The combination of credit constraints and indivisible consumption goods may induce some riskaverse individuals to play lotteries to have a chance of crossing a purchasing threshold. One implication of this is that income effects for individuals who choose to play lotteries are likely to be...

We investigate life cycle patterns of demand for services from household durables using UK panel data. We take careful account of prices, demographics, labour supply and health. Demand for consumer electronics rises with age, while the demand for household appliances is flat. These findings...

This document describes the UK tax and benefit system between April 1990 and April 2010, as implemented in FORTAX, a microsimulation library written in Fortran. It begins with an overview of FORTAX and the information it calculates. Subsequent sections describe the taxes and benefits implemented...

This paper considers what role in-home barcode scanner data could play in collecting household expenditure information as part of national budget surveys. One role is as a source of validation. We make detailed micro-level comparisons of food and drink expenditures in two British datasets: the...

Prices of real and financial assets fell substantially in the UK during 2008-09. The fourth wave of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) was in the field throughout this 'financial crisis'. We use these data and earlier ELSA waves first to document the effect of the crisis on the...

Anti-smoking policies can in theory make smokers better off, by helping smokers with time-inconsistent preferences commit to giving up or reducing the amount they smoke. We use almost 20 years of British individual-level panel data to explore the impact on self-reported psychological well-being...

We use English household-level survey data from 1996 to 2010 to explore whether economic market failures play a significant role in explaining the presence of energy efficiency measures (loft insulation, cavity wall insulation and full double glazing) in residential properties. There appears to...