LAURA BLOW
https://sites.google.com/site/laurablow
l.blow@ucl.ac.uk
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
Placement Director: Andrew Chesher
Graduate Coordinator: Daniella Fauvrelle
andrew.chesher@ucl.ac.uk
economics.jobmarket@ucl.ac.uk
Office Contact Information
Institute for Fiscal Studies
7 Ridgmount Street
London WC1E 7AE
Tel: +44 (0)7714 246785
Undergraduate Studies
1992 – 1994
M.Phil. Economics, Merton College, Oxford University
1988 – 1991
BA (Hons) Economics, King’s College, Cambridge (First Class)
Graduate Studies
PhD Economics, University College London, 2011 to present
Expected date of completion: Spring 2016.
References:
Professor Sir Richard Blundell (Advisor)
Department of Economics
University College London
30 Gordon Street
London WC1H 0AX
r.blundell@ucl.ac.uk
Professor Martin Browning
Department of Economics
University of Oxford
Manor Road
Oxford OX1 3UQ
martin.browning@economics.ox.ac.uk
Professor Ian Crawford
Department of Economics
University of Oxford
Manor Road
Oxford OX1 3UQ
ian.crawford@nuffield.ox.ac.uk
Dr Valérie Lechene
Department of Economics
University College London
30 Gordon Street
London WC1H 0AX
v.lechene@ucl.ac.uk
Research Fields
Applied microeconomics, consumer choice theory, behavioural economics
Teaching
Extensive supervision of junior colleagues while Programme Director and Senior Research Economist
at IFS. IFS Public Economics Lectures at Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Tutor in Applied
Economics University College London (1996-97).
Employment
2008-to date
Senior Research Economist, Institute for Fiscal Studies
2002-2007
Programme Director, Institute for Fiscal Studies
2002
Programme Coordinator, Institute for Fiscal Studies
1997-2002
1994-1997
1991-1992
Senior Research Economist, Institute for Fiscal Studies
Research Officer, Institute for Fiscal Studies
Research Officer, Bank of England
Professional Activities
Seminars/Conference papers
Barcelona Graduate School of Economics, Oxford University, Nuffield Foundation, National Bureau of
Economic Research, University of Copenhagen, Universidad Carlos III, Amsterdam Institute for
Advanced Labour Studies, University of Amsterdam, University College London, Institute for Fiscal
Studies
Referee Review of Economic Studies, Economic Journal, Quantitative Economics, Fiscal Studies,
American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Oxford Economic
Papers
Recent Research Grants
2012-2014
2010-2013
2009-2010
2009-2010
2009-2010
2009-2010
2005-2008
2005-2008
2003-2004
2002-2004
‘Marriage and Consumption’ ESRC (ES/J005754/1) (with M. Browning and M.
Ejrnaes)
‘Sustainable Lifestyles Research Group’ (ESRC/DEFRA)
‘Heat or eat? An empirical analysis of cold weather income support
programs’, Nuffield Foundation (with T. Beatty and T. Crossley)
‘Do the Poor Pay More?’ Joseph Rowntree Foundation
‘Power and Predictive Success in Revealed Preference Tests’ ESRC (RES-00022-3770) (with T. Beatty and I. Crawford)
‘Household responses to the price of car travel – a distributional analysis’,
Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
‘The Willingness to Pay For Innovative Consumer Products’, ESRC (RES-0023-1416) (with I. Crawford)
Housing Expenditures and Housing Welfare, ESRC (RES-000-23-1448) (with L.
Nesheim)
‘Consumption Booms and Busts’, Bank of England, (with O. Attanasio).
‘Parental background and child outcomes: how much does income matter
and what else matters?’, HM Treasury Evidence Based Policy Fund, (with A.
Goodman, I. Walker and F. Windmeijer)
Refereed Publications and Book Chapters
‘Cash by any other name? Evidence on labeling from the UK Winter Fuel Payment’, Journal of Public
Economics , Volume 118, October 2014, pp. 86–96, (with T. Beatty, T. Crossley and C. O’Dea)
Is there a ‘heat-or-eat’ trade-off in the UK? Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, 177, Part 1,
pp. 281–294, 2014, (with T. Beatty and T. Crossley
‘Using the CE to Model Household Demand’, (with V. Lechene and P. Levell), in Improving the
Measurement of Consumer Expenditures (C. Carroll, T. Crossley, and J. Sabelhaus, editors), 2014,
NBER Book Series Studies in Income and Wealth, University of Chicago Press
‘Who Benefits from Child Benefit?’ Economic Inquiry, no. doi: 10.1111/j.1465-7295.2010.00348.x, 2010,
(with I. Walker and Y. Zhu)
‘Revealed Preference Methods for the Consumer Characteristics Model’ Review of Economic Studies, vol
75, pp. 371-389, 2008, (with M. Browning and I. Crawford)
‘Booms and busts: consumption, house prices and expectations’, Economica, 75(299), 2008 (with O.
Attanasio, R. Hamilton and A. Leicester).
‘The cost of living with the RPI: Substitution bias in the UK Retail Prices Index’, Economic Journal, 2001,
111 (with I. Crawford).
Other Publications:
‘Never mind the hyperbolics: nonparametric analysis of time-inconsistent preferences’, IFS
Working Paper W14/17, 2014, (with M. Browning and I. Crawford)
‘Do the Poor Pay More? An Investigation of British Grocery Purchase Prices’, IFS Report, 2012, ISBN:
978-1-903274-81-1
‘Dynamic housing expenditures and household welfare’, CEMMAP Working Paper CWP04/09, 2009 (with
L. Nesheim)
‘A retail price index including the shadow price of owner occupied housing’, CEMMAP Working Paper
CWP03/09, 2009 (with L. Nesheim)
‘Parental income and children's smoking behaviour: evidence from the British Household Panel
Survey’ (with A. Leicester and F. Windmeijer), IFS Working Paper, W05/10, 2005.
‘Consumption trends in the UK 1975-1999, IFS Reports, R65, 2004 (with A. Leicester and Z. Oldfield).
‘Methodological issues in the analysis of consumer demand patterns over time and across countries’,
AIAS, Amsterdam, 2003, (with A. Kalwij and J. Ruiz-Castillo).
‘Household expenditure patterns in the United Kingdom’, DEMPATEM paper, 2003
‘Demographics in demand systems’, IFS Working Paper W03/18, 2003
‘Explaining trends in household spending’, IFS Working Paper W03/06, 2003
‘A nonparametric method for valuing new goods’, European Central Bank Working Paper No. 143, 2002,
(with I. Crawford).
‘Deadweight loss and taxation of unearned income: evidence from tax records of the UK self employed’,
2002, IFS Working Paper 02/15, (with I. Preston)
Budget 2002: business taxation measures (with A. Klemm, M. Hawkins, J. McCrae and H. Simpson), IFS
briefing note 24, 2002
‘Cost-of-living indices and revealed preference’, (1999), IFS Report 60, (with I. Crawford)
‘Valuing Quality’, (1999), IFS Working Paper W99/15, (with I. Crawford).
‘A quality-constant price index for new cars in the UK, 1986 to 1995’, (1998), IFS Working Paper 98/12,
(with I. Crawford).
Research Papers
‘Nonparametric Analysis of Time-Inconsistent Preferences’ (Job Market Paper)
with M. Browning and I. Crawford
What are the necessary and sufficient nonparametric/revealed preference empirical conditions for
quasi-hyperbolically discounted consumption behaviour? This paper explores this question in the
elementary, choice-revealed preference tradition of Samuelson (1948), Houthakker (1950) and Afriat
(1967). We describe conditions for the leading forms of the model: the sophisticated agent who
recognises his future behaviour will be at odds with his current wishes, and the naive agent who does
not. We find, perhaps surprisingly, that, without further restrictions, the conditions for the data
satisfying quasi-hyperbolic discounting (sophisticated or naive) are simply that they satisfy the
generalised axiom of revealed preference (GARP). We explore what extra assumptions we can make in
order to get additional restrictions beyond GARP.
We discuss how to implement tests of these restrictions and also how to make sensible empirical
comparisons with alternative models including the standard exponential discounting model. The
hyperbolic model or GARP necessarily fit the data at least as well as the exponential model because they
are less restrictive, and so claiming a better fit is not a rational way to compare models. We consider this
problem in some detail and suggest a different way of comparing models using their empirical
informational content. We provide an empirical application investigating how the quasi-hyperbolic
discounting model performs compared to the exponential model using a large, consumption panel data
set.
‘Marriage and Consumption’
with M. Browning and M. Ejrnæs
We examine theoretically and empirically consumption over the early part of the life-cycle. The main
focus is on the transition from being single to living with someone else. Our theoretical model allows for
publicness in consumption; uncertainty concerning marriage; differences between lifetime incomes for
prospective partners and a marriage premium. We develop a two period model to bring out the main
features of the impact of marriage on consumption and saving. We then develop a multi-period model
that can be taken to the data on expenditures by singles and couples aged between 18 and 30. Our
empirical work is based on UK expenditure survey data from 1978 to 2005. We allow for heterogeneity
in education. The model fits the data relatively well. We find that expenditure by couples leads to about
10-38% more consumption than the same expenditure split between two comparable singles.
‘Meaningful Theorems: Revealed Reference-Dependent Preferences’
with I. Crawford and V. Crawford
We derive nonparametric necessary and sufficient conditions, in the revealed-preference tradition of
Samuelson (1948), Houthakker (1950), and Afriat (1967), for the existence of reference-dependent
preferences that rationalize choice, as in Kőszegi and Rabin’s (2006) and other structural
implementations of Kahneman and Tversky’s (1979, 1991) Prospect Theory. Reference-dependence’s
nonparametric implications depend on whether Prospect Theory’s notion of “sensitivity” is constant and
whether reference points are observable. We revisit the dataset studied by Farber (2005, 2008) and V.P.
Crawford and Meng (2011) using our nonparametric conditions characterisations of the theory.
Other work in progress
Price dispersion, search and storage
Models of Mental accounting (with I. Crawford)