Most Popular Books by Ian Preston

The U.K.''s experience with the poll tax reminds us that even in an economy with a relatively well developed detection and legal system, one cannot take tax compliance for granted. The experience of the poll tax provides a unique opportunity to study many dimensions of tax compliance. We model nonpayment rates in a short panel of data on the 366 English local authorities. The transparent observability of individual and aggregate liabilities makes reliable measurement of rates of nonpayment possible. Moreover, these rates rose to unprecedented levels as well as exhibiting considerable variation across authorities. This, together with the variation in local taxes both between districts and over time, creates an ideal opportunity for empirical investigation. Our empirical specification allows us to investigate the determinants of compliance as a function of authority characteristics from census and other geographical data. Moreover, the analysis takes seriously the possibility of neighbourhood influences across authority boundaries. Our empirical results confirm the idea that higher taxes lead to larger compliance problems and that attempts to enforce compliance have a positive effect. Neighbourhood effects on non-compliance were less conspicuous, figuring significantly, if at all, only in the final year.

Join Relly and Ogi Ogi on a wonderful adventure to free their friend Glump from the Princess''s dungeons... Relly and Ogi Ogi are imaginary friends. They live in a world called Imago, which is where your imaginary friends live when you''re not playing with them. After breaking into the castle in disguise, Relly and Ogi Ogi are horrified to see how mean and cruel the Princess really is. To rescue Glump, Relly and Ogi Ogi are going to need the help of their children, Abby and Jane, but the girls have their own problems. Their terrible teacher ''The Fowl One'' is incredibly cruel and has piercing eyes that can freeze you to the spot! Can Relly and Ogi Ogi get to Abby and Jess in time to save Glump?

Join Relly and Ogi Ogi as they race across Imago to help free their friend Father Rhyme from the clutches of the wicked General. Relly and Ogi Ogi are imaginary friends. They live in a land called Imago, which is where your imaginary friends live when you''re not playing with them. The wicked General needs to gather some magical objects so he can take over the land of Imago. He captures Father Rhyme and sets off across the Eastern desert to find the last piece of the magical puzzle. To stop him Relly and Ogi Ogi are going to need the help of Imago''s most fearless pirate. But there''s danger in our world for their children, Abby and Jane, as a school trip to the British Museum goes horribly wrong and an ancient Egyptian treasure goes missing. Can Relly and Ogi Ogi win the race to find the missing magical object and thwart the wicked General''s evil plans? Can Abby and Jane catch the museum thief and how does he know about Imago? Join the two friends on their second adventure into the world of imagination...

Economists are often puzzled by the stronger public opposition to immigration than trade, since the two policies have similar effects on wages. Unlike trade, however, immigration can alter the composition of the local population, imposing potential externalities on natives. While previous studies have addressed fiscal spillover effects, a broader class of externalities arise because people value the ''compositional amenities'' associated with the characteristics of their neighbors and co-workers. In this paper we present a new method for quantifying the relative importance of these amenities in shaping attitudes toward immigration. We use data for 21 countries in the 2002 European Social Survey, which included a series of questions on the economic and social impacts of immigration, as well as on the desirability of increasing or reducing immigrant inflows. We find that individual attitudes toward immigration policy reflect a combination of concerns over conventional economic impacts (i.e., wages and taxes) and compositional amenities, with substantially more weight on the latter. Most of the difference in attitudes toward immigration between more and less educated natives is attributable to heightened concerns over compositional amenities among the less-educated.

This chapter investigates the relationship between immigration and inequality in the UK over the past 40 years. This is a period when the share of foreign-born in the UK population increased from 5.3% in 1975 to 13.4% in 2015. We evaluate the impact immigration had on wage inequality in the UK through two channels: the first is the effect on the earnings distribution of natives and the second is the effect on the composition of the wage-earning population. We find both effects to be very small. We decompose wage inequality into inequality within the immigrant and native groups and inequality between the two groups. We find inequality among immigrants to be consistently higher than inequality among natives. We also examine the impact of immigration on the fiscal budget, and the potentially unequal impact of the ensuing tax implications on natives. In the UK, where immigrants are net fiscal contributors, this is not a factor that aggravates economic inequality. Even though the impact of immigration is found to be small, the way it is perceived across different population groups in the UK varies; a fact mostly attributed to racial and cultural concerns rather than perceived economic competition.

The impact of immigration on the public finances is an important influence on public opinion. This paper aims to provide a thorough conceptual survey, pointing out the complexities of a full understanding and the relevance of indirect effects and covering both static perspectives and longer run dynamic issues. It considers simple accounting approaches which are relatively neglectful of behavioural responses but also tries to bring out the complexities in the nature of the relationship between rates of immigration and the public exchequer that come with more sophisticated modelling of its economic effects.

We provide an overview of the integration of refugees into the labor markets of a number of high-income countries. Discussing the ways in which refugees and economic migrants are differently selected and so might be expected to perform differently in a host country''s labor market, we examine employment and wages for these groups over time after arrival. There is significant heterogeneity between host countries, but in general refugees experience persistently worse outcomes than other migrants. While the gaps between the groups can be seen to decrease on a timescale of a decade or two, this is more pronounced in employment rates than it is in wages. We also discuss how refugees are distinct in terms of other factors affecting integration, including health, language skills and social networks. We provide a discussion of insights for public policy in receiving countries, concluding that supporting refugees in early labor market attachment is crucial.