Browse all research funded by the Stone Centre at UCL

Income and wealth inequality has steadily risen in the U.S. over the last two decades. At the same time, private capital markets have expanded, while public stock market listings have fallen. To what extent could both these trends be related to the increasing participation of high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) in private capital markets?

During the 1980s and 1990s, merger waves led to unprecedented corporate consolidation, and prior studies have highlighted that both markups and firm concentration have considerably risen over that timeframe. Although mergers allow firms to unlock synergies, which are productivity-enhancing, they also allow firms to capture market share, thereby reducing competitive pressure in the affected industries. I study the effects of merger activity on aggregate outcomes, and whether mergers can explain the trends mentioned above.

Public sector pay growth in the United Kingdom has lagged behind the private sector over the past 15 years, raising concerns about recruitment and retention. Yet evidence on who enters public sector jobs across generations has remained limited, largely due to data constraints. In this research, we draw on new administrative data to document how the probability of entering public sector work has evolved, both across education groups and across different areas of the public sector.‍

Why is there such strong opposition to carbon taxes in rural areas? In this article, we focus on the role of perceived unequal treatment. We argue that per- ceptions of unequal treatment by the state lead people living in rural areas to be less supportive of carbon taxes, because they believe that carbon taxes un- fairly punish those that have already been disadvantaged by the state. We carry out a survey with a representative sample of around 3,000 respondents from the United Kingdom to test our argument. We provide observational and experimen- tal evidence showing that for those living in rural areas, increased perceptions of unequal treatment by the state reduce the perceived fairness of carbon taxes and substantially lower support for carbon taxation. Our results suggest that tackling deep-rooted perceptions of unequal treatment in rural areas is crucial for building broad public support for carbon taxation.

We quantify behavioral responses to estate taxation by exploiting two large reforms in Taiwan. Using comprehensive administrative data and a difference-in-difference design, we show that the response of reported estates to the reforms is quick, persistent, and exhibits an asymmetry. We estimate elasticities of reported estates with respect to the net-of-tax rate of 2.76 (s.e. 0.39) for the tax increase and 1.31 (s.e. 0.16) for the tax cut. The asymmetry arises because liquid items such as financial assets, deposit savings, and charitable exemptions respond significantly more to a tax increase. The quick adjustments in reported estates, combined with a null effect on labor supply behavior among both donors and heirs, suggest the responses are likely driven by tax avoidance. The observed asymmetry can be explained by tax avoidance with sunk costs: taxpayers increase avoidance during a tax increase but are less responsive to a tax cut due to previously incurred avoidance costs. We set up a tax avoidance model and derive sufficient statistics, characterized by our estimated elasticities, to assess the welfare impact of tax reforms. Our analysis shows that using the tax cut elasticity, which is attenuated due to sunk costs, would underestimate the welfare cost and overestimate the net welfare effect of a tax increase by 61%.

Understanding the roots of violent and criminal behaviour is crucial for developing effective prevention and intervention strategies. A large body of research has highlighted the complex interplay between genetic, environmental, and psychological factors in explaining such behaviours. This project will focus the long-term consequences of early exposure to abuse and violence.

Our project advances the hypothesis that financial literacy could be one of the factors responsible for the gender gap in wealth, as financial knowledge helps individuals accumulate wealth, but women tend to be less financially literate than men.

In this project we study ethnic discrimination by states as an organizational problem. To do so, we have collaborated with Peru's anti-corruption agency to accurately characterize differential treatment of public officials.

Are slums stepping-stones to better lives or poverty traps? To do so, we will leverage unique administrative data from Brazil alongside an intergenerational quantitative urban model which integrates human capital investment decisions and thus social mobility.

This project studies the distributional effects of international trade policies and shocks via their impact on consumer prices, which may be different across consumer groups who have different consumption baskets.