Each year the UK records 25,000 or more excess winter deaths, primarily among the elderly. A key policy response is the 'Winter Fuel Payment' (WFP), a labelled but unconditional cash transfer to households with a member above the Female State Pension Age. The WFP has been shown to raise fuel...

Understanding tax non-compliance and the effectiveness of strategies to tackle it is crucial for a modern tax authority. In this paper we study how and why audits impact reported tax in the years after audit - the dynamic effect - for individual income taxpayers. We exploit data from a random...

We present the first comprehensive evidence on the health impacts of the introduction and expansion of a large non-contributory health insurance program in Mexico, the Seguro Popular (SP). SP provided access to health services without co-pays to individuals with no Social Security protection. To...

This paper estimates the effects of entering the labour market when the economy is weak on subsequent living standards using consistent long-running household survey data from the UK. In line with previous research, we find persistent scarring effects on employment and earnings. However, we also...

We study optimal corrective taxation in the alcohol market. Consumption generates negative externalities that are non-linear in the total amount of alcohol consumed. If tastes for products are heterogeneous and correlated with marginal externalities, then varying tax rates on different products...

We look at how strongly shocks to asset values affect labour supply, using Italian data. We use asset price shocks to provide a measure of wealth changes that is exogenous to households' saving and labour supply. Our results point to significant effects of wealth on hours of work and on whether...

We examine the optimal auditing problem of a tax authority when taxpayers can choose both to evade and avoid. For a convex penalty function the incentive-compatibility constraints may bind for the richest taxpayer and at a positive level of both evasion and avoidance. The audit function is...

Consideration set models relax the assumption that consumers are aware of all available options. Thus far, identification arguments for these models have relied either on auxiliary data on what options were considered or on instruments excluded from consideration or utility. In a discrete choice...

The earliest age at which women can receive a state pension in the UK (the "state pension age") has been increasing since 2010. We use a difference-in-differences methodology, exploiting the gradual increase from age 60 in 2010 to age 63 in 2016, to estimate the impact of the reform on women's...

We investigate bunching at personal tax thresholds over a 40-year period. At kinks, where the marginal tax rate rises, we find bunching among company owner-managers and the self-employed, but not those with only employment income. Notches, where the average rate rises, provide compelling...