The impact of CEP's research on public policy and debate

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The impact of CEP's research on public policy and debate is profound. This is clear from seeing how often our research is quoted in the media and by policy makers.

But the influence of our research ideas is often harder to see in the daily news cycle, as often it enters the DNA of political discourse without reference back to the original work.

In this series of "Big Ideas" we survey some of the ways in which CEP's research has had an impact and how this has happened.

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Press inquiries should be directed to Romesh Vaitilingam (Tel: 07768-661095 Email: romesh@vaitilingam.com), or if unavailable, to Helen Durrant (Tel: 020 7955 7395 Email: h.durrant@lse.ac.uk)

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Combatting Unemployment

IZA Prize in Labor Economics
Richard Layard and Stephen J. Nickell
Edited by Werner Eichhorst and Klaus F. Zimmermann
OUP (May 2011)
ISBN 978-0-19-960978-9

£35.99

Combatting Unemployment is a collection of key papers from seminal labour economists Richard Layard and Stephen J. Nickell.

The authors received the IZA Prize in Labor Economics in 2008 for their path-breaking work on the relationship between labor market institutions and unemployment

Why is unemployment higher in some countries than others? Why does it fluctuate between decades? Why are some people at greater risk than others?

Layard and Nickell have worked on these issues for thirty years. Their famous model, first published in 1986, is now used throughout the world. It asserts that unemployment must be high enough to reduce the real wages for which workers settle to the level justified by productivity. So what affects 'wage push'? The authors showed early on that the key factors affecting 'wage push' are how unemployed workers are treated and how wages are negotiated. If unemployed people get benefits without being required to accept jobs, vacancies go unfilled and mass unemployment results. The solution is welfare-to-work policies like those now introduced in most parts of the world.

The authors have proposed these policies for the last twenty-five years in a series of key articles reproduced in this book. Their original analysis explains the subsequent movement of unemployment over the last two decades. They conclude the book with a new chapter on what should be done in the recession: no-one, they say, should be given unemployment benefit beyond a year, after which they should be offered work.

Purchase this book from the publisher

Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (2nd Edition)

Happiness: Lessons from a New Science
Richard Layard
Penguin (April 2011)
ISBN 9780241952795

£9.99

In this new edition of his landmark book, Richard Layard shows that there is a paradox at the heart of our lives. Most people want more income. Yet as societies become richer, they do not become happier. This is not just anecdotally true, it is the story told by countless pieces of scientific research. We now have sophisticated ways of measuring how happy people are, and all the evidence shows that on average people have grown no happier in the last fifty years, even as average incomes have more than doubled. In fact, the First World has more depression, more alcoholism and more crime than fifty years ago. This paradox is true of Britain, the United States, continental Europe, and Japan. What is going on? Now fully revised and updated to include developments since first publication, Layard answers his critics in what is still the key book in 'happiness studies'.

Purchase this book from the publisher
Press Release

The Labour Market in Winter: The State of Working Britain

The Labour Market in Winter: The State of Working Britain
Paul Gregg & Jonathan Wadsworth (Editors)
Oxford University Press (January 2011)
ISBN 978-0-19-958737-7

£30.00 / $55.00
This collection of essays - by leading economic experts on the UK labour market - provides an overview of the key issues concerning the performance of the labour market, and the policy issues surrounding it, with a focus on the recent recession and its aftermath. The result is the first comprehensive analysis of the economic downturn and the Labour government's record in the fields of employment, education, and welfare.

The result is the first serious comprehensive analysis of the economic downturn and the Labour government's record in the field of employment, spanning its time in office. An indispensable reference source on contemporary labour market developments in the UK, this book will be required reading, and of lasting use, to academics, students, practitioners, and policy makers.

Professor Paul Gregg and Professor Jonathan Wadsworth are both senior research fellows in LSE's Centre for Economic Performance's labour markets programme.

Purchase this book from the publisher

Go to the The Labour Market in Winter website where you can

• Read the Introduction in Adobe PDF
  
  
• Download data from the book
  
  

The Comingled Code: Open Source and Economic Development

The Comingled Code: Open Source and Economic Development
Josh Lerner & Mark Schankerman
MIT Press (Dec 2010)
ISBN-10: 0-262-01463-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-262-01463-2

£25.95 / $35.00

Discussions of the economic impact of open source software often generate more heat than light. Advocates passionately assert the benefits of open source while critics decry its effects. Missing from the debate is rigorous economic analysis and systematic economic evidence of the impact of open source on consumers, firms, and economic development in general. This book fills that gap. In The Comingled Code, Josh Lerner and Mark Schankerman, drawing on a new, large-scale database, show that open source and proprietary software interact in sometimes unexpected ways, and discuss the policy implications of these findings.

The new data (from a range of countries in varying stages of development) documents the mixing of open source and proprietary software: firms sell proprietary software while contributing to open source, and users extensively mix and match the two. Lerner and Schankerman examine the ways in which software differs from other technologies in promoting economic development, what motivates individuals and firms to contribute to open source projects, how developers and users view the trade-offs between the two kinds of software, and how government policies can ensure that open source competes effectively with proprietary software and contributes to economic development.

For more info, or to purchase online, please visit the MIT website

Press

The Economist - 15 Jan 2011, p.78, Unattributed
Open-source software Untangling code
Editorial regarding programs written by volunteers. It is mentioned that John Lerner and Mark Schankerman, professor at Harvard Business School and the LSE have written 'The Comingled Code'.

The Future of Finance: The LSE Report

The Future of Finance: The LSE Report
Adair Turner, Richard Layard, Peter Boone, Charles Goodhart, Andrew Haldane, Simon Johnson, John Kay, Andrew Large, Andrew Smithers, Sushil Wadhwani, Martin Wolf & Paul Woolley.
London School of Economics (September 2010)
ISBN-10: 085328458X
ISBN-13: 9780853284581

288 pages
£14.99

This book presents a novel approach to the reform of the world’s financial system, starting with the basic question, what is a financial system for? It shows that the existing system has become far more complicated than it needs to be to discharge its functions – and dangerously unstable into the bargain. It proposes some drastic remedies.

The Future of Finance: The LSE Report is the work of a group of leading academics, financiers, journalists and officials from the UK’s Financial Services Authority, the Bank of England and the Treasury. They met twelve times, for what many of those present described as the best and most searching discussions they had ever participated in.

The first author is Adair Turner, chair of the Working Party of the G20 Financial Stability Board reporting to the G20 Summit in November 2010; the others are major international players in policymaking or public debate.

Order a copy online from Central Books
Email: mo@centralbooks.com Tel: +44 (0)845 458 9910

Visit the Future of Finance Website
Download slides and videos of presentations from the Future of Finance conference

Endorsements

“The UK has been at the epicenter of both the financial crisis and the ongoing debate over the future of finance. Here the leading figures in that debate tell us how to think about the process of financial reform. Their thoughts deserve the widest possible audience, not just in Britain but in the United States and globally.”
Barry Eichengreen, University of California, Berkeley

“A preoccupation with public good is what distinguishes this book from others about the crisis. The authors take a broader perspective in exploring new approaches for understanding the functions of banks and financial markets. It is particularly refreshing to see the London School of Economics re-establishing its traditional leadership in social sciences research oriented towards social welfare advancement.”
Jean Charles Rochet, University of Zurich and Toulouse School of Economics

“As we look forward to the reform of the financial system, there is a need for a more fundamental review of the nature of financial intermediation, its scope and size. This volume is in the best traditions of the LSE in weaving together the perspectives of academics and policymakers to address a topic of great importance. It is a must read for anyone who wishes to delve deeper into the policy issues.”
Hyun Song Shin, Princeton University

Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion

Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion
Joshua D. Angrist and Jörn-Steffen Pischke
Princeton University Press (4 Jan 2009)
ISBN-10: 0691120358
ISBN-13: 978-0691120355
£54.00 and £24.95

The core methods in today's econometric toolkit are linear regression for statistical control, instrumental variables methods for the analysis of natural experiments, and differences-in-differences methods that exploit policy changes. In the modern experimentalist paradigm, these techniques address clear causal questions such as: Do smaller classes increase learning? Should wife batterers be arrested? How much does education raise wages? Mostly Harmless Econometrics shows how the basic tools of applied econometrics allow the data to speak. In addition to econometric essentials, Mostly Harmless Econometrics covers important new extensions - regression-discontinuity designs and quantile regression - as well as how to get standard errors right. Joshua Angrist and Jörn-Steffen Pischke explain why fancier econometric techniques are typically unnecessary and even dangerous. The applied econometric methods emphasized in this book are easy to use and relevant for many areas of contemporary social science. This book features: an irreverent review of econometric essentials; focus on tools that applied researchers use most; chapters on regression-discontinuity designs, quantile regression, and standard errors; many empirical examples; and, a clear and concise resource with wide applications.

A Good Childhood: Searching for Values in a Competitive Age

A Good Childhood: Searching for Values in a Competitive Age
Richard Layard and Judy Dunn
Penguin (5 Feb 2009)
ISBN-10: 0141039434
ISBN-13: 978-0141039435
£9.99

Every day the newspapers lament the problems facing our children - broken homes, pressures to eat and drink, the stress of exams. The same issues are discussed in every pub and at every dinner party. But is life really more difficult for children than it was, and if so why? And how can we make it better? This book, which is a result of a two year investigation by the Children's Society and draws upon the work of the UK's leading experts in many fields, explores the main stresses and influences to which every child is exposed - family, friends, youth culture, values, and schooling, and will make recommendations as to how we can improve the upbringing of our children. It tackles issues which affect every child, whatever their background, and questions and provides solutions to the belief that life has become so extraordinarily difficult for children in general. The experts make 30 specific recommendations, written not from the point of view of academics, but for the general reader - above all for parents and teachers. We expect publication to be a major event and the centre of widespread media attention.

Richard Layard is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, and author of the best-selling Happiness (Penguin, 2005). He was founder-director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics and now heads its programme on well-being. He is also a member of the House of Lords.

Judy Dunn is Professor of Developmental Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. Her research interests are in children's social, emotional and communicative development, studied in their families and with their friends. She is Chair of the Good Childhood Inquiry.

Read the press coverage of A Good Childhood: Searching for Values in a Competitive Age