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 earners respond to higher tax rates by working less or by taking steps to...

The coalition government's austerity programme has resulted in some sizeable reductions in the police workforce, yet crime has continued to fall. A key question for the next Parliament is whether further real-terms reductions in police budgets can occur without more deleterious effects on crime....

Housing affordability is a key concern of an ever-larger fraction of UK voters who are crammed into artificially limited space. At the same time, a lot of wealth lies in housing assets and there are many vested interests in keeping things this way, such as current homeowners and private...

The UK's main political parties have all pledged to combat climate change whatever the result of the general election. Yet according to a new report from the CEP, much of the discussion is largely rhetoric, with limited focus on actionable policy commitments. The report's authors explain how UK...

Please see the CEP #ElectionEconomics report(Paper 1)and the Executive Summary (Paper 2) that cover all the election 2015 briefings, discussing the research evidence on 15 of the UK's key policy battlegrounds: immigration, austerity, real wages and living standards, productivity and business,...

The UK's top 1% have between 12.5% and 15.5% of all income. This is mid-way between the United States (20%) and Continental Europe (8%). This share has been rising steadily since the late 1970s, mainly due to labour income (wages), but also with a role for capital income (dividends, capital...

UK productivity stagnated after the Great Recession of 2008-09 and remains about 15 percent below historical trends. This 'productivity puzzle' is due to a mixture of cyclical and structural effects - the fall is not entirely permanent; and has led to a widening of the longstanding gap with...

We analyze the effects of Brexit on the UK economy. The most important economic consequence of Brexit would likely be reduced trade with EU countries. We consider an optimistic scenario with relatively small increases in trade barriers between the UK and the EU and a pessimistic scenario with...

England's performance in international tests of student achievement continues to be disappointing. Further improvement is essential not only for students' themselves but also for economic growth. This briefing considers the impact of Academies, school spending and teacher quality. Research...

Real wages and living standards have taken a hard hit in the UK in the recent past. Real wages of the typical (median) UK worker have fallen by almost 10% since 2008 and median family incomes have significantly fallen for working age households. This recent experience is weaker than in the...