This paper considers the case for replacing the Carli index in the Retail Prices Index for calculating price changes at the elementary aggregate level. Following Diewert (2012), we go through each of the three approaches used to select appropriate index numbers: the test, stochastic and economic...

This paper sets out revealed preference tests for different models of consumption behaviour over retirement that we applied to a Spanish consumption panel dataset. We reject the perfect foresight model both with separable preferences and allowing for preference change. The first order conditions...

Most analysis of the effects of the tax and benefit system is based on snapshot information about a single cross-section of people. Such an approach gives only a partial picture because it cannot account for the fact that circumstances change over life. This paper investigates how our impression...

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...

In this paper we document significantly steeper declines in nondurable expenditures in the UK compared to the US, in spite of income paths being similar. We explore several possible causes, including different employment paths, housing ownership and expenses, levels and paths of health status,...

The distributional impact of proposed reforms plays a central role in public debates around tax and transfer policy. We show that accounting for realistic patterns of mobility in employment, earnings and household circumstances over the life-cycle greatly affects our assessment of the...

In this paper we discuss two alternative approaches to constructing complete adult life-cycles using data from an 18-year panel. The first of these is a splicing approach - closely related to imputation - that involves stitching together individuals observed at different ages. The second is a...

In this paper we document significantly steeper declines in nondurable expenditures in the UK compared to the US, in spite of income paths being similar. We explore several possible causes, including different employment paths, housing ownership and expenses, levels and paths of health status,...

In October 2012, the ONS announced a consultation on whether the statistical methods used to calculate the Retail Prices Index (RPI) should be changed to bring them closer in line to those used in the Consumer Prices Index (CPI). Previous IFS work has looked at how inflation rates varied across...

This paper examines the distributional impact of increases to out-of-work transfers, increases to work-contingent transfers, and increases in higher rates of income tax over the whole of life. We find that, in contrast to what is implied by standard snapshot analyses, increases to...