The UK government is in the process of introducing a radical package of welfare reforms that it hopes will encourage more people to work as well as reducing government expenditure. The largest structural change planned is the introduction of universal credit to combine six existing means-tested...

Dynamic scoring – taking full account of all the economic effects of policies when estimating their budgetary effects – is almost self-evidently attractive. But it is formidably difficult to achieve. This paper assesses the key conceptual and practical challenges it poses and considers the...

<p>Governments wishing to reduce inequality by redistributing money from the rich to the poor face the dilemma that in doing so (by increasing tax rates and means-tested benefits, for example) they reduce the incentive for individuals to increase their incomes. Policy-makers have tried to balance...</p>

Based on the best available theory and evidence, the Mirrlees Review sets out a comprehensive set of proposals for tax reform. While focused on the UK, its analysis and conclusions bear directly on the policy debate in other developed countries. The Review proposes a move to a more neutral tax...

This paper reviews various techniques for quantifying financial incentives to work, shows how financial work incentives have changed across the population since 1979, and estimates how much of these changes are due to changes in the tax and benefit system.

This paper estimates the marginal efficiency cost of redistribution (MECR) associated with a demogrant and an in-work benefit for the UK since 1979, taking account of extensive as well as intensive labour supply responses. The principal methodological advance in the paper is its greater...

<p><p>Income Tax and National Insurance are now sufficiently similar that merging them appears to be a plausible option, yet still sufficiently different that integration raises significant difficulties. This paper surveys the potential benefits of integration - increased transparency and reduced...</p></p>

This paper addresses the strategic impact of modular design on the optimal length and price of a differentiated product line. We represent consumer demand with a Bayesian logit model. We also break operations costs into product design and production components. Our analysis shows that reducing...