs

Using administrative employer-employee data from Germany, I exploit two reductions of tax breaks for commuting in 2003/4 and 2006/7 to estimate commuting costs’ effect on the decision to switch job and move house. Standa...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Does Better Rail Access Improve Homeowners’ Happiness?: Evidence Based on Micro Surveys in Beijing

Development of urban transport infrastructures is a key policy focus---particularly in countries like China which have experienced fast urbanisation over the past decade. While existing studies provide marginal values fo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Great Stagnation: What Can Policymakers Do?

Although the economic recovery in the UK has been disappointing, it is inappropriate to either assert that Japan’s two lost decades illustrate the ineffectiveness of stimulative monetary policy or that the UK is predesti...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Does Public Investment Spur the Land Market?: Evidence from Transport Improvement in Beijing

Over 140 billion CNY (1GBP=10CNY) has been spent between 2000 and 2012 in Beijing on the construction of new rail transit lines. This massive public investment allows me to examine the consequences of transport improveme...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Effect of the UK Stamp Duty Land Tax on Household Mobility

We estimate the effect of the UK Stamp Duty Land Tax on household mobility using micro data. Exploiting a discontinuity in the tax schedule as a quasi-experimental setting, we isolate the impact of the stamp duty from ot...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Not all Incentives Wash out the Warm Glow: The Case of Blood Donation Revisited

The issue of the nature of the altruism inherent in blood donation and the perverse effects of financial rewards for blood and/or organ donation has been recently revisited in the economic literature with limited consens...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does High Involvement Management Improve Worker Wellbeing?

Employees exposed to high involvement management (HIM) practices have higher subjective wellbeing, fewer accidents but more short absence spells than “like” employees not exposed to HIM. These results are robust to exten...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Big ideas: Innovation policy

In the last CentrePiece, John Van Reenen stressed the importance of competition and labour market flexibility for productivity growth. His latest in CEP's 'big ideas' series describes the impact of research on how policy...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Tax Competition Among Local Governments: Evidence from a Property Tax Reform in Finland

This paper uses a Finnish policy intervention to study tax competition among local governments. Changes in the statutory lower limits to the property tax rates are used as a source of exogenous variation to estimate the ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Investigating Agglomeration Economies in a Panel of European Cities and Regions

This paper investigates agglomeration economies in an annual panel of NUTS 2 and NUTS 3 city regions across France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the UK over 1980-2006 and comparing three sub-samples to see if the e...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does High Involvement Management Lead to Higher Pay?

Using nationally representative survey data for Finnish employees linked to register data on their wages and work histories we find wage effects of high involvement management (HIM) practices are generally positive and s...Read more...

Book

The Future of Finance
The LSE Report

This book presents a novel approach to the reform of the world’s financial system, starting with the basic question, what is a financial system for? It shows that the existing system has become far more complic...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Mortgage Interest Deduction and its Impact on Homeownership Decisions

This paper examines the impact of the combined U.S. state and federal mortgage interest deduction (MID) on homeownership attainment, using data from 1984 to 2007 and exploiting variation in the subsidy across states, ove...Read more...

CEP policy analysis

Still time to reclaim the European Union Emissions Trading System for the European tax payer

The criteria proposed by the EU Commission to identify industries that will receive free emission permits in the third phase of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) are not restrictive enough. Evidence fr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Welfare Policy and the Distribution of Hours of Work

We examine the distribution of hours of work across industrial sectors in OECD countries. We find large disparities when sectors are divided into three groups: one that produces goods without home substitutes and two oth...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Trade, Wages and Productivity

We develop a new general equilibrium model of monopolistic competition with heterogeneous firms, variable demand elasticity and multiple asymmetric regions, in which trade integration induces wage and productivity change...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How to Measure Living Standards and Productivity

This paper sets out a general algorithm for calculating true cost-of-living indices or true producer price indices when demand is not homothetic, i.e. when not all expenditure elasticities are equal to one. In principle,...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade, Wages and Productivity

We develop a new general equilibrium model of monopolistic competition with heterogeneous firms, variable demand elasticity and multiple asymmetric regions, in which trade integration induces wage and productivity change...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Impacts of the Climate Change Levy on business: Evidence from Microdata

We estimate the impacts of the Climate Change Levy (CCL) on manufacturing plants using panel data from the UK production census. Our identification strategy builds on the comparison of outcomes between plants subject to ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A Tale of Two Countries: Unions, Closures and Growth in Britain and Norway

Using linked private sector employer-employee panel data for Britain and Norway we explore the effects of unionization on workplace closure and employment growth over the period 1997-2004. Unions prolonged the life of lo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Employment Outcomes in the Welfare State

We examine the implications of tax and subsidy policies for employment in the 'three worlds of welfare', Anglo-Saxon, Continental European and Scandinavian. We argue that home production is key to a proper evaluation of ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Chain Indices of the Cost of Living and the Path-Dependence Problem: An Empirical Solution

This paper proposes an empirically feasible method for correcting the path-dependence bias of chain indices of the cost of living. Chain indices are discrete approximations to Divisia indices and it is well known that th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Seigniorage

In this paper I analyse four different but related concepts, each of which highlights some aspect of the way in which the state acquires command over real resources through its ability to issue fiat money. They are (1) s...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Incidence of an Earned Income Tax Credit: Evaluating the Impact on Wages in the UK

Tax credits have been a popular way to alleviate in-work poverty. The assumption is typically that the incidence is on the claimant workers. However, economic theory suggests no particular reason to believe that this sho...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Apprenticeship in Europe: 'Fading' or Flourishing?

This paper sets out the extent and defining characteristics of apprenticeship in Europe. Apprenticeship is then situated within the wider context of European provision for education and training of 16-19 year olds and a ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Incidence of UK Housing Benefit: Evidence from the 1990s Reforms

Housing Benefit (HB) in the UK subsidizes the rent of tenants in both the private and public sectors. Its share in total welfare benefits has risen markedly through time and there is widespread dissatisfaction with it. B...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Measuring the Cost Effectiveness of an R&D Tax Credit for the UK

This paper investigates the economic impact of the government's proposed new UK R&D tax credit. We measure the benefit of the credit by the effect on value added in the short and long?run. This is simulated from existin...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Fixed-Term Contracts and Unemployment: An Efficiency Wage Analysis

During the 1980s, many European countries introduced fixed-term contracts to fight high and persistent levels of unemployment. Although these contracts have been widely used, unemployment has remained about the same afte...Read more...