Survey data are widely used to provide indicators of economic activity ahead of the publication of official data. This paper proposes an indicator based on a theoretically consistent procedure for quantifying firm-level survey responses that are ordered and categorical. Firms' survey responses...

This papers identifies the information content at the firm-level of qualitative business survey data by first examining the consistency between these data and the quantitative data provided by the same respondents to the UK’s ONS in official surveys. Since the qualitative data are published...

This paper discusses the way in which payments from pooled annuity funds need to be adjusted to take account of the fact that future mortality rates are uncertain. Mortalityadjusted annuities, as we describe payments from the pooled fund are variable annuities in which aggregate mortality risk...

We assess the implications of demographic uncertainty for the United Kingdom’s fiscal position. We construct stochastic population projections and then use the framework provided by generational accounts to project government revenues and expenditures. We present stochastic paths for the...

Means testing plays an important role in the UK state pension system. We use a dynamic programming model to consider the long-term behavioural effects of a recent policy reform that reduced the marginal tax rates on private income of means tested retirement benefits from 100% to 40%. Our...

This paper explores the pricing of annuities in a structural overlapping generations model in which the mortality rate of people when old is uncertain. A market clearing price for annuities is established below the fair price. At this price the willingness of old people to pay the young to carry...

This study uses a stylised simulation model to consider potential behavioural responses to the reduction in pension taper rates associated with replacing the Minimum Income Guarantee (MIG) with the Pension Credit (PC). A range of long-run responses to the policy change are identified, summarised...

This paper examines the effect of lifelong learning on men’s employment and wages. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey, a variant of the mover-stayer model is developed in which hourly wages are either taken from a stationary distribution (movers) or are closely related to the...

This paper uses the English Longitudinal Survey of Ageing to explore the selfreport effect of cataract operations on eyesight. Calibrating the results to an existing study of the effect of imperfect eyesight on qualty of life, the impact of cataract operations on quality-adjusted life-years is...

From a household point of view the two major changes associated with the economic disruption of the last eighteen months are, first, that the unemployment rate and presumably the risk of unemployment have risen sharply, and secondly, that there have been large declines in asset prices. It is...