This paper investigates how different income shocks shape consumption dynamics over the business cycle. First, we break new ground by creating a unique, panel dataset of transitory and permanent income shocks, using subjective income expectations from the Dutch Household Survey. Second, we...

Collective models have become the go-to framework for intra-household allocations. Available empirical collective models are built for fixed sets of household members and accommodate diversity in household structures with difficulty. Individual-level data on food consumption from Bangladesh...

The UK taxes business income at much lower rates than employment income. In this paper we describe the problems caused by that differentiation and assess the main arguments used to defend it. We summarise the Mirrlees Review's proposals for radical reform that would align tax rates across legal...

We show the extent of errors made in the award of disability insurance using matched survey-administrative data. False rejections (Type I errors) are widespread, and there are large gender differences in these type I error rates. Women with a severe, work-limiting, permanent impairment are 20...

We exploit a policy designed to randomly allocate roommates in a large South African university to investigate whether inter-racial interaction affects stereotypes, attitudes and performance. Using Implicit Association Tests, we find that living with a roommate of a different race reduces white...

Rajasthani women typically leave school early and marry young. We develop a novel discrete choice methodology using hypothetical vignettes to elicit average parental preferences over a daughter's education and age of marriage, and subjective beliefs about the evolution of her marriage market...

Many children in developing countries grow up in unstimulating environments, leading to deficiencies in early years' developmental outcomes, particularly cognition and language. Interventions to improve parenting in the first 3 years of life have a clear impact on these outcomes, but the...

We investigate the role of training in reducing the gender wage gap using the UK-BHPS which contains detailed records of training. Using policy changes over an 18 year period we identify the impact of training and work experience on wages, earnings and employment. Based on a lifecycle model and...

Credit constraints are considered to be an important barrier hindering adoption of preventive health investments among low-income households in developing countries. However, it is not obvious whether, and the extent to which, the provision of labelled micro-credit (where the loan is linked to...

The low take-up of cost-effective and highly subsidised preventive health technologies in low-income countries remains a puzzle. One under-studied reason is that the design of subsidy schemes is such that households remain financially constrained. In this paper we analyse whether, and how,...