We review the effects on the Covid-19 pandemic on inequalities in education, the labour market, household living standards, mental health, and wealth in the UK. The pandemic has pushed up inequalities on several dimensions. School closures particular disrupted the learning of poorer children,...

We exploit the randomized evaluation of a remedying education intervention that improved the reading skills of low-performing third grade students in Colombia, to study whether providing educational support to low-achieving students affects the academic performance of their higher-achieving...

This paper investigates the effect of electronic payments technology on firms' tax compliance in a large developing economy. We consider India's demonetization policy which, by limiting the availability of cash, led to a large increase in the use of electronic forms of payments. Using...

This note explains the equivalence between approximate rationalizability and approximate cost-rationalizability within the context of consumer demand. In connection with these results, we interpret Afriat's (1973) critical cost efficiency index (CCEI) as a measure of cost (in)efficiency, in the...

In this paper we discuss the state of the literature relating to the decumulation of retirement wealth and the management of retirement incomes. On the one hand, life-cycle models which allow for strong bequest motives and the effects of medical expense risks have been shown to be able to...

This paper examines measurement error in the share of income going to the top 1% (and other subgroups) that comes from estimation of the denominator. We compare two approaches. First, the default 'external' approach used in the current literature, which relies on different data sources for the...

We study the effect of an increase in the UK state pension age from 65 to 66, a high level internationally, on labour market activity. Despite there being limited financial incentives to retire at the state pension age, we find large effects: the employment rate of 65-year-olds increased by 7.4...

Remuneration-post-verification subsidies and microcredit have been postulated as potential solutions to imperfect capital markets and commitment problems that impede lumpy human capital investments, but little is known about the merit of combining these financing mechanisms. We draw on a cluster...

Private transfers can affect the spending response to stimulus payments, as those receiving income windfalls may transfer resources to other households in greater financial need. We report a survey experiment where individuals were asked how they would respond to a £500 payment, with a randomly...

We study earnings and income inequality in Britain over the 25 years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus on the middle 90% of the income distribution, within which the gap between top and bottom in 2019-20 was essentially the same as a quarter-century earlier. We show that this apparent...