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...

We use English household-level survey data from 1996 to 2010 to explore whether economic market failures play a significant role in explaining the presence of energy efficiency measures (loft insulation, cavity wall insulation and full double glazing) in residential properties. There appears to...

Government wants both to reduce carbon emissions and to reduce 'fuel poverty'. Energy prices have risen in part because of a multitude of policies aimed at reducing emissions. There are also multiple policies aimed at ameliorating these effects. Altogether, this leads to a complex policy...

This report, funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), examines the effect of UK government policies on energy use and carbon pricing. The work was undertaken by researchers from the ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy...

This paper considers the potential role of in-home scanners as a method of data collection for national budget surveys such as the Consumer Expenditure Survey. A detailed comparison is made between scanner data and diary-based budget survey data for food at home in the UK. Levels of recorded...

A common approach to measuring price changes is to look at the change of the expenditure needed to purchase a fixed basket of goods. It is well-known that this approach suffers from problems and creates several biases in the measurement of price changes faced by consumers. Substitution and...

This chapter provides an overview of key economic issues in the use of taxation as an instrument of environmental policy in the UK. It first reviews economic arguments for using taxes and other market mechanisms in environmental policy, discusses the choice of tax base, and considers the value...