Fredrik Segerfeldt argues that migration benefits not only migrants from developing countries but also the family and friends that they leave behind. The idea of 'brain drain,' that the outward flow of the best and brightest inhabitants of a developing country adversely affects that country's prospects, is not borne out in the empirical data, while remittances are shown to significantly ameliorate poverty. 

Read the report.

Britain’s welfare system is overcomplicated, wasteful and counterproductive. In Free Market Welfare, Michael Story makes the case for merging most working-age benefits into a Negative Income Tax – a single, tapered payment that tops up the wages of the working poor and guarantees that work always pays.

Read this report.

This paper assesses the various utility sales of telecoms, gas, water and electricity companies during the 1980’s and 1990’s and looks at how government, shareholders and customers fared since the privatisation process. The paper argues that the following benefits occurred for each stakeholder:

For the government – various general benefits accrued, such as a pronounced surge in investment. It benefited financially, both from one-off sales proceeds and from ongoing sizeable Corporation Tax receipts.

For shareholders, like pension funds, have generally done very well, with many privatizations – particularly the 12 RECs – heavily outperforming the FTSE 100. Privatized water stocks, too, have powered ahead. There are a few notable exceptions to this, such as Railtrack, British Energy and British Telecom.

For utility customers the financial benefits have been less tangible – in a period of massively rising wholesale prices there has been little to pass on. But investment has been much higher and much-needed improvements in customer service have been developed. Telecoms prices have actually fallen materially, while domestic gas, water and electricity prices have all risen sharply in real terms. However, domestic energy prices have risen mainly due to much higher wholesale gas costs – not because of private sector ownership.

The paper finds investment in utilities is now much higher than before privatization, especially in the electricity distribution and water sectors. It also argues that the privatisation of utilities also created an innovation spike, specifically in the telecoms sector.

Read the report.

• Being a UK resident with non-domiciled status simply means that one does not intend to remain indefinitely. The tax system requires residents to be taxed on their foreign income. Non-doms resident in the UK elect to be taxed on either the arising basis (their worldwide income is taxed automatically) or the remittance basis (they are only taxed on worldwide income if they bring it to the UK). 2008 reforms mean that after 7 years of UK residence, non-doms who choose to be taxed in the latter way must pay a yearly fee of £30,000 (rising to £50,000 after more years of residence).
• Ed Miliband has claimed that there are 116,000 non-doms but this ignores those of the UK’s 400,000 international students and 6 million foreign-born workers who did not have to file a self-assessment form and those who did file it but did not tick the non-dom box. It is estimated that something like 1 million are not permanent residents, so are by definition non-doms.
• The rules introduced by Labour (and supported by the Tories) in 2008 ended up only hurting less wealthy non-doms and did nothing to really wealthy ones: electing to be taxed on a remittance basis benefits only those with very high foreign incomes.
• The UK is far from the only country with an arrangement for taxing foreign incomes. In fact, of the 221 jurisdictions which have some form of personal income tax, a mere 35 tax only local income.
• There is a substantial literature showing that tax systems are very important in deciding where top talent goes. It tells us that punitive changes to the UK tax system could discourage the most valuable potential immigrants from footballers to inventors.
• Changing how we determine someone’s domicile is likely to have unintended consequences. First, making it easier to acquire a new domicile might reduce inheritance tax receipts, as UK domiciled residents of foreign countries currently pay UK death duties on their worldwide estates. Second, changes to the concept of domicile would have repercussions in other areas of law, such as matrimonial matters and determining the validity of wills.
• The ethical justifications for Ed Miliband’s view that it is immoral that non-doms do not pay tax on their foreign income are deeply contentious. There is no principled moral case for taxing more than local income.

Read the report.

A ground-breaking survey reveals that the visa system is failing international graduate entrepreneurs who want to start a business in the UK. The report from The Entrepreneurs Network, in partnership with National Union of Students (NUS), surveyed 1,599 graduate international students.

Read the report.

Members of Parliament may talk a good talk about their desire to support entrepreneurship in the UK, but in practice there are multiple, competing policy options open to them – whether this is increasing tax breaks, spending more in various ways or cutting regulation. Due to the limited time and resources available to government it matters where the sympathies of our representatives lie within the context of the current policies already in force. Parliamentary Snapshot: MPs on Entrepreneurship is the first survey to uncover the views of MPs on policies impacting entrepreneurs, providing useful insights on the opinions and working knowledge of the House of Commons.

Read the report.

Gabriel Sahlgren shows the relationship between educational outcomes and economic growth and argues that expanding access to private education would improve long-run GDP growth dramatically.

Read the report.

Estimated to be spending £100m over its targeted budget, UKTI is not delivering enough exports to justify its costs. This report argues that UKTI is representative of some of the worst inefficiencies of the bloated quango state. 

Julian Morris reviews the evidence around plain packaging for cigarettes from Australia, the only country to have tried the policy so far. It finds that plain packaging has not had a noticeable impact on smoking rates, but has led to a significant rise in counterfeits, which are more easily available for underage smokers.

Read this report.

Ben Southwood reviews the evidence around the incidence of the corporation tax, finding that more than half appears to come out of workers’ wages, with the remainder coming as an economically harmful capital tax.

Read the report.