Originated with an Institute for Fiscal Studies project on fiscal policy in the corporate sector that used company accounting data to analyze the effects of corporate taxation on firm behavior, focusing on how company accounts can best be applied to economic analysis. Discusses the assessment of...

One of the most enduring legacies of the 1980s has been the programme of privatizations that the Thatcher government set in train in the first half of the decade. Whole sectors of the UK economy which were formerly part of the public sector were sold off to the private sector. Some were bought...

The last decade has witnessed the introduction of an elaborate system of regulation in the UK. Whole segments of British industry are now operating under the supervision of regulatory bodies not dissimilar to the government departments they were designed to replace. Regulation has been an...

The Inland Revenue must derive a certain degree of satisfaction from the fact that it took the City the best part of a week to appreciate that one of the more obscure sections of the 1982 Finance Bill had overnight ended its favourite pastime of bed and breakfasting-a most skilful exercise in...