This paper concerns the relationship between refuse collection contract costs and the number of bidders for a sample of English local authorities. Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) of blue collar services such as refuse collection and street cleaning was introduced in the UK by the Local...

We consider the estimation of Cobb-Douglas production functions using panel data covering a large sample of companies observed for a small number of time periods. Standard GMM estimators, which eliminate unobserved firm-specific e¤ects by taking first differences, have been found to produce...

A new procedure for measuring horizontal inequity and vertical equity in the income tax is proposed, for which the "equals" under the tax law are socioeconomic groups, and the equal treatment norm is a command that, for equity, these groups should face the same tax schedule. The measures...

In this paper we model the evolution ofincome risk and consumption growth.We decompose the time series innovation of the income process intoits common and cohort-specific components. From these we compute conditional variances which are used as separate risk terms in a consumptiongrowthequation....

We analyse a puzzle in the UK corporation tax: by both historic and international standards corporation tax revenues have been high while the statutory rate has been low. Possible explanations include the following: changes in tax law that may have increased effective tax rates; other factors...

The nature and extent of intergenerational mobility in Britain to what extent there is a correlation between a parent's position in the income distribution and that of his or her children at similar points in the life-cycle is a topic of considerable interest for social scientists and...

Individuals in the UK now face an effective choice between joining different types of pension plan. We model this choice in a life cycle utility- maximising framework, for risk averse individuals. It is assumed that no pension plan can guarantee every individual a fair annuity at the risk-free...