Scotben Review

January 15, 2026

Here’s the Essex Review of Scotben. All very fair, I think.

I will indeed work on a takeup routine, though I think it’s likely hard to get right. (On that, I found a paper on takeup I actually like). Though I still have reservations about all the adjustments that are commonly make nowadays:

• tax-benefit models are always going to be poor forecasting tools;
• takeup corrections make individual level results much harder to interpret; and
• most of the takeup literature seems pretty junky to me, confusing actual takeup decisions with modelling errors. (This new paper looks good in that regard).