It is widely recognised that the real rates of return which have been earned on most financial assets in the UK in recent years have been negative-the yield on investments has not been high enough to compensate for the erosion of capital values through inflation. There are many purposes for...

In our article in the July 1980 issue of Fiscal Studies, we examined the impact of the growth of North Sea oil production on the domestic economy. A major conclusion of that article was that 'the contraction of manufacturing output, and an increase in domestic absorption on imported...

There are two reasons for concern about the effect fo the tax and benefit system on incentives for low paid workers. Because of tax and loss of entitlement to benefits, it is possible that a large increase in gross earnings has little effect on a worker's net income. This problem has been widely...

Local government finance has suddenly become the most acute fiscal problem of the early 1980's in Britain. In January 1982 the Institute for Fiscal Studies held a conference, to discuss the issues involved. The immediate occation was the publication by the Government of a Green Paper describing...

The first review of the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme is currently in progress. We have argued elsewhere (Hemming and Kay, 1981b) that the review should involve a fundamental reappraisal of the structure of the scheme. In this paper we concentrate on a single issue, but one which is...