Today, the Office for National Statistics published new figures on government revenues, spending and borrowing.

How have public sector pay and employment changed in Scotland in recent years and what are the implications of those changes?

Funding and spending growth are set to slow. Without a top-up, health spending will be flat in 2025–26 and tricky trade-offs elsewhere loom too.

We borrowed and spent more than other countries to respond to the pandemic and the sharp rise in energy prices two years ...

At just under £8 billion, spending on schools and childcare is the second-largest area of public service spending in Scotland, behind spending on health. While councils rather than the Scottish ...

Council tax is levied on the occupiers of residential property to help fund the provision of local services. Individual Scottish councils set the tax rates for their area, but it is the Scottish ...

This Working Paper is an update of Intergenerational mobility in socio-emotional skills This paper investigates the intergenerational transmission of socio-emotional skills during childhood, using ...

The Scottish Government has pledged to keep teacher numbers at their 2023 level for the foreseeable future. Delivering this in a world of falling pupil numbers would mean smaller class sizes, but ...

As the OBR comes up with its forecast, which will underpin the Chancellor’s decisions at the Spring Forecast, one of the concerns may be that it tells her that she is not meeting her fiscal targets.

Private-sector employees tend to get a new pension pot every time they change employer. This means people who work for many different employers over their career often end up with many different ...

In Scotland, as in England, council tax bills are still based on April 1991 property values. This is unfair. The unfairness is not because property values have increased so much nationally over the ...

David is an Associate Director and helps lead two main areas of research at the Institute. First is work on devolved and local government finance, with a particular focus on the distribution of ...