ESRC Institute for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy

我们在财政研究所（IFS）的目标是通过更好地了解政策如何影响个人，家庭，企业和政府的财政，以促进有效的经济和社会政策。IFS的ESRC研究所作为国家资源，开展和传播世界级的研究，为政策提供信息。我们的目标是：（a）在了解个人和公司的行为以及他们对政府政策及其更广泛的经济和体制环境的反应方面取得重大科学进展;（B）确保利用这种知识对广泛领域的政策运作和评价产生重大积极影响;和（c）作为国家资源，通过利用和收集新型数据，开展国际合作并与其他相关学科合作，培养新一代的高技能研究人员。这些目标直接有助于促进和支持世界级的独立社会科学的生产和应用。 我们的研究议程涵盖了广泛的主题，旨在解决英国和其他经济体在确保家庭，企业和更广泛的经济弹性方面面临的主要挑战。它将根据不断变化的政策环境继续发展。我们的议程围绕五个相互关联的主题组织：不平等和生活水平;税收和福利改革;人力资本和生产力;人口老龄化的挑战;以及对公共支出和公共服务的需求。 我们的研究重点是政策的影响，重要的是这些影响产生的机制。这意味着我们需要：模拟人们如何在生活中以及不同经济行为体之间的互动中做出决策;了解决策的背景;使用适当的评估方法，并在没有评估方法的情况下开发新的评估方法;并在需要时开发新的数据和衡量工具。 我们主要关注英国的政策，但我们也与美国，欧洲和低收入和中等收入国家的政策辩论合作并提供信息。我们定期与世界各地的研究人员互动，利用我们独特的团队研究环境，进行实证政策研究的能力建设。

Our goal at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) is to promote effective economic and social policies by better understanding how policies affect individuals, families, businesses and the government's finances. The ESRC Institute at IFS acts as a national resource to conduct and disseminate world-class research to inform policy. We aim to: (a) make major scientific progress in understanding how individuals and firms behave and how they react to government policy and their broader economic and institutional environment; (b) ensure this knowledge is used to have substantial positive impact on the operation and evaluation of policy across a broad range of areas; and (c) operate as a national resource to build technical and policy capacity by exploiting and collecting new types of data, collaborating internationally and with those in other relevant disciplines, and training a new generation of highly skilled researchers. These objectives contribute directly to promote and support the production and application of world-class, independent social science. Our research agenda covers a broad range of topics and is designed to address major challenges the UK and other economies face in ensuring the resilience of households, firms and the broader economy. It will continue to evolve in response to the changing policy landscape. Our agenda is organised around five interconnected themes: inequalities and living standards; tax and benefit reform; human capital and productivity; the challenges of an ageing population; and demands on public expenditure and public services. Our research focuses on the impacts of policy and importantly on the mechanisms through which those impacts arise. This means we need to: model how people make decisions through their lives and the interactions between different economic actors; understand the context within which decisions are taken; use appropriate evaluation methods, and develop new ones where they do not exist; and develop new data and measurement tools where needed. Our main focus is on policy in the UK, but we also work with and inform policy debates in the US, Europe, and low- and middle-income countries. We regularly interact with researchers worldwide, exploiting our unique team-based research environment for capacity building in empirical policy research.