Professor Stephen Smith

              
Stephen Smith is a Professor of Economics at University College London.

He began his career in the Government Economic Service, and then worked at  the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), where he was Deputy Director from 1990 to 1997.

Stephen Smith joined UCL full-time as Professor of Economics in 1997. He was head of the Economics Department (1997-2002) and Executive Dean of the UCL Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences (2007-13).

At UCL he teaches public economics and environmental economics to undergraduate and graduate students. He has recently distilled some of the key ideas from his teaching into two short books for non-specialists, published in OUP's "Very Short Introduction" series: “Environmental Economics. A Very Short Introduction”, published in 2011 and “Taxation. A Very Short Introduction”, published in 2015.

Stephen Smith's research on environmental policy is mainly concerned with the economics of instrument choice in environmental regulation. In the area of taxation he mainly works on the economics of European VAT tax policy and on excise taxes. Together with co-authors he has contributed papers on VAT and on Environmental Taxation to the Mirrlees Review of the UK Tax System, coordinated by IFS, which reported during 2011.

Stephen Smith's publications include:

1.         Economics of Tax Policy

Taxation. A Very Short Introduction, (2015) Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-968369-7

"Vaue Added Tax and Excises", (with Ian Crawford and Michael Keen) in James Mirrlees, Stuart Adam, Timothy Besley, Richard Blundell, Stephen Bond, Robert Chote, Malcolm Gammie, Paul Johnson, Gareth Myles and James Poterba (eds) (2010), Dimensions of Tax Design. The Mirrlees Review, pp 275-362. Oxford University Press.

"Optimal Commodity Taxation with Duty-Free Shopping", (2008), International Tax and Public Finance. 15(3), pp 274-296.  DOI: 10.1007/s10797-007-9034-z (with Vidar Christiansen).

“VAT fraud and evasion: What do we know and what can be done?”, (2006), National Tax Journal, Vol LIX, No 4, pp 861-887. (with Michael Keen)

"National Policy Interests in the Duty Free Market", (2004), (with Vidar Christiansen), CESifo Economic Studies, vol 50, 2/2004, 351-375. ISSN1610-241X

2.         Environmental Economics

“Emissions Taxes and Abatement Regulation under Uncertainty”, (2014), Environmental and Resource Economics, DOI 10.1007/s10640-013-9755-7 (with Vidar Christiansen).

“Externality-Correcting Taxes and Regulation” (2012). Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 114 (2), pp 358-383, (with Vidar Christiansen). DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9442.2012.01701.x

Environmental Economics. A Very Short Introduction, (2011) Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-958358-4

"Environmental taxes", (with Don Fullerton and Andrew Leicester) in James Mirrlees, Stuart Adam, Timothy Besley, Richard Blundell, Stephen Bond, Robert Chote, Malcolm Gammie, Paul Johnson, Gareth Myles and James Poterba (eds) (2010), Dimensions of Tax Design. The Mirrlees Review, pp 423-518. Oxford University Press.

“Assessing the performance of the UK Emissions Trading Scheme”, (2007), Environmental and Resource Economics, 37(1), pp 131-158, (with Joseph Swierzbinski). ISSN 0924-6460. DOI: 10.1007/s10640-007-9108-5

3.         Recent journalism, etc

 

It's time to reform Council tax, (2015) Prospect magazine, 5 May 2015, online at http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/economics-and-finance/its-time-to-talk-about-council-tax

 

 

Stephen Smith is a Research Associate of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and a Research Fellow of CESifo (Munich). He has acted as a consultant to a number of government departments and international organisations including HM Treasury, DEFRA, the UK Environment Agency, European Environment Agency, the OECD, the European Commission, and the IMF.