In raw data in the UK, the income loss on separation for women who were cohabiting is less than the loss for those who were married. Cohabitees lose less even after matching on observable characteristics including age and children. This difference is not explained by differences in access to...

We study the impact of Chinese import competition in the 2000s on workers and their households in England and Wales. We document both the direct employment changes of individuals affected by trade exposure, as well as the employment response of individuals whose partner is exposed to trade. We...

We use large-scale panel data from linked decadal censuses in England and Wales to study the responses of both individuals and their partners to rising Chinese import competition in the 2000s. We test whether partners provide insurance against lost household earnings by increasing labour supply....

In raw data in the UK, the income loss on separation for women who were cohabiting is less than the loss for those who were married. Cohabitees lose less even after matching on observable characteristics including age and children. This difference is not explained by differences in access to...

Value added taxes (VAT) are an important, and in many cases increasing, source of revenue in both developed and developing countries. Unsurprisingly there is an intense academic and policy debate about the appropriate VAT rate structure, for both equity and efficiency reasons. In this paper we...

What shapes the optimal degree of progressivity of the tax and transfer system? On the one hand, a progressive tax system can counteract inequality in initial conditions and substitute for imperfect private insurance against idiosyncratic earnings risk. At the same time, progressivity reduces...

I undertake a political economy exercise of a type described in John Rawls' A Theory of Justice; namely, one in which economic institutions are judged by how well they match the key principles in theories of distributive justice. My main contention is that such an exercise is integrally related...

This paper make straightforward extensions to Anderson's (1996) nonparametric statistical tests of stochastic dominance criteria to bivariate distributions. These test are applied to a time series of cross-section datasets on household level total expenditure and non labour market time in the UK.

We develop a tax micro-simulator model (MEXTAX) that can quantify the revenue and distributional impact of tax reforms in Mexico using micro-level data. We use MEXTAX to assess revenue-raising reforms to Mexico's direct and indirect tax systems of 2010. Initial proposals by the Executive Power...

This paper make straightforward extensions to Anderson's (1996) nonparametric statistical tests of stochastic dominance criteria to bivariate distributions. These test are applied to a time series of cross-section datasets on household level total expenditure and non labour market time in the UK.