Standard economic theory implies that the labelling of cash transfers or cash-equivalents (e.g. child benefits, food stamps) should have no effect on spending patterns. The empirical literature to date does not contradict this proposition. We study the UK Winter Fuel Payment (WFP), a cash...

We merge detailed household level expenditure data from older households with historical local weather information. We then test for a heat or eat trade off: do houseolds cut back on food spending to finance the additional cost of keeping warm duing cold shocks? We find evidence that the poorest...

We investigate necessary and sufficient nonparametric conditions for the quasi-hyperbolic consumer. These turn out to be quite tractable. We investigate the performance of this model compared to the standard exponential discounting model using consumer panel data.

Responses to changes in marginal income tax rates can be more complex than a simple adjustment in hours worked. Given this, a more inclusive way to assess the deadweight costs of taxes on labour income is to examine the effect of changes in the marginal tax rate on taxable income rather than on...

This paper uses revealed preference restrictions and nonparametric statistical methods to bound a quality-constant price series for a good that changes quality over time. Unlike the more usual hedonic regression techniques for estimating quality-adjusted prices, this method does not require us...