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Comment, analysis, and debate by CEP researchers on today's economic and social policy issues.

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Blog
LSE Business Review:
Education makes women, not men, more likely to have children

Given the wide-ranging consequences of declining fertility rates, academics and policymakers around the world are increasingly interested in understanding what influences men's and women's decision to start a family. Han...Read more...

Kristiina Huttunen, Tiina Kuuppelomaki, Mikko Silliman and Hanna Virtanen

13 September 2024

Blog
Centre for cities:
City Talks: Why we are seeing a boom in urban economics research (Podcast)

We are constantly finding out more about where people live and work, how people move around, where businesses choose to locate, and where people spend their money - all of which adds more depth to our picture of cities. ...Read more...

Andrew Carter, Neil Lee, Max Nathan and Helen Simpson

12 September 2024

Blog
Vox EU:
Global environmental cooperation and innovation

In the ongoing debate on climate change, one of the most pressing challenges is fostering effective international cooperation. This column examines the success of the 1987 'Montreal Protocol' in phasing out harmful chlor...Read more...

Eugenie Dugoua

12 September 2024

Blog
Vox EU:
The economics of organisational strategy

Many of today's global problems, such as sustainability, technology, skills, and diversity can only be solved by organisations. This column argues that more work is needed to understand strategic management by firms, how...Read more...

Ghazala Azmat, Florian Englmaier, Alfonso Gambardella, Maria Guadalupe, Raffaella Sadun and Catherine Thomas

9 September 2024

Blog
Vox EU:
Online versus in-person services: Effects on patients and providers

Switching the delivery of one-to-one services from in-person to online offers potential cost savings and increased convenience, but what are the impacts on providers and consumers? This column studies the effects of onli...Read more...

Amanda Dahlstrand, Nestor Le Nestour and Guy Michaels

7 September 2024

Blog
Vox Talks (podcast):
The economics of strategy (podcast)

Organisations don't just provide employment: they solve, or attempt to solve, important problems in our society. Organizational economics has made some impressive strides in recent years to show what choices organisation...Read more...

Ghazala Azmat

6 September 2024

Blog
Vox EU:
Good management practices are great for productivity ... as well as profit shifting

Following the release of the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers, there has been renewed research into profit shifting by multinational firms. This column utilises a novel dataset to show that well-managed subsidiaries...Read more...

Katarzyna Bilicka and Daniela Scur

4 September 2024

Blog
IMF Finance and Development magazine:
A fivefold increase in remote work since the pandemic could boost economic growth and bring wider benefits

Economics is famous for being the dismal science. Sadly, recent work highlighting the slowdown in productivity growth stretching back to the 1950s is no exception. But here Nicholas Bloom takes a more cheerful view becau...Read more...

Nicholas Bloom

4 September 2024

Blog
LSE Business Review:
The educational choices of British 16-year-olds matter for the economy

The choices that British 16-year-olds are making in the next few weeks about their future studies matter not just for them and their families but also for the nation's economy. Britain needs a workforce with graduate-le...Read more...

Aadya Bahl

22 August 2024

Blog
LSE Politics and Policy:
Labour's planning reforms - how to make housing targets work

Labour promised serious reforms to the planning system while in opposition. What it has proposed now that it's in Government, including reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework, is very far from a fundamental re...Read more...

Paul Cheshire

19 August 2024

Blog
LSE Politics and Policy:
Labour's planning reforms - building on grey belts and missed opportunities

Perhaps the proposal that people are most aware of when it comes to Labour's planning reform plans, the one that hit the headlines, is the idea of potentially re-defining small areas of green belts as "grey belt land". T...Read more...

Paul Cheshire

19 August 2024

Blog
LSE Business Review:
How do online doctor consultations compare to in-person ones?

In today's hybrid world, many decisions affect which one-to-one services, such as financial advice, tutoring or healthcare, are delivered online and which ones in person, and to whom. Although the shift to online provisi...Read more...

Amanda Dahlstrand, Nestor Le Nestour and Guy Michaels

16 August 2024

Blog
Handbook of Labor Economics:
Handbook Talk with Stephen Machin: How does crime impact the economy and society? (Podcast)

In this podcast episode dedicated to the new edition of the Handbook of Labor Economics, Professor from the London School of Economics discusses the recent advances in the Economics of Crime. What are the economic con...Read more...

Stephen Machin

15 August 2024

Blog
United States Politics and Policy:
Studying women's property rights in the 19th century can help uncover the missing inventors

The underrepresentation of disadvantaged groups, particularly women, in the innovation process and entrepreneurial activities is an ongoing issue across the globe. Despite making up 50 percent of the population, women co...Read more...

Ruveyda Nur Gozen

15 August 2024

Blog
Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment:
Harnessing the UK's strengths for green growth

Esin Serin and Pia Andres set out evidence on the UK's sectoral and technological strengths to assist policymakers as they consider how to allocate support across the economy in a way that maximises green growth opportun...Read more...

Pia Andres and Esin Serin

14 August 2024

Blog
Vox EU:
Managing to cope with natural disasters

Human-induced climate change is making disasters more frequent and more intense. Policy could help reduce the economic costs of climate change by helping firms withstand extreme weather events. This column explores how m...Read more...

Agnes Norris Keiller and John Van Reenen

8 August 2024

Blog
Vox EU:
The speed of firm response to inflation

Firm inflation expectations are a key driver of future price growth. This column uses a large economy-wide business survey to understand the response of firms to monthly CPI inflation releases in the UK. Firms' CPI infla...Read more...

Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Gregory Thwaites and Ivan Yotzov

6 August 2024

Blog
Project Syndicate:
China Is Exporting Its AI Surveillance State

Contrary to what many Western policymakers and commentators once hoped, recent analyses have added to the evidence that trade does not always foster democracy or liberalize regimes. Instead, China's greater integration w...Read more...

Martin Beraja, David Y. Yang and Noam Yuchtman

24 July 2024

Blog
Jam Tomorrow (Podcast):
The Green Belt: Fields forever? (podcast)

Ros Taylor talks to LSE professor Paul Cheshire and journalist Jonn Elledge about the problems facing Labour as it tries to persuade Britons of the need for more housing and infrastructure. And Paul Cheshire sets out a p...Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Jonn Elledge and Ros Taylor

16 July 2024

Blog
The Rest is Money (podcast):
Bank of England Economist: Interest rates must be cut (podcast)

Economist and external member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, Swati Dhingra talks to Robert and Steph about why she thinks the time has come to lower Bank Rate, the interest rate set by the Bank of En...Read more...

Swati Dhingra

14 July 2024

Blog
Harvard Business Review:
Designing a Successful Reskilling Program

In this article, written as a follow up to the award-winning "Reskilling in the Age of AI", the authors report the results of a reskilling survey that they conducted with chief human resource officers from approximately ...Read more...

Leila Doumi, Sagar Goel, Orsolya Kovacs-Ondrejkovic, Raffaella Sadun and Jorge Tamayo

10 July 2024

Blog
LSE Review of Books:
This Time No Mistakes: How to Remake Britain - review

In This Time No Mistakes, Will Hutton examines the causes of Britain's political and economic dysfunction and calls for a new public philosophy combining social democracy and progressive liberalism to redress current cri...Read more...

Will Hutton

10 July 2024

Blog
What works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Why the new government needs to be clearheaded on local growth

There are lots of local disparities in the UK. Health, education, levels of crime, employment rates and more diverge significantly across places. These disparities came into focus at the time of the 2019 election, where ...Read more...

Will Brett-Harding

9 July 2024

Blog
Vox EU:
The effect of productivity growth on within-firm inequality

Wage inequality has increased dramatically in the US since the 1970s, largely driven by within-firm earnings inequality. This column uses combined data from three large micro datasets to study the drivers and implication...Read more...

Nicholas Bloom, Scott W. Ohlmacher, Cristina J. Tello-Trillo and Melanie Wallskog

7 July 2024

Blog
Vox EU:
Gendered change: 150 years of transformation in US hours

The 2023 Nobel Committee awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Claudia Goldin. Among her many contributions is the emphasis on the non-monotonic trend in women's employment...Read more...

L. Rachel Ngai, Claudia Olivetti and Barbara Petrongolo

3 July 2024

Blog
LSE Business Review:
The UK must invest in further and higher education

Education has not been a prominent part of the election debates, and further education even less so. But as Sandra McNally, Guglielmo Ventura and Gill Wyness argue, economic growth depends on paying much more attention t...Read more...

Sandra McNally, Guglielmo Ventura and Gill Wyness

3 July 2024

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Ideas for the UK - election economics collection

Prospects for taxes and public services have been central in the election campaign. But the UK faces many other challenges, including housing, skills, climate, inequalities, energy, trade and policies to address the foun...Read more...

Andrea Correa-Jimenez, Richard Davies, Joshua Hellings, Ashley Lait, Finn McEvoy, Charlie Meyrick and Romesh Vaitilingam

2 July 2024

Blog
LSE Business Review:
What an LSE-CBI survey found about AI adoption in UK firms

The crises and changes of the 2020s have provided many challenges for UK firms, and these occurred against a background of stagnant productivity since the financial crisis. But crises can also force productivity-enhancin...Read more...

Juliana Oliveira-Cunha, Bruno Serra and Anna Valero

2 July 2024

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
How can the next government ensure better evidence use for achieving economic growth?

Whichever party wins this week's election will face big challenges, including achieving stronger local economic growth. Knowing how to do this - which mix of interventions will be most effective, and where to target them...Read more...

Will Brett-Harding

1 July 2024

Blog
LSE EUROPP:
How climate change concerns affect voters

In recent years, there has been a noticeable rise in temperatures and extreme heatwaves across the UK and Europe. Older people may be particularly vulnerable to this, with indications of a 30% increase in heat-related de...Read more...

Maria Cotofan, Karlygash Kuralbayeva and Konstantinos Matakos

26 June 2024

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
How do the 2024 manifestos compare to the evidence on local growth?

Two weeks from election day, we have manifestos from the main parties. In this blog, we look at the Labour and Conservative manifestos and ask what existing evidence tells us about the likely effectiveness of some of the...Read more...

Will Brett-Harding

25 June 2024

Blog
LSE Business Review:
How our mistakes are judged can have lasting career impacts

Taking ownership of mistakes is daunting, particularly if your ego is easily bruised or your professional reputation is on the line. However, acknowledging your mistakes will lead to more innovative problem-solving and d...Read more...

Grace Lordan and Jasmine Virhia

24 June 2024

Blog
Vox EU:
Outsourcing market access services is a key strategy for firms expanding abroad

Business services like advertising, legal support and market research are key inputs for all manufacturing companies in an international business environment, since they are essential for accessing markets abroad. This c...Read more...

Giuseppe Berlingieri and Frank Pisch

23 June 2024

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Ideas for the UK: election economics international week

What is the right level of migration for the UK? Is the country on track to meet its commitments on tackling climate change? And how will big changes in the world trading environment affect the economy? Our fourth electi...Read more...

Andrea Correa-Jimenez, Richard Davies, Joshua Hellings, Ashley Lait, Finn McEvoy, Charlie Meyrick and Romesh Vaitilingam

21 June 2024

Blog
LSE Politics and Policy:
Stop performative Brexit and do what works for the British economy

Brexit has left its mark on UK international trade, although, so far, the effect has been smaller than economists expected. Dennis Novy, Thomas Sampson and Catherine Thomas review recent UK trade performance and argue th...Read more...

Dennis Novy, Thomas Sampson and Catherine Thomas

21 June 2024

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Spatial disparities in productivity are central to the future of levelling up

In the run-up to the election, our colleagues at the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) are running a series of election analysis articles, where world-leading economists give their take on the state of different area...Read more...

Will Brett-Harding

18 June 2024

Blog
LSE Politics and Policy:
How to grow the UK's dwindling productivity

The UK economy is stuck. GDP growth per person has been anaemic over the last 14 years, and last year it actually fell. The cause behind these concerning figures is the collapse in the growth of productivity. If the next...Read more...

Anna Valero and John Van Reenen

12 June 2024

Blog
Economics Observatory:
University degrees: how should we assess their value?

Evaluating university degrees on the basis of the job prospects they provide for graduates has led to some being seen as 'low value' or 'low quality'. But, in reality, their worth is hard to measure. Closing such courses...Read more...

Gill Wyness

11 June 2024

Blog
Vox EU:
Mafias and Firms (Podcast)

Which firms are infiltrated by organised crime, and why? We know that organised crime has links to some firms in the legal economy. But how big is this infiltration, and what do they gain from it? Rocco Macchiavello tell...Read more...

Rocco Macchiavello and Tim Phillips

7 June 2024

Blog
Imperial College Business School:
Do carbon markets work?

Ever since the EU created its market-based carbon policy, governments and businesses have been keen to see an impact. But analysing how effective policies can be on a noisy economic and global stage is complex - and hard...Read more...

Mirabelle Muûls

7 June 2024

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Using evidence for making sense of policy debates in this election

The UK's general election campaign is now in full swing, with the policy announcements, promises, claims and counterclaims that come with it. Very soon we will see the publication of manifestos, and with them some idea o...Read more...

Will Brett-Harding

6 June 2024

Blog
Politics and Policy:
Smarter, not more regulation will lead to better work

A long tradition in economics says that if an employer and a worker agree a contract on any terms both parties must be made better-off or otherwise they would not have agreed to the contract in the first place. If that w...Read more...

Alan Manning

6 June 2024

Blog
Economics Observatory:
How could the UK's education system be reformed to equalise opportunities?

Nine out of ten respondents to a recent UK poll by More in Common for the Sutton Trust agreed that it is important for young people to have equal opportunities, regardless of their background. While recent YouGov pollin...Read more...

Jake Anders, Lindsey Macmillan and Gill Wyness

5 June 2024

Blog
Economics Observatory:
How can the UK's apprenticeship system be improved?

Apprenticeships are intended to provide opportunities for young people as they move from education to working life. But the way things operate in the UK means that those who would most benefit are often missing out. Appr...Read more...

Sandra McNally

4 June 2024

Blog
LSE Business Review:
An "army of people" investigating how to make work and life more enjoyable

Wellbeing science can help revolutionise government, work, school and life. Schools shouldn't train people only for work, and work should be enjoyable. People are now studying how to make this happen, because the well-be...Read more...

Richard Layard

4 June 2024

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Ideas for the UK: election economics week one

Should the UK have compulsory national service? Do we need more police? How bad are NHS waiting lists? What about our failing water companies? Over the past week, the UK has seen a host of new policy proposals in these a...Read more...

Andrea Correa-Jimenez, Andrea Correa-Jimenez, Denes Csala, Richard Davies, Joshua Hellings, Ashley Lait, Finn McEvoy, Charlie Meyrick and Romesh Vaitilingam

31 May 2024

Blog
What works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Planning ahead for local growth

With a summer election coming, local areas face an important challenge over the next few months. Whichever government emerges on July 4th, it seems clear they will be asking local places to work out new steps and strateg...Read more...

Will Brett-Harding

30 May 2024

Blog
IFS Zooms In (podcast):
Election 2024: How to grow the economy (podcast)

After years of sluggish growth and flatlining productivity, a rare political consensus has emerged that growing the economy is one of the key priorities of the next government. With an election on the way, we're bound to...Read more...

Anna Valero

24 May 2024

Blog
Politics and Policy:
Can Starmer avoid the mistakes of the past?

Many think that the UK's crisis is the result of a series of mistakes individual prime ministers made: Boris Johnson, Theresa May, Liz Truss. But a deeper look reveals the source of these mistakes: the ideology of rampan...Read more...

Will Hutton

24 May 2024

Blog
United States Politics and Policy:
Will the US remain the world's superpower? | LSE iQ and The Ballpark podcast

A shining city on a hill. America the beautiful. The United States has long been mythologised as the land of dreams and opportunity. And since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s it has been undisputedly the ...Read more...

Elizabeth O'Brien Ingleson, Ashley J. Tellis and John Van Reenen

21 May 2024

Blog
British Politics and Policy:
What economists think of Labour's economic policy

The UK will soon have an election and, if the polls are right, Labour will take power for the first time since 1997. There are many similarities between now and then. As in 1997, the Conservative party look tired, voters...Read more...

Neil Lee

20 May 2024

Blog
Centre for Cities (podcast):
City Talks: Sharing the benefits of a high-tech economy (podcast)

Centre for Cities chief executive Andrew Carter is joined by Professor Neil Lee, professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics and author of Innovation for the Masses: How to Share the Benefits of the...Read more...

Neil Lee

7 May 2024

Blog
The Conversation:
Minimum wage for South African farm workers: study shows 2013 hike helped reduce poverty even though compliance was poor

Minimum wage policies are typically aimed at reducing poverty. Yet there is little direct evidence of this effect, especially in developing countries. And none for South Africa, write Ihsaan Bassier and Vimal Ranchhod....Read more...

Ihsaan Bassier and Vimal Ranchhod

7 May 2024

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
With great power comes great responsibility (for evaluation?)

Last week saw the final local government elections before the next general election. Amongst councillors changing places - or staying put - across the country, these elections ushered in two new metro mayors: one for Yor...Read more...

Will Brett-Harding

6 May 2024

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
The UK needs a new institution for growth and productivity

As the UK gears up for a General Election, there is no lack of advice on what any new government's priorities need to be. While the margins for policy manoeuvre are perceived to be rather narrow, we can be certain that g...Read more...

Anna Valero, Andy Westwood and Bart van Ark

30 April 2024

Blog
Vox EU:
How and why work-from-home rates differ across countries and people

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly accelerated the shift to work from home around the world, but with significant cross-country variations. This column explores how factors such as lockdown stringency, population densit...Read more...

Cevat Giray Aksoy, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Steven J. Davis, Mathias Dolls and Pablo Zarate

30 April 2024

Blog
LSE Business Review:
The increasing complexity of digitalisation may hurt manual workers' health

Some of the effects of workplace digitalisation are well studied, such as changes in workers' wages and increased economic inequality. But how does technological progress affect workers' health? Melanie Arntz, Sebastian ...Read more...

Melanie Arntz, Sebastian Findeisen, Stephan Maurer and Oliver Schlenker

26 April 2024

Blog
Vox EU:
The impact of higher interest rates on UK firms

Firms across many advanced economies have faced a significant increase in the interest rates paid on borrowing and received on deposits since 2021. Krishan Shah, Nick Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Gregory Thwaites and ...Read more...

Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Krishan Shah, Gregory Thwaites and Ivan Yotzov

26 April 2024

Blog
INSEAD Knowledge:
Consumers' green conscience fosters clean innovation

Alexandra Roulet and Philippe Aghion explain how consumers' green conscience can foster clean innovation and provide tips for how companies can reach green goals in a highly competitive market....Read more...

Philippe Aghion and Alexandra Roulet

25 April 2024

Blog
Vox EU:
Cool cities: The value of urban trees

Cities are warming faster than their rural surroundings. But the ecosystem support provided by urban forestry is often omitted from climate policies due to the difficulty in assigning to it a credible monetary sum. Lu Ha...Read more...

Lu Han, Stephan Heblich, Christopher Timmins and Yanos Zylberberg

25 April 2024

Blog
LSE Inequalities:
A class apart: prime ministers' origins profoundly impact their political worldviews

The background of our Prime Ministers hugely influences the judgements they make. Yet our leaders are drawn from an astonishingly narrow slice of society: every PM who attended an English university since WW2 went to Oxf...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major

16 April 2024

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Do plural ownership policies matter for local economies?

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino outlines how a new evidence briefing published by the What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth provides guidance for local policymakers on how to think through some of the local economic impacts ...Read more...

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino

16 April 2024

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Higher workload for police officers correlates with victims withdrawing statements

In the UK, partners or family members are responsible for nearly half of all female homicides. But there is an increasing rate of statement withdrawal from victims in high-risk domestic abuse cases. Tom Kirchmaier and Ek...Read more...

Tom Kirchmaier and Ekaterina Oparina

15 April 2024

Blog
Vox EU:
Intergenerational income mobility in France: A comparative and geographic analysis

The question of the extent to which individuals' incomes are related to those of their parents has seen renewed interest as rising income inequality raises concerns about equality of opportunity. Gustave Kenedi and Louis...Read more...

Gustave Kenedi and Louis Sirugue

12 April 2024

Blog
The Conversation:
How the national living wage helps the UK's poorest households: new research

The UK's national living wage has just been raised by 10% to £11.44 per hour. It is now payable for all workers aged 21 and over, where previously it was for those aged 23 and over. Introduced in 2016 as the flagship pol...Read more...

Giulia Giupponi

11 April 2024

Blog
LSE EUROPP:
What explains the gender ideology gap?

Felipe Carozzi and Andres Gago present evidence from Spain that can provide a partial explanation for a growing ideological gap between young men and women across the world....Read more...

Felipe Carozzi and Andres Gago

11 April 2024

Blog
LSE Inequalities:
The spiralling costs of higher education are hitting stay at home students harder

Since the pandemic, a new divide has emerged in higher education between commuter students, on the one hand, and on-campus students, on the other. Reporting on the findings of a new student money and wellbeing survey, Le...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major

9 April 2024

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
The national minimum wage - 25 years on

This month marks 25 years since a national minimum wage was introduced in the UK. Once a controversial policy, due to fears that it would lead to fewer jobs, it has instead proven to be highly successful. The minimum wag...Read more...

Stephen Machin

1 April 2024

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
New opportunities in transport investment for growth?

In February, the government announced the new Local Transport Fund, a package of £4.7bn of spending. Places will be able to spend funds on a range of transport investments, with the aim of improving connectivity within a...Read more...

Will Brett-Harding

28 March 2024

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Mais lecture - a serious approach for sustainable and inclusive growth

In her Mais lecture, the Shadow Chancellor diagnosed the UK's problems of economic stagnation, persistent inequality and the instability that geopolitical shocks and climate change bring. Anna Valero outlines what a solu...Read more...

Anna Valero

28 March 2024

Blog
LSE USAPP:
Book Review: Innovation for the Masses: How to Share the Benefits of the High-Tech Economy by Neil Lee

In 'Innovation for the Masses: How to Share the Benefits of the High-Tech Economy' Neil Lee proposes abandoning the Silicon Valley-style innovation hub, which concentrates its wealth, for alternative, more equitable mode...Read more...

Neil Lee

24 March 2024

Blog
Economics Observatory:
What next for Poland's economy?

Poland's new government is prioritising competent policy-making, the rule of law and investment in skills and education. There is real promise that new policies will be based on solid research evidence, including the app...Read more...

Pawel Bukowski and Wojciech Paczos

20 March 2024

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
The persisting pay gap and the motherhood penalty

Despite progress in gender equality, the pay gap continues to be a major challenge. Policymakers are yet to understand the nuances and intricate mechanics of why women's earnings take a hit after they become mothers, arg...Read more...

Almudena Sevilla

20 March 2024

Blog
LSE EUROPP:
Online tutoring can transform education for disadvantaged students

Online tutoring programmes have emerged as an effective strategy for narrowing the educational gaps that were exacerbated by the pandemic. Claudia Hupkau, Lucas Gortazar and Antonio Roldan-Mones outline how an eight-week...Read more...

Lucas Gortazar, Claudia Hupkau and Antonio Roldan

19 March 2024

Blog
The We Society (podcast):
Should governments care about wellbeing?

Professor Lord Richard Layard is one of the first economists to look at happiness as a metric that Governments worldwide should strive to improve in their population. He was the founder-director of LSE's Centre for Econ...Read more...

Richard Layard

13 March 2024

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Why representation matters in the economics profession

What prompts someone to become an economist? How important is representation in inspiring the next generation of black economists? And how positive should women economists be about the future? Felicia Odamtten, an econom...Read more...

Felicia Odamtten

12 March 2024

Blog
Project Syndicate:
Should Workers Fear AI?

While hand-wringing about AI's implications for work and labour markets is understandable, economic history and current data make clear that the most common fears are largely overblown. Current applications are nowhere n...Read more...

Christopher A. Pissarides

11 March 2024

Blog
Vox EU:
Employment dynamics across firms during COVID-19: The role of job retention schemes

Governments around the world implemented widespread business support during the COVID-19 pandemic. The measures may have affected employment dynamics and reallocation, with potential consequences for aggregate productivi...Read more...

Sara Calligaris, Gabriele Ciminelli, Helia Costa, Chiara Criscuolo, Lilas Demmou, Isabelle Desnoyers-James, Guido Franco and Rudy Verlhac

9 March 2024

Blog
LSE Business Review:
The 'child penalty' creates most of the gender earnings gaps in rich countries

After having children, women tend to change their working hours and wage rates, and even transition to new jobs. This phenomenon, known as the child penalty, explains the bulk of the gender earnings gap in developed coun...Read more...

Anneliese Dodds, Myung Jin, Camille Landais and Almudena Sevilla

8 March 2024

Blog
Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment:
The UK's Spring Budget 2024: more of the same on growth and net zero?

The Spring Budget 2024 prioritised short-run tax cuts, with Chancellor Jeremy Hunt taking an extra 2% off national insurance contributions. This was anticipated, given we are in an election year - but it marks another mi...Read more...

Esin Serin, Anna Valero and Dimitri Zenghelis

6 March 2024

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Does providing gig workers with unemployment insurance create a moral hazard?

Non-standard workers doing short-term, flexible jobs are a growing segment of the labour force, which poses difficult questions. Is it good policy to provide unemployment insurance to them? Do people engage in gig work b...Read more...

Jonas Kolsrud and Johannes Spinnewijn

29 February 2024

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Making sense of services

Will Brett-Harding outlines a two-step approach for thinking about what high growth potential services look like at the local level....Read more...

Will Brett-Harding

27 February 2024

Blog
Wonkhe:
The spiralling costs of higher education are hitting stay at home students harder

Commuter students face financial struggle and a growing sense of isolation from campus. Lee Elliot Major introduces the findings of a new student money and wellbeing survey....Read more...

Lee Elliot Major

27 February 2024

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Do publicly funded autonomous schools improve education systems in the world?

In recent decades, many countries have established autonomous schools, which are publicly funded but can operate more independently than government-run schools. Natalie Irmert, Jan Bietenbeck, Linn Mattisson and Felix We...Read more...

Jan Bietenbeck, Natalie Irmert, Linn Mattisson and Felix Weinhardt

27 February 2024

Blog
Resolution Foundation:
Investing in Britain's future - An economic strategy for Britain (video)

Investing too little for one year is manageable, but doing so year after year is a recipe for relative decline. This is precisely what the UK has been doing and where it finds itself. Anna Valero and James Smith discuss ...Read more...

Anna Valero

27 February 2024

Blog
Vox EU:
Managers say working from home is here to stay

Krishan Shah, Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Gregory Thwaites, and Ivan Yotzov analyse new firm-level data to explore future remote work trends. Managers expect 2028 remote work levels to mirror those of 2023, ...Read more...

Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Krishan Shah, Gregory Thwaites and Ivan Yotzov

18 February 2024

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Global Britain has failed - what next?

The vision of post-Brexit Britain was one of international trade deals that would propel the country into a new era of prosperity. That vision of "Global Britain" is now dead. Thomas Sampson argues that the only viable a...Read more...

Thomas Sampson

16 February 2024

Blog
Vox EU:
Sleeping our way to being productive

Sleep is key to our physical and mental health. It also affects people's employment and productivity. Joan Costa-i-Font, Sarah Fleche and Ricardo Pagan explore how the amount of weekly sleep influences employment, produc...Read more...

Joan Costa-Font, Sarah Flèche and Ricardo Pagan

10 February 2024

Blog
Grantham Research Institute commentary:
Sustainable investment is good macroeconomics and fiscally prudent for the UK

In the global race for supremacy in 21st century markets, the UK must create expertise in building and deploying new energy technologies, and access the opportunities for stronger and more resilient growth that will brin...Read more...

Anna Valero and Dimitri Zenghelis

9 February 2024

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Lessons for business support schemes from a large RCT in the UK

Productivity in the UK is stagnant and improving firm performance a key policy objective. Almost a decade ago, the UK government undertook an ambitious randomised control trial - the Growth Vouchers Programme - which pro...Read more...

Gonzalo Nunez-Chaim

8 February 2024

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Generational diversity is on the rise, and those embracing it are gaining a competitive edge

Major firms are experiencing a widening gap between their youngest and oldest employees. Daniel Jolles and Grace Lordan write that frictions which undermine the potential productivity benefits of generational diversity a...Read more...

Daniel Jolles and Grace Lordan

7 February 2024

Blog
Vox EU:
Trade liberalisation can weaken unions and reduce votes for the left

Intuitively, trade liberalisation should increase the appeal of left-wing parties that offer to protect workers with protectionist policies. Pedro Ogeda, Emanuel Ornelas and Rodrigo Soares use evidence from Brazil to sho...Read more...

Pedro Molina Ogeda, Emanuel Ornelas and Rodrigo R. Soares

4 February 2024

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
A novel way to estimate car longevity shows that electric vehicles' life mileage is increasing fast

A car's longevity is important for consumers' budgets as well as for the environment. But reliable evidence on the longevity of electric vehicles is hard to come by. Viet Nguyen-Tien and Robert Elliot, with fellow author...Read more...

Robert J.R. Elliott and Viet Nguyen-Tien

2 February 2024

Blog
Vox EU:
Neoclassical growth in an interdependent world

The neoclassical growth model remains a crucial reference point for economists thinking about cross-country income dynamics, but it imposes strong assumptions about goods and capital markets. Benny Kleinman, Ernest Liu, ...Read more...

Benny Kleinman, Ernest Liu, Stephen J. Redding and Motohiro Yogo

31 January 2024

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
The discussion of immigration needs to improve

Those who believe in a more open, liberal approach to immigration often frame their argument as being on the side of "good economics" versus "bad politics". Alan Manning explains why the arguments presented as "good econ...Read more...

Alan Manning

31 January 2024

Blog
Economics Observatory:
The UK's productivity gap: what did it look like twenty years ago?

How to boost UK productivity growth has long been a central concern of economic researchers and policymakers. A report written twenty years ago by Romesh Vaitilingam highlights the continuing challenges of achieving that...Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

29 January 2024

Blog
Vox Lacea:
Brazil's comparative advantage in soybean production triggered deforestation

In today's globalised world, technology and trade are key driving forces shaping agricultural markets worldwide. Igor Carreira, Francisco Costa and Jao Paulo Pessoa delve into the intricate relationship between trade and...Read more...

Igor Carreira, Francisco Costa and Joao Paulo Pessoa

26 January 2024

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Could a new policy institution help solve the UK's productivity problem?

Comparatively sluggish productivity growth is one of the UK's biggest policy challenges. Past strategies to solve the problem have lacked commitment and proper evaluation. One solution could be to establish a growth and ...Read more...

Anna Valero and Bart van Ark

25 January 2024

Blog
Notes from Poland:
Six myths about inequality in Poland

Pawel Bukowski discusses and debunks some of the common misconceptions regarding inequality in Poland....Read more...

Pawel Bukowski

24 January 2024

Blog
LSE Research for the World:
The UK's relative decline has gone on long enough, it's time for a new economic strategy

The British economy is stagnating, but this doesn't have to be terminal, argue Torsten Bell and Stephen Machin, who set out The Economy 2030 Inquiry's roadmap to a new prosperity....Read more...

Torsten Bell and Stephen Machin

23 January 2024

Blog
Vox EU:
The experience of war shapes communities and future wars

Countries currently involved in active warfare - Ukraine, Russia, and Israel most prominently - have launched intense mobilisation campaigns to expand their armies. This column examines what compels ordinary men and wome...Read more...

Felipe Carozzi, Edward W. Pinchbeck and Luca Repetto

20 January 2024

Blog
Higher Education Policy Institute:
Confronting higher education's class divide

Lee Elliot Major explains why developing an equity approach in higher education is the only way we will ever level the learning playing field - and lays out three simple steps we can take to achieve this....Read more...

Lee Elliot Major

18 January 2024

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Why women say hybrid working enhances productivity, while men don't

There is a complex interplay between gender, remote work and productivity. Nikita, Anna Lane, Grace Lordan and Paul Middleton conducted a survey of more than 1000 employees in financial and professional services in the U...Read more...

Anna Lane, Grace Lordan, Paul Middleton and Nikita

17 January 2024

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Boosting productivity: why doesn't the UK invest enough?

The UK economy has long suffered from chronic levels of underinvestment. Many factors explain the failure to invest enough. One recurring theme is short-term thinking - by managers who don't invest in projects with long-...Read more...

Jagjit Chadha and Anthony J. Venables

16 January 2024

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Why household income doesn't tell the full story on individual wellbeing

The literature on inequality often focuses on household income, but this measure has several limitations for assessing individual wellbeing. Tim Obermeier develops a new collective household model which simultaneously ac...Read more...

Tim Obermeier

11 January 2024

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Has job furlough reduced UK labour force participation after Covid-19?

Labour force participation in the UK has not recovered since the pandemic. Some blame the generosity of the job furlough scheme, but many countries with similar policies have performed better. Underlying health problems ...Read more...

Richard Disney

10 January 2024

Blog
LSE Impact:
Dashboards have the power to make complex research accessible to the public and policymakers

While researchers often point to the relevance of their research, economic models and econometric methods are typically inaccessible to a wider audience. Gabriel Ahlfeldt explains how interactive dashboards represent a u...Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt

3 January 2024

Blog
Vox EU:
Urban-biased structural change

Economic activity in high-income countries has shifted towards services and away from manufacturing. But research remains scant on the patterns of structural change within countries across urban and rural areas. Using mi...Read more...

Natalie Chen, Dennis Novy, Carlo Perroni and Horng Chern Wong

24 December 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
The three biggest workplace anxieties of 2023

What can leaders do to calm workplace anxieties and get the best out of their teams in 2024? Jazzy Jasiulek, Daniel Jolles, Nikita, and Grace Lordan asked over 1,400 professionals about their top anxieties and share how ...Read more...

Jazzy Jasiulek, Daniel Jolles, Grace Lordan and Nikita

20 December 2023

Blog
LSE USAPP:
Corporate landlords are eroding the American dream of homeownership, especially in black neighborhoods

There has been a growing trend for institutional investors to purchase single-family homes and convert them to permanent rental properties. At the same time, homeownership rates for black households have declined on par ...Read more...

Stephen B. Billings and Adam Soliman

18 December 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
How the most recent AI wave affects jobs

With rapid progress in natural language processing and image generation, AI now affects creative occupations, which were previously considered safe from automation. Cecily Josten and Grace Lordan write that new approache...Read more...

Cecily Josten and Grace Lordan

14 December 2023

Blog
Suma:
The economic impact of local organized crime

Magdalena Dominguez discusses organised crime in Uruguay, showing that although it has not reached extreme levels like in other countries in the region, is leaving a worrying mark. She shares measures and approaches Urug...Read more...

Magdalena Dominguez

11 December 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Fair employment policies: thinking through local impacts

Will Brett-Harding explains why we should assess the local economic impacts of fair employment policies and why it is important to think carefully about the economic logic and the evidence before pursuing them as a polic...Read more...

Will Brett-Harding

11 December 2023

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
From boom to bust in British immigration policy

A series of measures to slash immigration have been announced by the government making it harder for employers to hire overseas staff. Alan Manning looks at what the changes mean for would-be immigrants and their familie...Read more...

Alan Manning

6 December 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
How to end Britain's stagnation

Ending Stagnation, the final report of the Economy 2030 inquiry, sets out a serious strategy for ending Britain's relative decline. At its core is the aim to reverse decades of underinvestment - by private and public sec...Read more...

Resolution Foundation and Centre for Economic Performance

4 December 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Supply chain disruptions: Shocks, links, and hidden exposure

Supply chain disruptions are routinely blamed for things ranging from elevated inflation to shortages of medical equipment in the pandemic. But how should exposure to foreign supply chains be measured? Using a global inp...Read more...

Richard E. Baldwin, Rebecca Freeman and Angelos Theodorakopoulos

29 November 2023

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Autumn Statement: Positive reforms to boost business investment, but a holistic approach to the UK's growth problem is still lacking

The UK faces a productivity crisis and tackling this will be crucial to regaining sustainable increases in living standards. In response, the Autumn Statement announced a large number of measures to try and boost busines...Read more...

Anna Valero and John Van Reenen

23 November 2023

Blog
Project Syndicate:
What to do about Ukraine's brain drain

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 fuelled migration on a scale unseen since World War II, leaving 15 per cent of the population residing outside the country to this day. When Ukraine eventually gets the chanc...Read more...

Giacomo Anastasia and Tito Boeri

22 November 2023

Blog
VoxDevTalks:
Renewable energy in low- and middle-income countries (Podcast)

The price of renewables has fallen much faster than other sources of energy, making it a more accessible option for governments in low- and middle-income countries. In this episode of VoxDevTalks, Mar Reguant and John Va...Read more...

Mar Reguant and John Van Reenen

21 November 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Joining multinationals' supply chains can benefit domestic firms' performance

Developing countries compete to attract multinationals to induce development. Becoming suppliers to multinationals could improve domestic firms' technology and managerial practices, and the host country's economy could b...Read more...

Alonso Alfaro-Urena, Isabela Manelici and Jose P Vasquez

21 November 2023

Blog
LSE Research for the World:
Using peoples' feelings of happiness to make better policy decisions

How we spend our time directly impacts how satisfied we are with our lives, and understanding the activities that bolster our wellbeing - and those that don't - can help policymakers make better decisions when allocating...Read more...

Christian Krekel

21 November 2023

Blog
Faster Please:
Economic growth and the environment don't have to be enemies

An incredible coincidence: Lots of folks who don't like innovative, entrepreneurial market-technocapitalism ... think the only way to tackle climate change is to abandon innovative, entrepreneurial market-technocapitalis...Read more...

John Van Reenen

21 November 2023

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Autumn Statement: Is the UK gearing up on policies for sustainable growth?

Growth will be a key focus of the forthcoming Autumn Statement, which the Chancellor of the Exchequer will deliver this Wednesday. Anna Valero, Esin Serin and Brendan Curran argue that effective measures to promote green...Read more...

Brendan Curran, Esin Serin and Anna Valero

20 November 2023

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Planning may be a political hot potato but radical reform cannot wait

Planning - largely because of the cruel growth in the unaffordability of housing - has risen up the political agenda. Reforms are urgently needed to allow more homes to be built, but change is notoriously difficult. Ahea...Read more...

Paul Cheshire

15 November 2023

Blog
South-West Social Mobility Commission's Substack:
Fixing a broken tongue

Lee Elliot Major explains why the language we use in education is important to challenge the divides that scar the education system....Read more...

Lee Elliot Major

14 November 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
To improve performance and inclusion, firms must break silos between teams

Investment in diversity, equity and inclusion is critical to business performance and ability to compete, but the lack of meaningful change remains a barrier to progress. An often-overlooked pathway to change is to work ...Read more...

Teresa Almeida and Grace Lordan

14 November 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Unravelling the complexities of sanctions

Sanctions have become a linchpin of foreign policy. But as they have grown more complex, understanding their true impact on targeted economies has become increasingly difficult, and evidence of their firm-level effects i...Read more...

Javad Shamsi

14 November 2023

Blog
VoxTalks Economics:
AI's impact on jobs (Podcast)

By automating non-routine tasks, AI may have a profound effect on the jobs we do, and even whether those jobs exist. How much should we fear, and how much should we welcome this change? In the second of our podcasts from...Read more...

John Van Reenen

13 November 2023

Blog
Productivity Puzzles:
Why does the UK do so well on the Global Innovation Index? (Podcast)

How do we measure innovation and compare it across countries? And how can it be that the UK is doing so well as an innovation nation, while we seem to be underperforming on productivity?...Read more...

Anna Valero, Sacha Wunsch-Vincent and Bart van Ark

9 November 2023

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
More steps in the wrong direction on net zero, at precisely the wrong time

This week's King's Speech has paved the way for a further weakening of climate policy in the UK by introducing a bill to support future oil and gas drilling in the North Sea. Esin Serin and Anna Valero explain how this a...Read more...

Esin Serin and Anna Valero

8 November 2023

Blog
LSE Impact:
Get Happier - podcasting made simple

Discussing the launch of his new podcast series 'Get Happier', Paul Dolan argues for the underrated power of checklists and mnemonics and shows how they can be applied through the medium of podcasting....Read more...

Paul Dolan

7 November 2023

Blog
LSE EUROPP:
Interview with Neil Lee - "If we want to have innovative cities, they have to deliver for everyone"

In an interview with LSE Cities, Neil Lee discusses what's driving anti-metropolitan politics in Europe and how a more inclusive innovation economy could help address it....Read more...

Neil Lee

3 November 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Blog series: Understanding core economic concepts in economic growth

This blog series, aimed primarily at those working in local and central government, provides deep-dives into various components of economic growth, and some key concepts that affect the impact of economic growth policies...Read more...

Henry G. Overman

2 November 2023

Blog
Hoover Institution:
Work from Home and Productivity - A Conversation with Nick Bloom (Podcast)

Steven Davis and Nick Bloom discuss the big shift to work from home, what it means for productivity, why perceptions in this regard often differ between managers and workers, and why - on balance - the big shift is a ble...Read more...

Nicholas Bloom and Steven J. Davis

2 November 2023

Blog
Economics Observatory:
How does compulsory school attendance affect youth violence?

Keeping young people in education can provide them with protection from crime as well as limiting opportunities for them to engage in criminal activities. But a policy of raising the age of compulsory attendance may also...Read more...

Matteo Sandi

1 November 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Large firms generate positive productivity spillovers

The rising dominance of large firms in many industrialised countries over the last few decades has received much attention, largely focusing on the potential negative effects of this increased market concentration. Using...Read more...

Mary Amiti, Cedric Duprez, Jozef Konings and John Van Reenen

31 October 2023

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Youth custody: who ends up there and how does it affect their later lives?

There are severe long-term consequences for young people in the UK who spend time in youth custody, the majority of whom are boys. Those with very low grades, in special education facilities and with additional education...Read more...

Stephen Machin, Sandra McNally and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela

31 October 2023

Blog
Economics Observatory:
How have minorities been treated by the UK's judicial system?

Disparate treatment of minorities by the judicial system is not a construct of modern institutions. Irish defendants and victims faced harsher treatment and outcomes at London's Old Bailey in the 19th century. Lessons fr...Read more...

Anna Bindler, Randi Hjalmarsson, Stephen Machin and Melissa Rubio

30 October 2023

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Slavery and Britain's industrial revolution

To what extent did the wealth derived from slavery contribute to Europe's economic growth? Stephan Heblich, Stephen Redding and Hans-Joachim Voth find that slaveholding areas of Britain were less agricultural, closer to ...Read more...

Stephan Heblich, Stephen J. Redding and Hans-Joachim Voth

26 October 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Britain can promote private investment and economic growth. Here's how

The UK investment ecosystem needs rewiring across the board to increase firms' desire to invest in productive and sustainable assets, and to enhance their ability to do so. Paul Brandily, Mimosa Distefano, Krishan Shah, ...Read more...

Paul Brandily, Mimosa Distefano, Krishan Shah, Gregory Thwaites and Anna Valero

24 October 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Understanding capitalisation

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino discusses key concepts to consider when thinking about capitalisation for local economic growth policies....Read more...

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino

23 October 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Tracking the skills behind the AI boom: Evidence from 14 OECD countries

As artificial intelligence rapidly reshapes economies and societies, companies are seeking professionals with AI-related skills. This column uses data from online job postings to explore changes in the demand for these p...Read more...

Francesco Borgonovi, Flavio Calvino, Chiara Criscuolo, Julia Nania, Julia Nitschke, Layla O'Kane, Lea Samek and Helke Seitz

20 October 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
What Claudia Goldin taught economics about women, labour markets and pay gaps

When Claudia Goldin's research on women's work became influential in the 1980s, the study of gender was far from mainstream in economics. Four decades later, that is no longer the case, in large part thanks to her influe...Read more...

Barbara Petrongolo

20 October 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Understanding tradable and non-tradable sectors

Helene Donnat discusses what to consider when thinking about tradable and non-tradables in policymaking....Read more...

Helene Donnat

19 October 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
What happens to people when machines replace them in the workplace?

New technologies are replacing workers in a growing range of occupations, causing loss of earnings and employment. However, these losses are smaller than those suffered by workers who experience mass layoffs. Per-Anders ...Read more...

Per-Anders Edin, Tiernan Evans, Georg Graetz, Sofia Hernnäs and Guy Michaels

12 October 2023

Blog
Liberty Street Economics:
Do Large Firms Generate Positive Productivity Spillovers?

Mary Amiti, Cedric Duprez, Jozef Konings and John Van Reenen investigate whether large firms also generate positive effects. Using firm-to-firm transaction data for an industrialised country, Belgium, they find that larg...Read more...

Mary Amiti, Cedric Duprez, Jozef Konings and John Van Reenen

12 October 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
New evidence on spatial wage inequality across North America and Western Europe

Spatial inequality has become a key policy concern across much of the advanced world, prompting a spate of government action on the issue in recent years. This column presents evidence showing that, contrary to the popul...Read more...

Luis Bauluz, Pawel Bukowski, Mark Fransham, Annie Seong Lee, Neil Lee, Margarita Lopez Forero, Filip Novokmet and Moritz Schularick

10 October 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Understanding crowding out, displacement, and leakage

Will Brett-Harding discusses what to consider regarding crowding out, displacement and leakage, when thinking about local economic growth policies....Read more...

Will Brett-Harding

10 October 2023

Blog
VoxDev:
How the surveillance state is exported through trade in AI

Autocracies and weak democracies are more likely to import facial recognition AI from China, particularly in years when they experience domestic unrest, say Martin Beraja, Andrew Kao, David Yang and Noam Yuchtman....Read more...

Martin Beraja, Andrew Kao, David Y. Yang and Noam Yuchtman

9 October 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Why people quiet quit

There has been a surge in interest in quiet quitting, when employees put in only the minimum effort needed to keep their jobs, not showing interest in much more than that. Odessa Hamilton, Daniel Jolles and Grace Lordan ...Read more...

Odessa S Hamilton, Daniel Jolles and Grace Lordan

5 October 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Understanding additionality and deadweight

Will Brett-Harding discusses additionality and deadweight, the twin concepts which are essential to assessing policy effectiveness....Read more...

Will Brett-Harding

3 October 2023

Blog
Economics Observatory:
How can UK policy-makers make homes more affordable?

Housing in the UK has become seriously unaffordable; the problem is likely to get worse and younger people are being hit the hardest. Reforms that could be effective in solving the crisis are considered politically infea...Read more...

Christian A. L. Hilber

2 October 2023

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Time for a strategy to boost productivity in Manchester and beyond

The UK has a significant productivity problem and the poor performance of the nation's largest cities outside the capital contribute to this problem. Expert economists set out what change would be needed to set Greater M...Read more...

Paul Brandily, Mike Brewer, Nye Cominetti, Matt Coombes, Adam Corlett, Lindsay Judge, Felicia Odamtten, Henry G. Overman, Cara Pacitti, Gui Rodrigues, Krishan Shah, Paul Swinney and Lalitha Try

2 October 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Gender gaps from labour market shocks

Many workers will face unemployment at some point during their careers and research shows that job loss can lead to persistently lower earnings. But that research is chiefly about men. Ria Ivandic and Anne Sophie Lassen ...Read more...

Ria Ivandic and Anne Sophie Lassen

1 October 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Wages and vacancy duration

In a dynamic labour market, employer market power is jointly determined by the entry and exit margins of labour supply - ie the extent to which higher wages ease recruitment and improve rentention. Ihsaan Bassier, Alan M...Read more...

Ihsaan Bassier, Alan Manning and Barbara Petrongolo

28 September 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Understanding multipliers

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino discusses why we need to consider multipliers when thinking about local economic growth policies....Read more...

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino

26 September 2023

Blog
LSE Review of Books:
Creative destruction for growth and change

John Van Reenen introduces his new book, The Economics of Creative Destruction, co-edited with Ufuk Akcigit, which explores how technological innovation can be used to drive growth and tackle problems from inequality to ...Read more...

John Van Reenen

25 September 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
What can house prices tell us about the environmental costs of overhead power lines?

The transition to green energy requires many new electrical power lines to be constructed. In the UK, this construction is a contentious planning and political issue. Steve Gibbons and Cheng Keat Tang show the local cost...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons and Cheng Keat Tang

25 September 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Are the self-employed trapped?

Still affected by the cost-of-living crisis, the self-employed are still struggling to recover their finances and mental health. Many of them would leave for a salaried job, yet they appear to be stuck in self-employment...Read more...

Robert Blackburn and Maria Ventura

25 September 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Forward-looking labour supply responses to changes in pension wealth

As populations age, the strain on government budgets will keep pension reform at the forefront of political campaigns and policy debates worldwide. Elisabeth Artmann, Nicola Fuchs-Schundeln and Giulia Giupponi analyse ho...Read more...

Elisabeth Artmann, Nicola Fuchs-Schundeln and Giulia Giupponi

22 September 2023

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
The UK should lead on a green industrial strategy not roll back

The UK government appears to be watering down its commitments to net zero, breaking the cross-party consensus on the need for Britain to lead in the global battle against climate change. Yet now is the time to double dow...Read more...

Esin Serin, Anna Valero and John Van Reenen

20 September 2023

Blog
The News Agents:
Is this Sunak's 'moment of shame'? (podcast)

Rishi Sunak was propelled into explaining his new position in a hastily arranged press conference after details of plans to adjust (water down) his commitment to green policies were leaked to the BBC. Anna Valero and Lor...Read more...

Anna Valero

20 September 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Understanding efficiency and equity

Henry Overman explains why we need to consider efficiency and equity when thinking about local economic growth policies....Read more...

Henry G. Overman

20 September 2023

Blog
LSE Review of Books:
Book Review: Wellbeing: Science and Policy by Richard Layard and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve

In Wellbeing: Science and Policy, Richard Layard and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve present an enquiry into human wellbeing: what factors create it, how can it be effectively measured and how can it be improved? The authors' rich ...Read more...

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve and Richard Layard

19 September 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Christopher Pissarides: 'The more I study AI, the more optimistic I get about the labour market'

The rapid developments in artificial intelligence have been causing fears that many jobs will disappear. But Christopher Pissarides sees reason for optimism. In this Q&A with Maayan Arad, he says that the need to deal wi...Read more...

Maayan Arad and Christopher A. Pissarides

18 September 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Understanding agglomeration

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino explains why considering agglomeration is important for local economic growth policies and what to consider when thinking about agglomeration....Read more...

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino

14 September 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Don't let present bias keep you from getting ready for AI

Despite the quick pace of changes AI is producing in the workplace, many leaders are still not considering how things might soon be done very differently. 'Present bias' keeps them from leveraging new technologies to mak...Read more...

Yolanda Blavo, Grace Lordan and Jasmine Virhia

13 September 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Brazil's comparative advantage in soybean production triggered deforestation

Tropical ecosystems house an immense biomass, which makes it imperative to understand how they are affected by technology and trade. Igor Carreira, Francisco Costa and Joao Paulo Pessoa examine the Brazilian rainforest's...Read more...

Igor Carreira, Francisco Costa and Joao Paulo Pessoa

12 September 2023

Blog
Economics Observatory:
What explains the gender division of labour and how can it be redressed?

Adam Smith's division of labour was about the efficiency gains from task specialisation in factories. But the gender division - gaps between men and women in pay, prestige, career progression and much more - can also be ...Read more...

Barbara Petrongolo

11 September 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Public sector relocation: how to think about local impacts

Will Brett-Harding investigates the effects of public sector relocation on local areas that are destinations for the relocated or new public sector activity....Read more...

Will Brett-Harding

11 September 2023

Blog
LSE iQ:
Is AI coming for our jobs? (podcast)

Maayan Arad speaks to experts about Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the courtroom, and what might happen if robots take over the roles of judges. And explore how journalism and other professional fields could be affected...Read more...

Maayan Arad, Charlie Beckett, Giulia Gentile and Christopher A. Pissarides

7 September 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Should we call time on presenteeism?

Many companies have adopted a "remote first" approach for their workforce, but a growing number of firms are now demanding that employees work from the office most of the time. Jasmine Virhia and Grace Lordan warn firms ...Read more...

Grace Lordan and Jasmine Virhia

5 September 2023

Blog
INSEAD Knowledge:
Covid-19 furloughs helped firms not just survive, but thrive

Morten Bennedsen, Birthe Larsen, Ian Schmutte and Daniela Scur discuss how the furlough schemes implemented during the pandemic yielded benefits even after Covid-19 restrictions ended and helped firms thrive....Read more...

Morten Bennedsen, Berthe Larsen, Ian M. Schmutte and Daniela Scur

5 September 2023

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
A true housing crisis needs more than post-truth politicians

The UK's housing crisis is particularly acute by international standards. Instead of identifying real solutions, argues Paul Cheshire, policy-makers have offered only rhetorical devices, ineffective local mechanisms, and...Read more...

Paul Cheshire

5 September 2023

Blog
IFS Zooms In:
Are differences between companies driving inequality and holding back growth? (podcast)

What do we mean when we talk about inequality between firms? Are inequalities between firms limiting UK business dynamism? And do governments need to step in and enforce competition rules? In this podcast episode, John V...Read more...

John Van Reenen

30 August 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
How much is your time worth?

Christian Krekel and George MacKerron analyse more than two million data points from a smartphone app that randomly asks people how they feel at any particular moment and what they are currently doing, to provide estimat...Read more...

Christian Krekel and George MacKerron

30 August 2023

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Uncovering the association between school qualifications and youth custody

Youth custody has severe long-term consequences for detained young people. Stephen Machin, Sandra McNally and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela investigate the relationship between GCSE qualifications and youth custody, and find t...Read more...

Stephen Machin, Sandra McNally and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela

30 August 2023

Blog
Financial Times:
Are Fridays dead? (podcast)

It's Friday afternoon in the city. There are office blocks all around and a restaurant or bar on every corner... so where is everyone? If occupancy and travel data are anything to go by, they're probably at home. Nick Bl...Read more...

Nicholas Bloom

29 August 2023

Blog
Africa at LSE:
Public disclosure policies don't improve tax collection in Uganda

Public disclosure policies are designed to raise tax compliance where alternative enforcement capacity is limited. But they can also have negative consequences by showcasing the true extent of tax compliance, write Priya...Read more...

Priya Manwaring and Tanner Regan

29 August 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Understanding supply and demand

Helene Donnat explains what supply and demand is and why policymakers need to consider it to design effective policies....Read more...

Helene Donnat

29 August 2023

Blog
UK in a Changing Europe:
Daniel Chandler on rehabilitating liberalism and the political implications of economic inequality (podcast)

Daniel Chandler talked to Professor Anand Menon on this week's episode of the UKICE (I Tell) podcast about his new book, Free and Equal: What Would a Fair Society Look Like?, what his top two policy recommendations for K...Read more...

Daniel Chandler

25 August 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Why leaders must keep their ego in check

The ego, if left unchecked, can pose big problems in the workplace. Nikita and Grace Lordan list five of these problems and discuss how a leader can take steps to mitigate them....Read more...

Grace Lordan and Nikita

23 August 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
What are spatial disparities?

Henry Overman explains what spatial disparities are, why we need to consider them when thinking about local economic growth policies and whether we should try to reduce them....Read more...

Henry G. Overman

22 August 2023

Blog
Harvard Business Review:
Reskilling in the age of AI

As the pace of technological change continues to increase, millions of workers may need to be not just upskilled but reskilled. Companies have a critical role to play in addressing this challenge. To learn more about wha...Read more...

Leila Doumi, Sagar Goel, Orsolya Kovacs-Ondrejkovic, Raffaella Sadun and Jorge Tamayo

18 August 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Why business groups (think Samsung or Tata Group) have an export advantage in emerging markets

With their superior access to capital, knowledge and labour, business groups offer many advantages to their affiliated firms. Daniel Shapiro, Saul Estrin, Michael Carney and Zhixiang (Steven) Liang write that these advan...Read more...

Michael Carney, Saul Estrin, Zhixiang Liang and Daniel Shapiro

18 August 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Firms' required returns to capital and the missing investment puzzle

Despite falling interest rates over the past decades, investment rates have not increased as standard economic theory would suggest. Niels Joachim Gormsen and Kilian Huber construct a global database of firm discount rat...Read more...

Niels Joachim Gormsen and Kilian Huber

10 August 2023

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
How the scars of past wars continue to shape UK society

Edward Pinchbeck, Felipe Carozzi and Luca Repetto discuss new research exploring how memory of losses from war affects communities and shapes social values. Their findings suggest the impact can reverberate through gener...Read more...

Felipe Carozzi, Edward W. Pinchbeck and Luca Repetto

7 August 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Price-setting in a high-inflation environment

Since 2021, inflation rates have increased sharply in many advanced economies. Philip Bunn, Nicholas Bloom, Paul Mizen, Ozgen Ozturk, Gregory Thwaites and Ivan Yotzov study firm pricing strategies during the recent perio...Read more...

Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Gregory Thwaites, Ivan Yotzov and Özgen Öztürk

7 August 2023

Blog
Social Science Space:
Raffaella Sadun On effective management (Podcast)

In this Social Science Bites podcast, Raffaella Sadun discusses her research findings with host David Edmonds, on what exactly we mean by 'management' and what effective management looks like in a workplace....Read more...

Raffaella Sadun

1 August 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
More education signals ability to employers, but does it really improve skills?

Better educated workers may earn higher wages for two possible reasons: because they acquire more skills or because more education signals their intellect and enthusiasm. Economists believe that signalling plays a role a...Read more...

Georg Graetz

31 July 2023

Blog
LSE Impact of Social Sciences:
New approaches to economics research are reshaping how we understand and respond to gender stereotypes

New ways of analysing data from images and text are being used by economists to study discrimination in the labour market. A recent workshop, hosted by the Centre for Economic Performance and the Department of Social Pol...Read more...

Myung Jin and Almudena Sevilla

25 July 2023

Blog
FE News:
The childcare revolution: a new opportunity for parental partnerships in child learning

Lee Elliot Major discusses how teacher-parent partnerships can help make the UK's childcare system more effective and provides three policy recommendations the government can implement....Read more...

Lee Elliot Major

25 July 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Loss aversion and consumer inertia: new evidence from phone subscriptions

Across a range of everyday markets, consumers make recurrent tariff choices in the face of a multitude of fees and plans, leading to concerns they may fail to make optimal choices of suppliers or contracts. Christos Gena...Read more...

Christos Genakos, Costas Roumanias and Tommaso Valletti

21 July 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Wellbeing:
Using people's feelings to value time

This short summary introduces the main idea in Christian Krekel and George MacKerron's paper proposing an alternative method to estimate the value of time (VOT): experiential valuation based on experience-sampling....Read more...

Christian Krekel and George MacKerron

20 July 2023

Blog
The Conversation:
Inflation may be coming down but its unequal effects can still have a big impact on wellbeing

Inflation is coming down across developed economies, although not as much as governments and central banks would like. Price hikes hurt everyone, but research into inflation inequality shows the effects are more pronounc...Read more...

Alberto Prati

19 July 2023

Blog
RSA:
Investment for inclusive and sustainable growth in cities

This is a decisive decade for addressing the UK's longstanding productivity problems, large and persistent inequalities across and within regions, and delivering on net zero commitments. Anna Valero has contributed this ...Read more...

Anna Valero

19 July 2023

Blog
VoxTalks Economics:
Is green growth possible? (Podcast)

Is innovation our best hope for dealing with climate change and, if so, how can we stimulate the sort of innovation that we need to make the green energy transition? Philippe Aghion tells Tim Phillips that we need both c...Read more...

Philippe Aghion and Tim Phillips

19 July 2023

Blog
Trade Talks:
Did responsible sourcing by multinationals help workers in poor countries? (podcast)

A series of industrial accidents that killed workers in the supply chains of multinational corporations triggered backlash by Western consumers. In response, many global companies committed to treat workers in poor count...Read more...

Jose P Vasquez

16 July 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Economists discuss monetary policy in light of Charles Goodhart's work

Financial stability and monetary policy are once again topical in the wake of rising inflation and higher interest rates, which have severely affected bank balance sheets, triggering a flight of deposits and government i...Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

12 July 2023

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Will the NHS long-term workforce plan solve the current crisis?

New proposals to solve staffing shortages in the NHS focus on training more staff and retaining those already working in surgeries, clinics and hospitals. But the plan may be insufficiently ambitious; and it requires mor...Read more...

Jo Blanden, Marco Mello, Giuseppe Moscelli and Melisa Sayli

10 July 2023

Blog
Fire & Wire Podcast:
Fire & wire: wellbeing in the workplace (podcast)

Professor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve discusses why wellbeing matters in the workplace and shares some of the latest findings coming out of the Wellbeing Research Centre, in the second episode of the Fire & Wire podcast....Read more...

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve

10 July 2023

Blog
Trade Talks:
Industrial policy and the rise of Romania's Silicon Valley (podcast)

In 2001, Romania gave an income tax break to a select group of software programmers. Isabela Manelici explains how this particular industrial policy helped stem Romania's "brain drain" problem, transformed the country's ...Read more...

Isabela Manelici

9 July 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Rebuilding cities in Ukraine

Presuming that Ukraine successfully reclaims most or all of its lost territories from Russian occupation, there will be a political drive to bring refugees back to their hometowns and to rebuild destroyed cities. This co...Read more...

Richard K. Green, J. Vernon Henderson, Matthew E. Kahn, Alex Nikolsko-Rzhevskyy and Andrii Parkhomenko

8 July 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Public spaces: key points to keep in mind

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino discusses the local economic benefits and costs of possible schemes regarding the public realm and green spaces....Read more...

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino

4 July 2023

Blog
Working on Wellbeing:
Lord Richard Layard on putting wellbeing top of the policy agenda (podcast)

Richard Layard talks to Sarah Cunningham about how wellbeing science has developed over the past half-century, and how he is calling on policymakers and business leaders to put wellbeing at the heart of decision-making....Read more...

Richard Layard

28 June 2023

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
The rising tide of school absences in the post-pandemic era

While many presumed school attendance levels would recover rapidly from the impact of the pandemic, new research reveals the scale of continued absenteeism among school pupils across the country. Andrew Eyles, Esme Lilly...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major, Andrew Eyles and Esme Lillywhite

28 June 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
The supply chain for electric car batteries is changing the world's geopolitics

The rising demand for electric vehicles is changing the geopolitical landscape, as the world pivots away from fossil fuels towards the materials critical to the EV supply chain. As manufacturers and countries race to sec...Read more...

Robert J.R. Elliott, Gavin Harper, Benjamin Jones and Viet Nguyen-Tien

27 June 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Thinking through social infrastructure wider outcomes

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino discusses the indirect effects of social infrastructure on communities, as part of the What works Centre for Local Economic Growth's 'thinking through series' which focuses on how local policymakers...Read more...

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino

22 June 2023

Blog
Centre for Cities City Talks:
City talks: what are the signs that the UK is levelling up? (Podcast)

Henry Overman speaks to Chief Executive Andrew Carter about how to measure the scale of the underperformance of cities in the UK and search for evidence that could point us towards the right solutions, in this podcast ep...Read more...

Andrew Carter and Henry G. Overman

22 June 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Competition and pass-through: lessons from the Greek islands

Although theoretical analysis shows that competition is a key determinant of how firms pass through changes in tax rates to consumers, empirical evidence is scant. This column explores changes in the excise duty on petro...Read more...

Lydia Dimitrakopoulou, Christos Genakos, Themistoklis Kampouris, Blair Yuan Lyu, Mario Pagliero and Stella Papadokonstantaki

22 June 2023

Blog
LSE EUROPP:
What girls study at school affects how healthy their babies will be later in life

Education plays a crucial role in shaping the future of individuals and societies. Pilar Cuevas-Ruiz, Cristina Borra and Almudena Sevilla present findings from research on the long-term health effects of a comprehensive ...Read more...

Cristina Borra, Pilar Cuevas-Ruiz and Almudena Sevilla

21 June 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Murphy's Law versus the luck of the Irish: Disparate treatment of the Irish in 19th-century courts

Using data from 100 years of trials at London's Old Bailey criminal court, Anna Bindler, Randi Hjalmarsson, Stephen Machin and Melissa Rubio-Ramos examine the processing of Irish defendants and victims by English juries ...Read more...

Anna Bindler, Randi Hjalmarsson, Stephen Machin and Melissa Rubio

17 June 2023

Blog
LSE Review of Books:
Book Review: Free and Equal: What Would a Fair Society Look Like? by Daniel Chandler

In 'Free and Equal: What Would a Fair Society Look Like?' Daniel Chandler considers how the work of twentieth-century philosopher John Rawls could inform policymaking to build a fairer society with reduced inequality and...Read more...

Daniel Chandler

16 June 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Stepping up evaluation of active travel

Will Brett Harding discusses increasing active travel and what this means for locally delivered projects, and more generally about plans for determining the benefits of active travel investments....Read more...

Will Brett-Harding

15 June 2023

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Which educational policies are most effective for equalising opportunities?

Against a backdrop of poor productivity growth, severe skill shortages and increasing educational inequalities in the UK since the pandemic, investment in education and skills is essential. It requires policies that span...Read more...

Lindsey Macmillan and Gill Wyness

15 June 2023

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Re-imagining politics to build a fairer society: Q&A with Daniel Chandler

For Daniel Chandler, some key insights into reforming our politics to make it more inclusive, egalitarian and democratic come from the philosopher John Rawls. In his latest book Free and Equal: What Would a Fair Society ...Read more...

Daniel Chandler

14 June 2023

Blog
LSE:
Daniel Chandler: The Simple Idea That Could Solve Our Political Problems (video)

Inequality, climate change, culture wars and disaffection with politics - these are just some of the seismic issues we face in the UK in 2023. But while different schools of political thought might suggest different solu...Read more...

Daniel Chandler

13 June 2023

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Mapping changes in educational achievement across England

As part of the LSE Festival 2023, the Mapping People and Change exhibition visualises data through maps on various socio-economic issues, providing insights into the impact of a rapidly changing world on people and commu...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major, Andrew Eyles and Myung Jin

12 June 2023

Blog
Economics Observatory:
What did Adam Smith think - and why does it matter today?

This year is the tercentenary of Adam Smith - 300 years since the birth of the man widely considered to be the father of economics. Jesse Norman MP, author of Adam Smith: What He Thought, and Why It Matters, talks to Rom...Read more...

Jesse Norman and Romesh Vaitilingam

9 June 2023

Blog
Economics Observatory:
300 years of history: In numbers

The central task for the global economy since Adam Smith's times has been to provide for an exploding population. Life expectancy has doubled, the global headcount has risen more than ten-fold, yet economic output has in...Read more...

Denes Csala, Richard Davies and Charlie Meyrick

8 June 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Fostering innovation for climate neutrality

Achieving climate neutrality will require cost reductions and the rapid diffusion of existing technologies, as well as innovation in new technologies. Mario Cervantes, Chiara Criscuolo, Antoine Dechezlepretre and Dirk Pi...Read more...

Mario Cervantes, Chiara Criscuolo, Antoine Dechezleprêtre and Dirk Pilat

1 June 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Leaders with courage listen, rather than roar

The meaning of courage in leadership has changed from "command and control" to joining the dots of the available perspectives as a way to innovate. Now, the key task for leaders is to listen actively. Yolanda Blavo and G...Read more...

Yolanda Blavo and Grace Lordan

31 May 2023

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Should the UK government get active about economic inactivity?

Concerns about a rise in economic inactivity have prompted new policies aimed at discouraging early retirement and encouraging the labour force participation of women with young children. Such interventions would be more...Read more...

Stephen Machin and Jonathan Wadsworth

26 May 2023

Blog
Economics Observatory:
How has the Russian invasion of Ukraine affected global financial markets?

As Russia's war against Ukraine continues to unfold, its global economic impact remains uncertain. Evidence from the stock market indicates that firms with strong trade or ownership ties to Russia are more likely to face...Read more...

Marcus Biermann and Elsa Leromain

25 May 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Accounting for imported and domestically generated inflation: Supply chains, monetary policy, and the UK's cost of living crisis

Inflation has increased sharply since the start of 2021 as the global economy grapples with the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Swati Dhingra and Jack Page draw on a long tradition of...Read more...

Swati Dhingra and Jack Page

25 May 2023

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
How can we make homes more affordable?

Housing has become unaffordable, the problem is likely to get worse, and the young are hit the hardest. Christian Hilber argues that we face a conundrum: reforms that would be effective are considered politically infeasi...Read more...

Christian A. L. Hilber

24 May 2023

Blog
LSE USAPP:
The 1918 flu pandemic made some people more religious, and others, more innovative.

Enrico Berkes, Davide Coluccia, Gaia Dossi and Mara Squicciarini investigate whether a destructive event - such as a pandemic - leads to either an increase in religiosity or a boost in innovation efforts. They find that ...Read more...

Enrico Berkes, Davide M. Coluccia, Gaia Dossi and Mara P. Squicciarini

24 May 2023

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Why the government's levelling-up plans need a reality check

The government has made tackling the UK's persistent spatial inequalities one of its top priorities. Yet progress has been slow or absent, because of insufficient investment, an underestimation of the scale of the challe...Read more...

Henry G. Overman

23 May 2023

Blog
LSE:
Why has productivity in the UK slowed? (video)

Growth and productivity are often talked about in UK politics but how are they linked and what effect do they have on the economy? John Van Reenen explains....Read more...

John Van Reenen

19 May 2023

Blog
LSE EUROPP:
A better understanding of pay-as-you-go pension systems leads to more positive attitudes toward migrants

A better understanding of pay-as-you-go pension systems and population trends can lead to more positive attitudes toward migrants, but only among individuals who support non-populist parties, find Tito Boeri, Matteo Gama...Read more...

Tito Boeri, Matteo Gamalerio, Massimo Morelli and Margherita Negri

12 May 2023

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Frontline stories: protecting biodiversity

Ahead of COP26 in 2021, Richard Davies talked to Dr Jane Goodall DBE, one of the world's leading environmentalists, founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and a United Nations Messenger of Peace....Read more...

Richard Davies and Jane Goodall

12 May 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Creditors use startups' choice of legal form as a signal for debt financing

Formal debt financing is an important source of external financing for startups, but creditors face information gaps, as startups lack a proven track record. Felix Bracht, Jeroen Mahieu and Steven Vanhaverbeke argue that...Read more...

Felix Bracht, Jeroen Mahieu and Steven Vanhaverbeke

4 May 2023

Blog
Economics Observatory:
What is the current state of the Russian economy under sanctions?

Economic sanctions have done considerable damage to Russia's economy. The country's economic situation will improve slowly as supply chains are re-oriented towards other markets, especially in Asia. But perseverance with...Read more...

Richard Disney

27 April 2023

Blog
Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance:
Do Carbon Prices Affect Stock Prices?

Patrick Bolton, Adrian Lam and Mirabelle Muuls discuss whether the EU cap-and-trade system has resulted in a signficant financial impact on the companies that are under the scheme and whether it has motivated them to red...Read more...

Patrick Bolton, Adrian Lam and Mirabelle Muûls

26 April 2023

Blog
Economics Observatory:
How have the forecasts on the effect of sanctions on Russia held up a year on?

Commentators were over-optimistic in believing that sanctions would immediately cause a large fall in economic activity in Russia and thereby halt the aggression against Ukraine. But despite the revised forecasts and out...Read more...

Richard Disney

26 April 2023

Blog
Vox Dev:
All aboard: The effects of port development

There are large potential gains to improving ports, but space constraints and other costs affect who benefits from port infrastructure, say Cesar Ducruet, Reka Juhasz, David Krisztian Nagy and Claudia Steinwender....Read more...

César Ducruet, Reka Juhasz, Dávid Krisztián Nagy and Claudia Steinwender

25 April 2023

Blog
LSE EUROPP:
Female students perform better when taught by female lecturers - but class size is key

Stephan Maurer, Guido Schwerdt and Simon Wiederhold find a positive impact from female lecturers on female educational performance. But this effect exists when class sizes are small, suggesting that it is direct and freq...Read more...

Stephan Maurer, Guido Schwerdt and Simon Wiederhold

24 April 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
What does the evidence say on place-based intervention for net zero?

Will Brett-Harding discusses the existing evidence on place-based intervention for net zero, in light of the global climate crisis and the magnitude of the damage that will, or already has, come with it....Read more...

Will Brett-Harding

21 April 2023

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Frontline stories: designing furlough at HM Treasury

Richard Davies speaks to Clare Lombardelli, Chief Economic Adviser at HM Treasury and Joint Head of the Government Economic Service....Read more...

Richard Davies and Clare Lombardelli

21 April 2023

Blog
CATO Institute:
The Impact of Regulation on Innovation

Many scholars have been concerned that slower growth in countries with heavy labour regulations could be due to firms' reluctance to innovate given the burden of red tape. Philippe Aghion, Antonin Bergeaud and John Van R...Read more...

Philippe Aghion, Antonin Bergeaud and John Van Reenen

19 April 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Using job postings to quantify remote work

The COVID pandemic initiated an enduring shift to remote work. But there is little evidence to explain where this shift is taking place at a micro level because the sample sizes are too small. Stephen Hansen, Peter Lambe...Read more...

Nicholas Bloom, Steven J. Davis, Stephen Hansen, Peter Lambert, Raffaella Sadun and Bledi Taska

18 April 2023

Blog
LSE USAPP:
Citizen complaints can be a useful early warning system for governments to act on environmental violations.

Is enabling citizens to complain about public services an effective way of improving government services, or should we be more concerned about their accuracy and reliability? In new research, Jonathan Colmer, Mary Evans,...Read more...

Jonathan Colmer, Mary F. Evans and Jay Shimshack

18 April 2023

Blog
LSE:
What is levelling up? (video)

Neil Lee explains what levelling up is and how investing in more cities outside of London can help close the socio-economic gap between different areas in the UK....Read more...

Neil Lee

18 April 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Local concentration and structural transformation

The national market shares of the leading US firms in many industries have risen substantially over the last four decades - ie, these industries have become more concentrated. David Autor, Christina Patterson and John Va...Read more...

David Autor, Christina Patterson and John Van Reenen

12 April 2023

Blog
LSE IQ:
How can we make homes more affordable? (Podcast)

In this LSE IQ episode on how we can make homes more affordable, Christian Hilber shares the reasons behind the UK's current housing affordability crisis, explaining the obstacles to building more houses as a way of over...Read more...

Christian A. L. Hilber

4 April 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Community Wealth Building for local growth and wider outcomes

Community Wealth Building (CWB) is an approach to local economic development which focuses on retaining public spending and economic activity in a local area. Will Brett-Harding discusses evidence on local economic impac...Read more...

Will Brett-Harding

3 April 2023

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Banks, budgets and birthdays

Three years on from its inception, Economics Observatory has posted over 650 articles and collected more than 2.5 million page views. With tensions in the banking sector, a new first minister in Scotland, and the 25th an...Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

31 March 2023

Blog
LSE Impact of Social Sciences:
Standing on the shoulders of Chinese (Scientific) Giants - Evidence for a citation discount for Chinese Researchers

Chinese researchers are increasingly leading scientific research, yet their contributions are not fully recognized, notably by US researchers. Shumin Qiu, Claudia Steinwender and Pierre Azoulay discuss the reasons why ar...Read more...

Pierre Azoulay, Shumin Qiu and Claudia Steinwender

29 March 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Why it's so difficult for companies to leave Russia

After the start of Russia's war on Ukraine, many multinational companies have announced their intention to leave Russia. Despite the pressure from numerous stakeholders, including Western governments, few companies have ...Read more...

Saul Estrin and Klaus E. Meyer

28 March 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Thinking through public spaces wider outcomes

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino assesses the local economic impacts of public spaces, exploring the benefits the evidence points towards, and asks what we need to do going forward....Read more...

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino

28 March 2023

Blog
LSE Impact of Social Sciences:
A new science of wellbeing will change policy and decision making

What produces a happy society and a happy life? Richard Layard and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve suggest that through the new science of wellbeing, we can now answer this question empirically. Explaining how wellbeing can be meas...Read more...

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve and Richard Layard

27 March 2023

Blog
Economics Observatory:
What is the role of government in creating a happier world?

The latest edition of the World Happiness Report offers new insights into wellbeing across the globe. The past year has brought a number of fresh challenges, but many people are still able to find happiness in their live...Read more...

Maria Cotofan

20 March 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Investment Zones and Innovation

In the Spring 2023 budget, the chancellor announced a newly revamped Investment Zones (IZs) programme as part of the UK's push for growth. This is a significantly scaled back version of the programme outlined by the prev...Read more...

Will Brett-Harding

17 March 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Train in vain? Skills, tasks, and training in the UK labour market

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt pledged that measures in the budget would help break down barriers that stop people working. One issue is how to ensure we have the skills the economy needs. Nye Cominetti, Rui Costa, Andrew Eyles,...Read more...

Nye Cominetti, Rui Costa, Andrew Eyles, Kathleen Henehan and Sandra McNally

16 March 2023

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
A budget for (green) growth? Unfortunately, not yet.

In light of the climate crisis, the energy and cost-of-living crises, and longstanding productivity problems urgently needed addressing, the Spring 2023 Budget was a key moment for the government to make progress in prov...Read more...

Esin Serin and Anna Valero

16 March 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Tangible or intangible investment, that is the question: Owner type and investment of private firms

Family business owners are often said to be risk averse, while corporate and institutional owners are less so. Saul Estrin, Jan Hanousek and Anastasiya Shamshur analyse how investment decisions vary across ownership type...Read more...

Saul Estrin, Jan Hanousek and Anastasiya Shamshur

14 March 2023

Blog
Economics Observatory:
How has Brexit affected business investment in the UK?

Leaving the European Union has undoubtedly had effects on the UK economy. The most obvious ones will be on international trade. But Brexit might also have an impact on business investment, which is crucial for the econom...Read more...

Jonathan Haskel and Josh Martin

13 March 2023

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
How women are changing the face of economics

Economics continues to be a discipline dominated by men. Yet trailblazing female economists are working to change that. Myung Jin explains why it is important to improve diversity and equality within the field....Read more...

Myung Jin

8 March 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Introducing our new logic model guide and checklist

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino outlines what makes a good logic model for a policy, programme or project, used to underpin funding bids and to develop successful local programmes....Read more...

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino

8 March 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Women in the workplace: 50 years of change

Decades of progress have seen greater opportunities for women in the workplace, but sizeable gender gaps remain in most indicators of economic achievement. Stefania Albanesi, Claudia Olivetti, and Barbara Petrongolo revi...Read more...

Stefania Albanesi, Claudia Olivetti and Barbara Petrongolo

8 March 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Wider outcomes from public procurement

Will Brett-Harding and Anamaria Tibocha-Nino discuss the effects of local public procurement and whether it can deliver additional social, environmental, or economic benefits on top of core goods or services being bought...Read more...

Will Brett-Harding and Anamaria Tibocha-Nino

6 March 2023

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
The paradox of vocational education

Despite a UK labour market that is hungry for skills, academic education has triumphed over training, apprenticeships and preparation for specific occupations. Alison Wolf looks at why vocational education continues to l...Read more...

Alison Wolf

3 March 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Observing freedom's vanishing act

The political equilibrium in Hong Kong was fundamentally altered in June 2020, when the Chinese Communist Party began coercively suppressing all protest. Noam Yuchtman provides a first-hand account of watching civil libe...Read more...

Noam Yuchtman

1 March 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Automation creates the space for entirely new jobs: the UK must adopt, adapt and improve

Fears about robots taking people's jobs are overplayed, say Rui Costa and Yuanhang Yu. Their research shows the real fear to overcome should be Britain's lack of productivity-enhancing robots, software, artificial intell...Read more...

Rui Costa and Yuanhang Yu

27 February 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Radical climate policies

The transition to net zero will require policies that promote switching to carbon-free technologies on a large scale and will often involve complementarities and peer effects in demand. Frederick van der Ploeg and Anthon...Read more...

Anthony J. Venables and Frederick van der Ploeg

27 February 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Does active travel have local economic benefits?

Active travel involves making journeys by physically active means such as walking and cycling. While the link to emissions is obvious, we know less about the local economic impacts. Anamaria Tibocha-Nino and Will Brett-H...Read more...

Will Brett-Harding and Anamaria Tibocha-Nino

15 February 2023

Blog
Promarket:
The Case for Green Industrial Policy

Industrial policy was once so old-fashioned that it was jokingly called "the policy that shall not be named". Now it's back in a big way. On issues ranging from clean energy to semiconductors to Covid-19, governments are...Read more...

John Van Reenen

14 February 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Slavery and the British Industrial Revolution

To what extent the wealth derived from slavery contributed to Europe's economic growth has been a hotly debated question for more than two centuries. Most economists studying the question have looked at national aggregat...Read more...

Stephan Heblich, Stephen J. Redding and Hans-Joachim Voth

11 February 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Self-employment dwindles amid the cost-of-living crisis

As the Covid-19 crisis has made way for inflation and skyrocketing energy prices, the self-employed have not yet found their way out of the recent economic adversities. And many of them are now finding their way out of s...Read more...

Robert Blackburn and Maria Ventura

10 February 2023

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Innovation and accelerators

In the new year speech, the Prime Minister argued "the most powerful plan for sustainable growth is to position the UK to fully benefit from the incredible scientific and technological change the world is seeing". New me...Read more...

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino

8 February 2023

Blog
LSE USA Politics and Policy:
Long Read: Economics experts agree that a US debt default would do substantial damage to financial markets

In January, the US federal government reached the debt ceiling previously set by Congress, and is now using extraordinary measures to meet its public spending obligations. The Initiative on Global Markets Forum at the Un...Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

7 February 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Flight from Russia

In addition to the human tragedy in Ukraine, Russia's invasion has led to a series of economic, social, and political events in Russia itself. This column uses outgoing flight prices before and after the invasion on 24 F...Read more...

Antonio Avila-Uribe and Dzhamilya Nigmatulina

6 February 2023

Blog
VoxEU Talk:
Slavery and the industrial revolution (podcast)

Did slaveholding accelerate the industrial revolution in Britain? This controversial theory was first argued by Eric Williams almost 80 years ago but has lacked strong supporting evidence - until now. Stephan Heblich and...Read more...

Stephan Heblich and Hans-Joachim Voth

3 February 2023

Blog
LSE American Politics and Policy:
For the US to again become the "Land of Opportunity" we need a better understanding of how geography and industrial change affects incomes

Kohei Takeda unpacks the relationship between declining manufacturing in parts of the US - which are often termed the 'Rust Belt' - and workers' income mobility....Read more...

Kohei Takeda

3 February 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Why older talent should be a consideration for today's inclusive leader

While 'age' has not been historically underrepresented in our workforces, creating longer, fulfilling working lives is now an economic imperative. Daniel Jolles and Grace Lordan break down three persistent myths about ol...Read more...

Daniel Jolles and Grace Lordan

2 February 2023

Blog
Economics Observatory:
How might changes in student visa provision affect UK immigration levels?

Net migration to the UK has reached record highs. International students are included in the immigration statistics and the government has implied it may seek to limit their future numbers. More research is needed to des...Read more...

Alan Manning

26 January 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
The labour market in Ukraine: Rebuild better

Rebuilding Ukraine will require emergency measures that address the effects of war alongside structural reforms that address pre-existing political and economic issues. Giacomo Anastasia, Tito Boeri, Marianna Kudlyak and...Read more...

Giacomo Anastasia, Tito Boeri, Marianna Kudlyak and Oleksandr Zholud

26 January 2023

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Striking a balance on student migration to the UK

Net migration into the UK was 504,000 between June 2021 and June 2022, far higher than the previous record of 330,00. While the single biggest factor behind the rise in net migration was the new visas open to Ukrainians ...Read more...

Alan Manning

24 January 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Commute time savings when working from home

The large shift to work from home during the Covid-19 pandemic reduced the amount of time that workers spend commuting. This column reports on a global survey of workers in 27 countries showing that working from home sav...Read more...

Cevat Giray Aksoy, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Steven J. Davis, Mathias Dolls and Pablo Zarate

24 January 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Robot adoption, worker-firm sorting, and wage inequality: Evidence from administrative panel data

Technological progress has contributed to rising wage inequality in recent decades. Automation and digitalisation increasingly require workers with specialised knowledge for specific tasks, say Ester Faia, Gianmarco Otta...Read more...

Ester Faia, Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano and Saverio Spinella

23 January 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
UTOPIA and the City: the future of work in financial and professional services

In the midst of a reorganisation of work caused by the pandemic, there is no one-size-fits-all arrangement and employers are battling to find the right mix between office and home working. To learn more about how to get ...Read more...

Yolanda Blavo, Grace Lordan and Jasmine Virhia

19 January 2023

Blog
FRBSF Economic Letter:
Supply Chain Disruptions, Trade Costs, and Labor Markets

Global supply chain disruptions due to the Covid-19 pandemic have increased the costs of trade between countries. Given the interconnectedness of the US economy with the rest of the world, higher trade costs can have imp...Read more...

Andres Rodriguez-Clare, Mauricio Ulate and Jose P Vasquez

19 January 2023

Blog
The Conversation:
Pay inequality is high in South Africa: bosses are part of the problem

South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world. This income inequality is mostly due to high unemployment and large differences in wages. In South Africa today, economists and policy-makers typically foc...Read more...

Ihsaan Bassier

19 January 2023

Blog
ProMarket:
A New Framework for Better Industrial Policies

Chiara Criscuolo and Guy Lalanne provide a new, conceptual framework for better industrial policy, considering topical areas such as clean energy, Covid-19, and performance of key business sectors....Read more...

Chiara Criscuolo and Guy Lalanne

17 January 2023

Blog
NHS England:
What's in a name? NHS Talking Therapies for Anxiety and Depression - the new name for IAPT services

Improving Access to Psychological Therapy (IAPT) services are being renamed as NHS Talking Therapies for Anxiety and Depression, following a public consultation. Professor David M Clark and Dr Adrian Whittington reflect ...Read more...

David M. Clark and Adrian Whittington

16 January 2023

Blog
LSE EUROPP:
Why political trust and voluntary compliance have been key to government pandemic responsiveness in Europe

The effectiveness of policy responses to Covid-19 has varied substantially across Europe. Drawing on new research, Timothy Besley and Christopher Dann illustrate how political trust and voluntary compliance have underpin...Read more...

Timothy Besley and Chris Dann

13 January 2023

Blog
The Work Goes On:
Richard Layard on his life in public service and his pioneering research on happiness (podcast)

Richard Layard joins Orley Ashenfelter on podcast 'The Work Goes On', to talk about his life in public service, his advocacy on behalf of the unemployed, and his pioneering research on happiness, life satisfaction, and m...Read more...

Orley Ashenfelter and Richard Layard

8 January 2023

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Courage and leadership in 2023

The new economy we are entering into demands a high level of innovation that cannot be achieved by alpha leaders. Grace Lordan writes that successful leadership will require a lot of courage to do things differently, in ...Read more...

Grace Lordan

4 January 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
The family consequences of job insecurity: Fertility and marriage

Fertility rates have fallen sharply in OECD countries over the last 60 years, a drop mirrored in diminished employment protection over the same period. This column asks whether this greater job insecurity has contributed...Read more...

Andrew E. Clark, Conchita D'Ambrosio and Anthony Lepinteur

3 January 2023

Blog
Vox EU:
Unequal education and the 'Great Gatsby Curve'

In modern economies, people's livelihoods are based in large part on skills acquired through education. Unequal education therefore drives both inequality in the labour market and low social mobility across generations. ...Read more...

Jo Blanden, Matthias Doepke and Jan Stuhler

20 December 2022

Blog
Vox Ukraine:
"What about the economy?": Vernon Henderson on the challenges of Ukraine's recovery (podcast)

Yulia Mincheva, the Analytics Society at VoxUkraine, and J. Vernon Henderson discuss how to rebuild destroyed cities and create conditions for their repopulation in this podcast, "What about the economy?"...Read more...

J. Vernon Henderson and Julia Mincheva

20 December 2022

Blog
Vox EU:
Responsible sourcing: Theory and evidence from Costa Rica

There is growing pressure on multinational enterprises to implement 'responsible sourcing' requirements for their suppliers in low- and middle-income countries. These include minimum standards on working conditions, such...Read more...

Alonso Alfaro-Urena, Benjamin Faber, Cecile Gaubert, Isabela Manelici and Jose P Vasquez

20 December 2022

Blog
Vox EU:
Tracking uncertainty in a rapidly changing global economic outlook

Tracking uncertainty at a high frequency is useful in the context of the multiple shocks that have hit the global economy over the past years and to disentangle the sources of uncertainty. This column presents a new mont...Read more...

Hites Ahir, Nicholas Bloom and Davide Furceri

17 December 2022

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Investments Zones can drive innovation if we learn from past mistakes

A key part of the previous government's plan for growth and currently being reformulated, Investment Zones have for decades been a policy aimed at delivering regional economic development, or levelling-up. Drawing on evi...Read more...

Max Herbertson and Neil Lee

13 December 2022

Blog
CVER Blog:
The Recent Evolution of Apprenticeships

While the number of apprenticeship starts in England has reduced dramatically in recent years, policy changes have likely improved their average quality. Chiara Cavaglia, Sandra McNally and Gu Ventura discuss the evoluti...Read more...

Chiara Cavaglia, Sandra McNally and Guglielmo Ventura

8 December 2022

Blog
Vox EU:
Firm inflation expectations in quantitative and text data

Inflation rates and short-term inflation expectations in the UK have increased significantly since 2021. This column uses quantitative and text data from the Decision Maker Panel to analyse the factors affecting inflatio...Read more...

Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Gregory Thwaites, Ivan Yotzov and Özgen Öztürk

8 December 2022

Blog
CEPR:
The labour market in Ukraine: Rebuild better

Giacomo Anastasia, Tito Boeri, Marianna Kudlyak and Oleksandr Zholud write about how the Ukrainian labour market can be rebuilt effectively in this chapter of 'Rebuilding Ukraine: Principles and policies', which offers a...Read more...

Giacomo Anastasia, Tito Boeri, Marianna Kudlyak and Oleksandr Zholud

7 December 2022

Blog
BBC Radio 4:
Understand The Economy: 9. International Trade and Currency Markets (podcast)

Richard Davies is a guest speaker in this episode of Understand: The Economy, Episode 9. International Trade and Currency Markets. Tim Harford explains who wins and who loses if the pound is cheap against the dollar....Read more...

Richard Davies and Tim Harford

1 December 2022

Blog
The Conversation:
Four-day week trial confirms working less increases wellbeing and productivity

A group of companies that have been trialling a four-day working week have recently reported increased revenue, with fewer employees taking time off or resigning, thus confirming an increase in wellbeing and productivity...Read more...

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve

1 December 2022

Blog
BBC Radio 4:
Understand The Economy: 7. Jobs and Unemployment (podcast)

What happens when lots of people lose their jobs? Why might wages be low even though everyone who wants a job, has one? What do we mean by employment and unemployment and what does 'economic inactivity' mean? What is pro...Read more...

Richard Davies and Tim Harford

29 November 2022

Blog
BBC Radio 4:
Understand The Economy: 6. Recessions (podcast)

What is a recession and what causes a recession? Tim Harford explains the role a government can play in pulling a country out of a recession. Richard Davies is a guest speaker in this episode....Read more...

Richard Davies and Tim Harford

28 November 2022

Blog
Research Professional News:
Autumn statement delivered reassurance, but not vision

Investing in innovation is key to the future prosperity of an advanced economy such as the UK. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt's 17 November autumn statement confirmed a commitment to raising public investments in science. Despit...Read more...

Anna Valero and John Van Reenen

28 November 2022

Blog
Inter Press Service:
Asia: the Power of Connections and their Consequences

In our recent book, "The Connections World: The Future of Asia", published by Cambridge University Press in October 2022, we argue that mutually beneficial links between dynastic business houses and political elites have...Read more...

Simon Commander and Saul Estrin

25 November 2022

Blog
Harvard Business Review:
The Myth of the Brilliant, Charismatic Leader

There's a view out there - call it the "superhero" theory of leadership - in which the individual vision, charisma, and brilliance of a CEO makes or breaks a company. That view is dangerous - not so much because CEOs don...Read more...

Raffaella Sadun

23 November 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
What is the contribution of China to pushing the technological frontier?

China's technological strength has been increasing since the late 2000s, accounting for a significant share of patents. Antonin Bergeaud and Cyril Verluise show that while China's share of patents is increasing in quanti...Read more...

Antonin Bergeaud and Cyril Verluise

23 November 2022

Blog
Vox EU:
How US sanctions increased the economic activity of sanctioned Russian firms

Dzhamilya Nigmatulina assesses the impact of sanctions following the 2014 annexation of Crimea on Russian sanctioned firms. The capital, materials inputs, and revenue of sanctioned firms actually increased relative to no...Read more...

Dzhamilya Nigmatulina

19 November 2022

Blog
The Diplomat:
Asia's Development Model Is Now Jeopardizing Its Future Economic Growth

Asia is facing an economic watershed moment. Turning the corner will require rethinking the role of its dominant, state-supported business groups....Read more...

Simon Commander and Saul Estrin

16 November 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Autumn Statement: 'no one will be spared the pain'

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt faces a difficult balancing act to try and delay many measures while doing enough in the short run to appease the markets. John Van Reenen comments briefly on what can be expected in the Autumn Sta...Read more...

John Van Reenen

16 November 2022

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
If the government cuts public spending, will volunteers step in?

The UK government is expected to respond to the country's economic woes with a wide-ranging programme of fiscal austerity. After the 2008/9 recession, the government accompanied its austerity programme with the idea of t...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons and Christian A. L. Hilber

16 November 2022

Blog
The ECB Blog:
Can Europe be a green innovation leader?

Europe is punching below its weight in the climate-technology competition. The continent needs to facilitate risk capital markets and to invest more in research and development. This is the 4th post in a series of climat...Read more...

Philippe Aghion, Lena Boneva, Johannes Breckenfelder, Luc Laeven, Conny Olovsson, Alexander Popov and Elena Rancoita

15 November 2022

Blog
IZA World of Labor:
Judging affirmative action

With the American Supreme Court preparing to hear two cases on the use of race-based affirmative action in university admissions, the stage is set for a landmark opinion that would prevent race from being considered in a...Read more...

Richard Murphy and Gill Wyness

14 November 2022

Blog
CVER Blog:
On Track to Success? Returns to Vocational Education against different alternatives

In the wake of Brexit and the global pandemic, skills shortages across the UK economy risk hampering efforts to reverse a decade of languishing productivity and festering inequality. Reinvigorating the long-neglected Bri...Read more...

Sönke Hendrik Matthewes and Guglielmo Ventura

11 November 2022

Blog
Macroscope, South China Morning Post:
To become a world leader in innovation, China needs to loosen the economic reins

In a push for more tech breakthroughs, China is ramping up state spending on research and development. But without creating space for private sector innovation, China is unlikely to achieve the kind of results it wants....Read more...

Simon Commander and Saul Estrin

10 November 2022

Blog
World Bank Blogs:
Relationship between poverty and violence against civilians. Evidence from Somalia

Many countries around the world continue to experience episodes of violence and conflict. In these fragile settings, authorities are often unable to provide basic services and social safety nets to their citizens, result...Read more...

Gonzalo Nunez-Chaim and Utz Pape

9 November 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
How should we decide when to use artificial intelligence in decision-making?

Should organisations adopt artificial intelligence in their decision-making processes? Grace Lordan, Paris Will, and Dario Krpan write that AI-based methods lead to more efficient hiring decisions, increasing diversity o...Read more...

Dario Krpan, Grace Lordan and Paris Will

3 November 2022

Blog
Understand: The Economy:
Understand The Economy: 2. Interest Rates and Mortgage Rates (podcast)

In this episode, Tim Harford explains why the banks charge interest when we borrow money and explains why the Bank of England might put interest rates up. Richard Davies is a guest on this episode of Understand: The Econ...Read more...

Richard Davies and Tim Harford

3 November 2022

Blog
BBC Radio 4:
Understand The Economy: 1. Inflation (podcast)

Understanding inflation can help understand why our shopping is getting more and more expensive and why prices rarely seem to come down. Tim Harford explains why the inflation figure we see on the TV might not reflect th...Read more...

Richard Davies and Tim Harford

31 October 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Clean technologies for growth and equity

Public investment in developing energy sources that don't cause climate change is a strategy for economic growth that could also contribute to the UK's levelling up agenda, says Ralf Martin. His analysis indicates that s...Read more...

Ralf Martin

24 October 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Nothing is booming in Britain, except uncertainty. This is not the time to cut public investment in research

Britain has suffered from a turbulent policy environment for a while. Following chancellor Jeremy Hunt's reversal of nearly all of the mini-budget tax measures and reigned in energy support, difficult spending cuts are c...Read more...

Anna Valero and John Van Reenen

20 October 2022

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy :
Why have energy bills in the UK been rising?

The UK is particularly exposed to the energy crisis sweeping across the world. After predictions that annual household bills were due to rise from around £1,000 to £3,500 in October 2022, the government announced it woul...Read more...

Anna Valero

20 October 2022

Blog
Vox EU:
Knowledge flows from public labs to private firms

How knowledge spillovers operate between academia and private firms remains an open question. Antonin Bergeaud, Arthur Guillouzouic, Emeric Henry and Clement Malgouyres find strong spillovers through the contracting, mob...Read more...

Antonin Bergeaud, Arthur Guillouzouic, Emeric Henry and Clement Malgouyres

19 October 2022

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Rising school absences: the post pandemic education divide

The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the equalising power of schooling. Over 28% of primary and 40% of secondary school pupils who qualified for free school meals were persistently absent during the 2021/22 autumn term....Read more...

Lee Elliot Major and Andrew Eyles

17 October 2022

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Investment Zones: who benefits?

In this final blog of the week's series on Investment Zones, Henry Overman highlights issues local and national governments may face as they negotiate, such as substitution of jobs, leakage, and who benefits from Investm...Read more...

Henry G. Overman

14 October 2022

Blog
Springer Nature Research Communities:
Towards Zero Waste: Segregation at Source Can Reduce Our Waste Footprint

Waste management is a key part of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 of making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. Fjolla Kondirolli, Swati Dhingra and Stephen Machin outline the...Read more...

Swati Dhingra, Fjolla Kondirolli and Stephen Machin

14 October 2022

Blog
Vox EU:
Fighting climate change: International attitudes toward climate policies

Climate policies to limit global warming have often been difficult to pass and implement. In exploring the policy preferences of over 40,000 people in 20 high- and middle-income countries, the authors find that whether p...Read more...

Ana Sanchez Chico, Antoine Dechezleprêtre, Adrien Fabre, Tobias Kruse, Bluebery Planterose and Stefanie Stantcheva

14 October 2022

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Investment Zones, deadweight, and displacement

Following his previous blog on bidding for Investment Zones in the UK and that it should be a 'no-brainer', Henry Overman outlines in detail the existing theory and evidence on deadweight and displacement - two core issu...Read more...

Henry G. Overman

13 October 2022

Blog
LSE:
Inflation: the energy crisis explained (video)

Rising energy bills drive up the cost of living. LSE's Anna Valero explains what led to the current energy crisis and how the transition to net zero emissions will help. ...Read more...

Anna Valero

12 October 2022

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Investment Zones: bid now, reflect later

With just three days left to draft initial bids for Investment Zones around the UK, Henry Overman addresses questions and concerns of some local areas still asking whether they should be bidding to host zones. Given the ...Read more...

Henry G. Overman

12 October 2022

Blog
Vox EU:
Working from home around the world

The Covid-19 pandemic triggered a surge in working from home. This big shift has endured and is likely to continue, even after the pandemic. This column reports that employees value the option to work from home 2-3 days ...Read more...

Cevat Giray Aksoy, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Steven J. Davis, Mathias Dolls and Pablo Zarate

8 October 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Is daylight saving time good for us?

Daylight saving time is observed in over seventy countries with the goal of reducing energy use. Studies show that time shifts, by reducing the number of hours we sleep, decrease our life satisfaction. Joan Costa-Font, S...Read more...

Joan Costa-Font, Sarah Flèche and Ricardo Pagan

5 October 2022

Blog
CEPR & VideoVox Economics:
Why do some regions fail to recover from economic shocks? (video)

Recorded at CEPR's June Paris Symposium, Tony Venables presents his research on those regional disparities in the UK which originated in the 1970s through negative trade and technology shocks and whose long run consequen...Read more...

Anthony J. Venables

5 October 2022

Blog
LSE Europp:
The well-being cost of inflation inequalities

Inflation is not distributed equally across society. Alberto Prati assesses the wellbeing cost of inflation inequalities in France, showing why measuring them is important for a policy agenda that places citizens' wellbe...Read more...

Alberto Prati

3 October 2022

Blog
Harvard Business Review:
The UK economic crisis might not be a one-off

Markets have reacted poorly to the UK government's new "mini-budget" combining energy price caps with tax cuts for the well off. The government's search for a quick fix to economic growth is a mistake. In fact, restartin...Read more...

John Van Reenen

3 October 2022

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
The link between growth and immigration: unpicking the confusion

More people in a country leads to a bigger economy, but not necessarily an improved standard of living. Alan Manning unpicks the complexities in the debate....Read more...

Alan Manning

3 October 2022

Blog
Economics Observatory:
What's happening to the UK economy?

Recently, the UK saw concerns that the pound would sink to parity with the dollar, turmoil in the bond market and the Bank of England forced to step in. What caused the financial market gyrations? Using interactive chart...Read more...

Richard Davies

30 September 2022

Blog
SDG Action:
Stimulating innovation for net zero

New technologies will play a vital role in achieving net zero. Getting them on stream and in widespread use fast enough to prevent climate catastrophe calls for bold and urgent action to unblock essential investment....Read more...

Anna Valero

27 September 2022

Blog
The Conversation:
Research into 1930s commuting in London shows how public transport boosts the labour market

An argument to justify public transport closures has often been lack of profitability for the service provider. However, Andrew J. Seltzer and Jonathan Wadsworth find that such discussions often miss much of the full val...Read more...

Andrew Seltzer and Jonathan Wadsworth

27 September 2022

Blog
Vox EU:
The G7 plan for a price cap on Russian oil: Views of leading economists

To limit the funding of Russia's continued aggravation towards Ukraine and its subsequent impact on soaring energy prices, the G7 countries plan to impose a price cap on purchases of Russian oil and related products. Man...Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

27 September 2022

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Investment zones and the problem of displacement

In September 2022, Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng set out plans for 'Investment Zones' as the part of the government's renewed focus on growth. A crucial question around area based initiatives is the extent to which growth in...Read more...

Will Brett-Harding

26 September 2022

Blog
Economics Observatory:
US student debt forgiveness: should the UK follow suit?

A recently announced policy package will ease the burden of student debt for millions of Americans. Richard Murphy, Stuart Campbell, Gill Wyness and Lindsey Macmillan contend that, due to differences between the national...Read more...

Stuart Campbell, Lindsey Macmillan, Richard Murphy and Gill Wyness

26 September 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
The shortest economic suicide note in history? How the mini-budget fails to help long-run growth

The UK has recently announced tax cuts and spending increases which exceed those implemented during the pandemic. John Van Reenen believes a reckoning will be unavoidable. He writes that policies for good growth are a lo...Read more...

John Van Reenen

26 September 2022

Blog
Vox Dev:
Responsible sourcing? Theory and evidence from Costa Rica

The authors investigate whether responsible sourcing policies implemented by multinational enterprises for their suppliers have impacts on the ground and, if they do, what these mean for firms and workers in the host cou...Read more...

Alonso Alfaro-Urena, Benjamin Faber, Cecile Gaubert, Isabela Manelici and Jose P Vasquez

23 September 2022

Blog
Vox EU:
Energy costs: views of leading economists on windfall taxes and consumer price caps

Proposed policy responses to steeply rising energy costs include windfall taxes, and caps on consumer energy prices. Asked whether an energy price cap would be a more appropriate immediate response to inflation than rais...Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

19 September 2022

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Is inflation avoidable?

Inflation in the UK is at a 40 year high, with prices rising across the economy. Shoppers can look for cheaper products, but many are already buying the lowest-cost options and the prices of those bargains are going up f...Read more...

Richard Davies

5 September 2022

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Lessons from a robust evaluation of the UK's Eat Out to Help Out scheme

Eat Out to Help Out had a limited effect on footfall and recruitment. Supporting businesses in any context (Covid-19, energy crisis, etc.) needs consideration of effective mechanisms for encouraging programme take-up and...Read more...

Gonzalo Nunez-Chaim

2 September 2022

Blog
The Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy:
Trade policy, regional disparities, and inclusive growth

Places matter to people. For many people, the place where they grow up will become the place where they live and work. Many countries experience regional disparities in economic performance that are profound and persiste...Read more...

Henry G. Overman

2 September 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
What should the next UK prime minister do?

Britain faces crises in energy and productivity, both of which have been crushing people's living standards. However, neither is being addressed by the two leadership candidates, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss. Anna Valero an...Read more...

Anna Valero and John Van Reenen

2 September 2022

Blog
UK in a changing Europe:
The Johnson legacy: education

Andrew Eyles explains that while the government's goals in education policy have been ambitious and are to be applauded, the policies in place fall short of the targets set out as part of the broader levelling up agenda....Read more...

Andrew Eyles

26 August 2022

Blog
Vox EU:
Firming up price inflation

Inflation rates in the UK and US are currently at their highest levels in over 30 years. This column uses firm-level data from the Decision Maker Panel to study inflation dynamics in the UK, and in particular since the s...Read more...

Lena Anayi, Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Gregory Thwaites and Ivan Yotzov

26 August 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
The UK must recognise its enduring economic strengths

A decade of stagnant living standards, weak productivity and low investment combined with a coming decade of major change - driven by Covid-19, Brexit and the need for accelerated action on Net Zero - mean that it is cru...Read more...

Josh De Lyon, Ralf Martin, Juliana Oliveira-Cunha, Arjun Shah, Krishan Shah, Gregory Thwaites and Anna Valero

25 August 2022

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Minimum wages and living wages: what happens in times of inflation?

It is widely accepted that minimum wages are an effective way to help workers at the lower end of the income distribution without damaging their job opportunities. But while the UK's minimum wage has risen faster than th...Read more...

Alan Manning

22 August 2022

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Are wages keeping up with the cost of living?

There is currently much debate about whether pay should keep pace with either productivity or inflation. How we measure price growth has a big influence on what we observe, shedding light on how different parts of the ec...Read more...

Jonathan Wadsworth

15 August 2022

Blog
Vox EU:
Structural change within versus across firms: evidence from the US

One feature of the US economy over the last five decades has been the transition away from manufacturing towards services. This column takes a firm-level view of structural change from 1977-2019 to study these sectoral d...Read more...

Xiang Ding, Teresa C. Fort, Stephen J. Redding and Peter K. Schott

11 August 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
How to future-proof your career

The job market is in constant flux; industries change or become obsolete and new technologies emerge and disrupt. In conversation with Jasmine Virhia, Grace Lordan explains what strategies we can put in place now to make...Read more...

Grace Lordan

11 August 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Britain, a services superpower sinking into stagnation

British households have low levels of financial resilience and are forecast a sluggish living standards recovery coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, Britain is the result of an economy defined by the low grow...Read more...

Resolution Foundation and Centre for Economic Performance

5 August 2022

Blog
IFS Explainer:
Why is inequality in the labour market growing? (video)

The world of work is changing. There have been huge shifts in the kinds of work we do and the types of organisations we work for. What has been happening to inequalities in the UK's labour market? What have been the imp...Read more...

Giulia Giupponi

3 August 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Falling behind, the self-employed would sacrifice 10% of their income for an insurance scheme

Two years after the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, incomes of the self-employed in the UK are still well below their pre-pandemic levels. The number of self-employed workers dropped during the crisis and has not yet r...Read more...

Robert Blackburn and Maria Ventura

28 July 2022

Blog
UCLA Housing Voice:
Skyscrapers with Gabriel Ahlfeldt (podcast)

Skyscrapers! We can't help but find them fascinating. Some cities are full of skyscrapers, and others have none. Developers built a 70-story tower on that parcel, but the proposed building just down the street is only 30...Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt

27 July 2022

Blog
The Overview:
Has the pandemic changed the workplace forever? (podcast)

Millions of US workers are quitting or changing jobs in an ongoing trend dubbed the Great Resignation. With job vacancies rising to record highs on both sides of the Atlantic, is the UK also facing a resignations surge? ...Read more...

Jonathan Wadsworth

27 July 2022

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Inflation update: what's driving the cost of living crisis?

Prices in the UK continue to rise, with the Consumer Price Index up 9.4% in June. A closer look at the underlying data shows that more items are going up in price than are going down, suggesting high inflation could be h...Read more...

Richard Davies

20 July 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
What lies behind Sri Lanka's collapse?

Corruption, the preferential treatment of connections, dependence on debt finance, and explosive borrowing from China have combined to push Sri Lanka into economic collapse. Political instability has only prolonged the c...Read more...

Simon Commander, Thamashi De Silva and Saul Estrin

19 July 2022

Blog
Vox EU:
Communication costs, science, and innovation

It seems obvious that lowering the cost of communication among innovators would facilitate scientific and technological progress. Yet, few studies examine this relationship. This column explores the introduction of the f...Read more...

Walker Hanlon, Stephan Heblich, Ferdinando Monte and Martin Schmitz

15 July 2022

Blog
Vox EU:
Using machine learning to assess the impact of deep trade agreements

Modern preferential trade agreements contain a host of provisions that go beyond tariff liberalisation. By adapting techniques from the machine learning literature, this column develops data-driven methods for selecting ...Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Valentina Corradi, Nadia Rocha, Michele Ruta, João Santos Silva and Tom Zylkin

8 July 2022

Blog
VoxTalks Economics:
Levelling up Europe's left-behind places (podcast)

Recorded live at CEPR Paris Symposium 2022: Inequality isn't just between individuals, but between regions too. Henry Overman explains to Tim Phillips why these disparities exist, why they are so persistent, and whether ...Read more...

Henry G. Overman

8 July 2022

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
The sanctification of science during the pandemic

Maja Graso and Paul Dolan examine the manifestations and consequences of firmly-held beliefs in COVID-19 science....Read more...

Paul Dolan and Maja Graso

8 July 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Green growth and electric vehicles: the role of recycling

The UK needs an electric vehicle (EV) battery recycling industry. This could strengthen the British EV supply chain and support the future development of UK-based gigafactories (large-scale battery factories) and electri...Read more...

Robert J.R. Elliott, Gavin Harper, Laura Lander and Viet Nguyen-Tien

7 July 2022

Blog
Vox EU:
Financial crises as drivers of populism: a new channel

Financial crises have severe economic costs. This column shows that they also entail major political costs. It argues that the global financial crisis, and associated Great Recession, represents a watershed for populism ...Read more...

Luigi Guiso, Helios Herrera, Massimo Morelli and Tommaso Sonno

7 July 2022

Blog
LSE Review of Books:
Book review: A Handbook for Wellbeing Policy-Making by Paul Frijters and Christian Krekel

In A Handbook for Wellbeing Policy-Making, Paul Frijters and Christian Krekel offer a new guide to wellbeing-driven public policy, focusing on the proposal to replace GDP with wellbeing as the key metric to assess societ...Read more...

Paul Frijters and Christian Krekel

6 July 2022

Blog
Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy:
Inclusion and wellbeing

The overarching good, according to economists, is utility, by which they mean wellbeing....Read more...

Richard Layard

6 July 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Bridging the productivity gap between different areas in the UK

An economic strategy that helps the UK respond to change and tackle stagnant living standards and weak productivity will need to address stubborn spatial disparities in economic performance across the UK. Addressing thes...Read more...

Paul Brandily, Mimosa Distefano, Helene Donnat, Immanuel Feld, Henry G. Overman and Krishan Shah

5 July 2022

Blog
Banque de France:
Ten years on from the business tax reform: how has it affected companies' behaviour?

In 2010, the French corporation tax known as the local economic contribution or CET (contribution economique territoriale) replaced the business tax (TP - taxe professionnelle). This latter tax on production had come und...Read more...

Antonin Bergeaud, Edouard Jousselin and Clement Malgouyres

1 July 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Net zero transition to mean significant change for 1.3 million workers

The UK's experience of structural change through deindustrialisation during the 1970s and 1980s drove up unemployment, concentrated among particular parts of the population, and left deep scars on some parts of the count...Read more...

Molly Broome, Stefano Cellini, Kathleen Henehan, Charlie McCurdy, Capucine Riom, Anna Valero and Guglielmo Ventura

30 June 2022

Blog
Economics Observatory:
What would it take to level up the UK?

The government's levelling up agenda seeks to reduce disparities across the UK. Policies to boost economic performance will need to attract workers and firms away from London and the South East and improve opportunities ...Read more...

Henry G. Overman and Helen Simpson

27 June 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Brexit will exacerbate long-term challenges facing the UK economy

Leaving the EU represents the largest change in the UK's relationship with the rest of the world in half a century. The impact won't be a one-off event. Structural changes will take place over the long term, as capital a...Read more...

Swati Dhingra, Emily Fry, Sophie Hale and Ningyuan Jia

24 June 2022

Blog
VoxTalks Economics:
The economics of Brexit (podcast)

The latest CEPR ebook investigates the impact of Brexit so far on the economies of the UK and EU. Tim Phillips talks to three of the authors: Jonathan Portes, Thomas Sampson and Sarah Hall....Read more...

Thomas Sampson

23 June 2022

Blog
Vox EU:
The economics of Brexit: a new eBook

What has Brexit meant for the UK economy? Six years on from the referendum, and over a year since the implementation of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement, this column introduces a new eBook which brings together ...Read more...

Jonathan Portes

23 June 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Low pay and insecurity in the UK labour market

Minimum wage increases have driven down the incidence of low hourly pay, but there has been much less progress elsewhere for low earners. Low pay is widespread among the self-employed, who do not benefit from the minimum...Read more...

Nye Cominetti, Rui Costa, Nikhil Datta and Felicia Odamtten

22 June 2022

Blog
Centre for European Reform:
Is Brexit to blame for Britain's economic woes? (podcast)

Thomas Sampson, of the London School of Economics, and John Springford, the CER's deputy director, discuss and compare their findings on how Brexit has affected UK goods trade and inflation, and John shares his latest re...Read more...

Thomas Sampson

14 June 2022

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Why is it so difficult to tackle the lack of affordable housing?

Boris Johnson has pledged that more people will be helped onto the property ladder and that the supply of housing will be improved. Christian Hilber and Olivier Schoni consider the history of housing policy and the chall...Read more...

Christian A. L. Hilber and Olivier Schöni

9 June 2022

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Ukraine's accession to the European Union: what difference would it make?

Existing agreements between Ukraine and the EU have already promoted substantial trade flows. Accession would have bigger implications for freedom of movement of capital and workers - investment inflows and migration out...Read more...

Richard Disney and Erika Szyszczak

7 June 2022

Blog
The Sutton Trust:
Gloomy prospects for social mobility in the pandemic era

Lee Elliot Major and Andrew Eyles explain how a gap in missed education between richer and poorer children was exacerbated by stark home learning divides and the likely consequences for social mobility....Read more...

Lee Elliot Major and Andrew Eyles

1 June 2022

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
What we learnt about the Covid economy

In spring 2020, many countries imposed radical, urgent actions including lockdowns to protect their citizens' health - but there was also a need to protect people from the worst of the ensuing economic storm. Academics a...Read more...

Helen Ward

27 May 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Return to work: a dictionary of behavioural biases

Firms are increasingly allowing their employees to decide if they work at home or in the office. But the return to work is fraught with many biases. Julia Bladinieres-Justo, Aleesha Bruce, Anisah Ramli, Nichaphat Surawat...Read more...

Teresa Almeida, Julia Bladinieres-Justo, Aleesha Bruce, Grace Lordan, Anisah Ramli, Nichaphat Surawattananon, Chanya Trakulmaykee and Jasmine Virhia

26 May 2022

Blog
LSE Europp:
Evidence from Greece: the potential pitfalls of using education as a welfare policy instrument

Policymakers frequently use education as a welfare policy instrument. But can these policies have unintended consequences? Christos Genakos and Eleni Kyrkopoulou present findings from a case study in Greece where a socia...Read more...

Christos Genakos and Eleni Kyrkopoulou

25 May 2022

Blog
The Royal Society:
What actually makes us happy?

Professor Lord Richard Layard considers the importance of wellbeing and happiness amongst our young people for their future....Read more...

Richard Layard

24 May 2022

Blog
Programme on Innovation and Diffusion Blog:
Risk of Business Failure - POID Tracker - Stalled Covid Recovery

Research shows that small firms are more likely to report they are at risk of failing in recent months, amid growing concerns about challenges such as Brexit controls, the Ukraine crisis and energy price hikes....Read more...

Peter Lambert, Apolline Marion and John Van Reenen

24 May 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Improving productivity through better management practices

John Van Reenen, Nicholas Bloom, and Raffaella Sadun explain how the World Management Survey provides the evidence needed for designing industrial strategies to tackle low productivity....Read more...

Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

20 May 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Five ways for leaders to work faster, better, and more inclusively

As the world of work changes, so should leadership. Grace Lordan describes five ways for leaders to become more effective....Read more...

Grace Lordan

19 May 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Imposing high tariffs on imported Russian gas: would it be effective?

As Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues and many call for a strengthening of sanctions, an alternative to a full energy embargo has been discussed in the form of European Union tariffs on imports of Russian gas. The In...Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

17 May 2022

Blog
VoxEU:
Trade with nominal rigidities: understanding the unemployment and welfare effects of the China shock

Researchers examine how increased competition from China impacts the welfare of the US labour market....Read more...

Andres Rodriguez-Clare, Mauricio Ulate and Jose P Vasquez

17 May 2022

Blog
Cogito:
University Challenge - bridging the local and the global

Anna Valero notes that universities play a special role in driving social and economic progress and shows how they can do even more to benefit their local communities....Read more...

Anna Valero

17 May 2022

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
What do we know so far about the effect of school closures on educational inequality?

Nearly all schools closed at some point during the pandemic. Reviewing the evidence so far, Jo Blanden, Matthias Doepke and Jan Stuhler warn that these closures will have a major negative impact on educational inequality...Read more...

Jo Blanden, Matthias Doepke and Jan Stuhler

16 May 2022

Blog
LSE Research:
State effectiveness and the climate crisis

Combatting the climate crisis is not just an issue of finding money for the right kinds of investment but also ensuring that it is spent effectively, says economist Tim Besley....Read more...

Timothy Besley

12 May 2022

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
Working harder and longer: how managers use their time when working from home

Managers worked longer hours during the pandemic and changed how they used their time, find Thomaz Teodorovicz, Raffaella Sadun, Andrew L. Kun, and Orit Shaer. They suggest how better technology, including AI, could help...Read more...

Andrew L. Kun, Raffaella Sadun, Orit Shaer and Thomaz Teodorovicz

29 April 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Brexit: the major trade disruption came after the UK-EU agreement took effect in 2021

The impact of Brexit on UK trade is a highly contested topic. Rebecca Freeman, Kalina Manova, Thomas Prayer, and Thomas Sampson summarise the findings of new research on how Brexit has affected the UK's goods trade with ...Read more...

Rebecca Freeman, Kalina Manova, Thomas Prayer and Thomas Sampson

26 April 2022

Blog
VoxEU:
The impact of the war in Ukraine on economic uncertainty

Economists review the effects of the war in Ukraine, identifying where and to what extent measures of economic uncertainty have increased....Read more...

Lena Anayi, Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Gregory Thwaites and Ivan Yotzov

16 April 2022

Blog
Banque de France:
Technological change and outsourcing: an illustration through broadband Internet access in France

The work organisation in companies is increasingly "fragmented" due to the growing use of outsourcing of activities that are not considered as "core business". Outsourcing is the process whereby a company separates itsel...Read more...

Antonin Bergeaud and Clement Mazet-Sonilhac

14 April 2022

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Sanctions on Russia: what are the ramifications of this new trade war?

Following the invasion of Ukraine, Western sanctions have targeted Russia's trade, companies, individuals and financial sector. The measures, which are far more wide-ranging than those following the annexation of Crimea ...Read more...

Adam Cygan, Richard Disney and Erika Szyszczak

13 April 2022

Blog
UK in a Changing Europe:
Levelling up education

Andrew Eyles examines the UK's levelling up white paper, explaining how the plans for education may need to go further to be fully effective....Read more...

Andrew Eyles

12 April 2022

Blog
VoxEU:
Import liberalisation as export destruction: evidence from the United States

Holger Breinlich, Elsa Leromain, Dennis Novy and Thomas Sampson look at US-China trade relations to examine how import liberalisation brings down import costs and increases competition, but can also lead to lower export ...Read more...

Holger Breinlich, Elsa Leromain, Dennis Novy and Thomas Sampson

11 April 2022

Blog
VoxEU:
Recidivism and neighbourhood institutions

Between 30% and 50% of individuals sentenced to prison are re-incarcerated in the two years after their release. Andres Barrios-Fernandez and Jorge Garcia-Hombrados examine links between church openings in Chile and re-i...Read more...

Andrés Barrios Fernández and Jorge Garcia-Hombrados

9 April 2022

Blog
VoxEU:
Global supply chain risk and resilience

Supply disruptions caused by systemic shocks such as Brexit, Covid, and Russia-Ukraine tensions have catapulted the issue of risk in global supply chains to the top of policy agendas. In some sectors, however, there is a...Read more...

Richard E. Baldwin and Rebecca Freeman

6 April 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Political systems affect innovation

Innovation drives economic growth, however data indicates innovative capability differs across economies. Simon Commander, Saul Estrin and Thamashi De Silva suggest democracy is associated with more innovation overall, t...Read more...

Simon Commander, Thamashi De Silva and Saul Estrin

5 April 2022

Blog
VoxTalks Economics:
Motivated science and green innovation (podcast)

Scientists create innovation. Is this because they are paid to do it, or because they care about the outcome? Tim Besley tells Tim Phillips how motivated science drives down the cost of innovation and may accelerate the ...Read more...

Timothy Besley

1 April 2022

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Two years on, how has the pandemic affected businesses in the UK?

Two years on from the start of the pandemic, this article takes stock of how businesses were affected, the extent to which things have recovered and where the effects of Covid-19 are still being felt....Read more...

Lena Anayi, Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Gregory Thwaites and Ivan Yotzov

31 March 2022

Blog
Wheeler Institute for Business and Development, London Business School:
Harnessing the potential of urbanisation in Africa: land and housing policy

Tanner Regan examines the potential for urban planning to encourage public and private investment in land and infrastructure....Read more...

Tanner Regan

29 March 2022

Blog
VoxEU:
The hidden costs of incentivising later retirement

Over the past two decades, many countries have reformed their public pension systems in pursuit of desirable fiscal effects, often by introducing or strengthening incentives for later retirement. However, the welfare eff...Read more...

Jonas Kolsrud, Camille Landais, Daniel Reck and Johannes Spinnewijn

22 March 2022

Blog
Economics Observatory:
What can we learn from the latest World Happiness Report?

Now in its tenth year, Maria Cotofan explains how the World Happiness Report offers an insight into the progress that has been made - both in terms of understanding the determinants of global wellbeing and in recognising...Read more...

Maria Cotofan

21 March 2022

Blog
Africa at LSE:
How multinationals exploited a health crisis to accelerate deforestation in Liberia

The way multinational enterprises conduct themselves during periods of crisis, such as an epidemic, is of key importance in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. A health crisis may alter the short-run incentives of some multi...Read more...

Tommaso Sonno and Davide Zufacchi

18 March 2022

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
Burglaries and robberies fell during Covid - but in the poorest parts of Britain, violent crime is up

Covid-19 brought about changes in the way people work, shop, socialise and travel. Patterns of crime and policing have changed too, as a report by Shubhangi Agrawal, Tom Kirchmaier and Carmen Villa-Llera highlights....Read more...

Shubhangi Agrawal, Tom Kirchmaier and Carmen Villa-Llera

18 March 2022

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
It is through excessive consumption of alcohol that football games trigger certain domestic abuse perpetrators

Reports of domestic abuse rise after football matches. Ria Ivandic, Tom Kirchmaier and Neus Torres Blas find that binge drinking is the key factor, with alcohol-linked violence against live-in partners happening more oft...Read more...

Ria Ivandic, Tom Kirchmaier and Neus Torres-Blas

17 March 2022

Blog
Economics Observatory:
How would minimum entry grades affect opportunities in higher education?

The UK government is consulting on the introduction of minimum eligibility requirements for access to student loans. Claire Crawford and Gill Wyness argue that if such a reform is introduced, it is likely to prevent many...Read more...

Claire Crawford and Gill Wyness

14 March 2022

Blog
VoxEU:
Economic consequences of Russia's invasion of Ukraine: views of leading economists

Romesh Vaitilingam reports on the views of leading economists concerning the likely economic consequences of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the responses by the international community....Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

10 March 2022

Blog
Economics Observatory:
How can we reduce gender gaps in mathematics education?

Underperformance by girls and young women in mathematics relative to their male peers is a loss of talent that may hinder productivity growth. Almudena Sevilla and Pilar Cuevas-Ruiz explore new developments in our unders...Read more...

Pilar Cuevas-Ruiz and Almudena Sevilla

10 March 2022

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Sanctions and the targeting of 'elite' interests: the effectiveness of targeting in the case of Iran

The targeting of elite interests has been at the centre of recent sanctions policies, and will be a major strategic concern as the world responds to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Mirko Draca, Jason Garred, and Nele Wa...Read more...

Mirko Draca, Jason Garred and Nele Warrinnier

4 March 2022

Blog
VoxEU:
Inflation, market power, and price controls: views of leading economists

With sharply rising US inflation prompting debate about the potential role of powerful firms in driving up prices and whether antitrust interventions and/or price controls may be an effective policy response, the IGM For...Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

25 February 2022

Blog
VoxEU:
Misallocation explains worse management among Mexican firms

The implications of poor management in developing countries are becoming well known, but what drives these differences is less clear. Based on large new surveys in Mexico and the US, this column argues that misallocation...Read more...

Nicholas Bloom, Leonardo Iacovone, Mariana Pereira-Lopez and John Van Reenen

25 February 2022

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
The progressive quandary: how to design an immigration policy that balances competing objectives

There is a tension between strong employment rights, a supportive welfare state, equal rights for migrants and locals, and an open, non-selective immigration policy that creates hard decisions for progressive politicians...Read more...

Alan Manning

24 February 2022

Blog
Economics Observatory:
How might Scottish independence affect the costs of international trade?

If Scotland were to become an independent country, there would be a new international border with the rest of the UK. Thomas Sampson considers how additional costs that are inevitably created by borders would affect trad...Read more...

Thomas Sampson

18 February 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Will the US child tax credit reduce poverty and improve outcomes for children and parents?

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 temporarily increased the value of the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,000 for children aged 6-16 and to $3,600 for younger children. To date, the Biden administration has been una...Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

18 February 2022

Blog
VoxEU:
Inequalities in student to degree match

Researchers find students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to be undermatched to their degree courses both academically and in terms of earnings potential. Women are more likely than men to be underma...Read more...

Stuart Campbell, Lindsey Macmillan, Richard Murphy and Gill Wyness

13 February 2022

Blog
VoxEU:
Teleworking is here to stay and may raise productivity if implemented appropriately

The pandemic triggered a surge in teleworking, raising questions about its persistence as well as its impact on firm performance and worker wellbeing. This column argues that teleworking is here to stay - for most worker...Read more...

Pawel Adrjan, Gabriele Ciminelli, Chiara Criscuolo, Peter N. Gal, Alexandre Judes, Michael Koelle, Timo Leidecker, Francesco Losma, Giuseppe Nicoletti, Cyrille Schwellnus and Tara Sinclair

10 February 2022

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Are we really witnessing a 'great resignation'?

Jonathan Wadsworth questions the idea that the Covid-19 pandemic has led to a large rise in the number of people quitting their jobs, either to move to a new job or a new life outside work....Read more...

Jonathan Wadsworth

8 February 2022

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Firms' digital innovation in the pandemic: how have workers been affected?

Covid-19 has accelerated digitisation in businesses and changes in working practices. Anna Valero, Capucine Riom and Juliana Oliveira-Cunha show how effective training and skills policies will be needed to support conti...Read more...

Juliana Oliveira-Cunha, Capucine Riom and Anna Valero

3 February 2022

Blog
LSE Politics and Policy:
'Levelling-up': the government's plans aren't enough to promote economic growth and tackle inequality

The government's levelling-up plan dodges the hard choices says Henry Overman. Countering the economic forces behind the UK's spatial disparities requires addressing multiple barriers and allowing differing approaches - ...Read more...

Henry G. Overman

2 February 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Economists discuss the impact of working from home on productivity, job satisfaction, and women's career progression

The pandemic has led to a big shift to working from home among people in occupations where it is possible for the jobs or some part of them to be done remotely. There has been much debate about the extent to which such f...Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

1 February 2022

Blog
Economics Observatory:
How might an independent Scotland build fiscal capacity?

Tim Besley and Chris Dann explain how developing a sense of common purpose is critical for nation-building - and would be a key issue for an independent Scotland....Read more...

Timothy Besley and Chris Dann

28 January 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
What is the optimal minimum wage?

With reports from the European Commission, the UK Treasury advocating significant increases in minimum wage levels, Gabriel Ahlfeldt, Duncan Roth, and Tobias Seidel explore whether such ambitious minimum wage increases i...Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Duncan Roth and Tobias Seidel

26 January 2022

Blog
UK in a Changing Europe:
Expecting Brexit

Swati Dhingra and Thomas Sampson examine how Brexit impacted UK trade and GDP before being implemented in 2021. Finding evidence that the UK's economy was around two to three per cent smaller at the end of 2019 than it w...Read more...

Swati Dhingra and Thomas Sampson

25 January 2022

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
Why wellbeing should be the goal of policy

Wherever there is a fixed budget constraint, money should be allocated to policies which give the greatest increase in wellbeing per pound of expenditure, argues Richard Layard. Even policy-makers unmoved by wellbeing as...Read more...

Richard Layard

24 January 2022

Blog
Brookings:
Gone digital: technology diffusion in the digital era

Flavio Calvino and Chiara Criscuolo examine the reasons for low productivity growth in a period of fast advancement in technological progress and the spread of digital technologies....Read more...

Flavio Calvino and Chiara Criscuolo

20 January 2022

Blog
VoxEU:
Fair and inclusive markets: why fostering dynamism matters

Philippe Aghion, Reda Cherif and Fuad Hasanov explain how economic dynamism is crucial for achieving inclusive growth and shared prosperity....Read more...

Philippe Aghion, Reda Cherif and Fuad Hasanov

20 January 2022

Blog
VoxEU:
Working from home and corporate real estate

As remote working became more common during Covid-19, Antonin Bergeaud, Jean Benoit Eymeoud, Thomas Garcia and Dorian Henricot examine how corporate real-estate market participants adjusted to the growth of teleworking i...Read more...

Antonin Bergeaud, Jean Benoit Eymeoud, Thomas Garcia and Dorian Henricot

18 January 2022

Blog
VoxEU:
Tracking business dynamism during the Covid-19 pandemic: new cross-country evidence and visualisation tool

Stefano Agresti, Flavio Calvino, Chiara Criscuolo, Francesco Manaresi and Rudy Verlhac employ a new data visualisation tool to reveal the impact on business dynamism of the Covid-19 crisis in 2020 and in recovery. Findin...Read more...

Stefano Agresti, Flavio Calvino, Chiara Criscuolo, Francesco Manaresi and Rudy Verlhac

17 January 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Have you quit your New Year's resolution by Quitter's Day?

Many people make New Year's resolutions, but by mid-January most resolutions will have been left aside. Workouts are skipped in favour of Netflix. Salads are shunned in favour of pasta. And across the UK Dry January is r...Read more...

Grace Lordan

17 January 2022

Blog
VoxEU:
The environmental burden of the international job market for economists

Each year, the 'international job market for economists' involves over 1,000 junior candidates and several hundred recruiters from all over the world meeting for short pre-screening interviews at annual congresses in Eur...Read more...

Olivier Chanel, Alberto Prati and Morgan Raux

16 January 2022

Blog
VoxEU:
Opening the black box of hospital mergers

Despite the current wave of US hospital mergers, it is unclear how they change behaviour and performance. Martin Gaynor, Adam Sacarny, Raffaella Sadun, Chad Syverson and Shruthi Venkatesh show that while mergers have ach...Read more...

Martin Gaynor, Adam Sacarny, Raffaella Sadun, Chad Syverson and Shruthi Venkatesh

16 January 2022

Blog
VoxEU:
The value of online gig economy platforms

The gig economy and online labour platforms often trade off increased flexibility for lower employment security. Christopher Stanton and Catherine Thomas show how traditional labour market regulations, such as minimum wa...Read more...

Christopher T. Stanton and Catherine Thomas

15 January 2022

Blog
VoxTalks Economics:
AI: software for autocrats? (podcast)

The Chinese government isn't just a world leader in the use of AI for facial recognition, its orders are funding innovation in its domestic industry too. But what's good news for entrepreneurs may be bad news for politic...Read more...

Noam Yuchtman

14 January 2022

Blog
VoxEU:
'Potential capital', working from home, and economic resilience

Janice Eberly, Jonathan Haskel and Paul Mizen estimate the potential capital and labour saved through working from home that would otherwise have been lost during the Covid-19 pandemic....Read more...

Janice Eberly, Jonathan Haskel and Paul Mizen

13 January 2022

Blog
Innovation Growth Lab:
Lessons on designing tech RCTs with SMEs

Capucine Riom, Anna Valero and Juliana Oliveira-Cunha look at how new technology based on artificial intelligence can be used to help small and medium-sized businesses improve productivity....Read more...

Juliana Oliveira-Cunha, Capucine Riom and Anna Valero

12 January 2022

Blog
VoxEU:
Quantifying the full impact of country-specific policies on trade flows

Rebecca Freeman, Mario Larch, Angelos Theodorakopoulos and Yoto Yotov propose a solution to issues measuring country-specific impact using structural gravity models - a popular way to analyse the impact of trade policie...Read more...

Rebecca Freeman, Mario Larch, Angelos Theodorakopoulos and Yoto Yotov

12 January 2022

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
Prosociality and the pandemic: adolescents from poorer backgrounds suffered more

Camille Terrier, Daniel L Chen and Matthias Sutter look at how Covid-19 infections affected adolescents' prosociality, an essential non-cognitive skill. The prosociality gap between students with high and low socio-econo...Read more...

Daniel L. Chen, Matthias Sutter and Camille Terrier

11 January 2022

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
Covid has hit social mobility in the UK, and young people's prospects are shrinking

The economic impact of Covid has hit young people, and especially poorer young people, harder than others. Andrew Eyles assesses the extent of the shock and what it means for social mobility, which was already in decline...Read more...

Andrew Eyles

10 January 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Omicron raises fresh questions: the economy, travel bans, and vaccine distribution

With the emergence of a new strain of the virus that causes Covid-19 re-opening debates about the economic impact of the pandemic, the success of efforts to achieve global distribution of vaccines and the value of travel...Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

5 January 2022

Blog
VoxEU:
Comparing online to in-person meetings

Covid-19 resulted in a shift towards working from home. This column discusses the findings of a survey of over 2,000 UK working adults, which suggest that online meetings are more efficient for smaller gatherings of 2 to...Read more...

Nicholas Bloom, Paul Mizen and Shivani Taneja

4 January 2022

Blog
LSE Business Review:
How we feel depends on what we pay attention to

Policymakers are increasingly focusing on wellbeing as a policy goal, leaning on wellbeing measures to aid their work. Paul Dolan writes that the existing frameworks fail to properly account for the fundamental mechanism...Read more...

Paul Dolan

3 January 2022

Blog
VoxEU:
The human side of productivity: uncovering the role of skills and diversity for firm productivity

Rising dispersion in productivity across firms has focused attention on the drivers of superior performances of a minority of firms at the 'productivity frontier' and disappointing performances of the remaining 'producti...Read more...

Chiara Criscuolo, Peter N. Gal, Timo Leidecker and Giuseppe Nicoletti

23 December 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Autocratic AI dystopias: from science fiction to social science fact

The growth of artificial intelligence technology brings the potential of a 'fourth industrial revolution', but also poses challenges for democratic institutions. This column analyses the mutually reinforcing relationship...Read more...

Martin Beraja, Andrew Kao, David Y. Yang and Noam Yuchtman

17 December 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
SMILE in 2022

As 2021 draws to a close, Grace Lordan offers six life lessons rooted in the behavioural sciences that will make you SMILE....Read more...

Grace Lordan

17 December 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Labour shortages have become widespread - this is how firms are responding

The majority of firms saw business grow between April and October 2021, after the shocks of Covid-19 and Brexit in 2020. But a new analysis by Swati Dhingra and Josh De Lyon into firms' experiences and expectations for t...Read more...

Josh De Lyon and Swati Dhingra

15 December 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
By allowing work to be done externally, broadband technology has increased outsourcing

Domestic outsourcing has grown substantially in developed countries over the past two decades. One reason for this is technological change that allows work to be done externally. Antonin Bergeaud, Clement Malgouyres, Cle...Read more...

Antonin Bergeaud, Clement Malgouyres, Clement Mazet-Sonilhac and Sara Signorelli

13 December 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Where are business angels from?

Business angels, those who invest in entrepreneurial ventures at a very early stage, play a key role for new business development, which can help improve a country's productivity. But where are business angels from? Fei...Read more...

Saul Estrin, Tomasz Mickiewicz and Fei Qin

9 December 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
When oligopolies confuse consumers, beware the rise of confusopoly

Confusing consumers can be profitable for companies, in particular in a competitive market where they can hardly increase their prices without losing their consumers. Ambre Nicolle, Christos Genakos, and Tobias Kretschme...Read more...

Christos Genakos, Tobias Kretschmer and Ambre Nicolle

8 December 2021

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
Which speakers will benefit from the rise in remote seminar presentations?

The pandemic has led to a surge in working from home and a fall in business travel. More meetings have taken place remotely. Marcus Biermann (Universite Catholique de Louvain and Centre for Economic Performance, LSE) loo...Read more...

Marcus Biermann

8 December 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Why natural experiments won the Nobel

Josh Angrist, David Card, and Guido Imbens shared the Nobel in 2021 for their pioneering work on natural experiments that, in the words of the committee, "revolutionised empirical research". Steve Pischke tells Tim Phill...Read more...

Jörn-Steffen Pischke

3 December 2021

Blog
Economics Observatory:
How are climate change policies affecting firms' competitiveness?

Policies to tackle climate change can impose costs on firms, especially those with high emissions of greenhouse gases, potentially reducing their competitiveness in global markets. Such measures can also encourage innova...Read more...

Mirabelle Muûls

2 December 2021

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Monitoring and evaluating during the Covid-19 recovery

Helene Donnat summarises the discussion from the What Works Growth's fifth Economic Recovery workshop, exploring the challenges places are facing in undertaking good quality monitoring and evaluation....Read more...

Helene Donnat

2 December 2021

Blog
LSE Politics and Policy:
The only way to substantially reduce the number of migrants crossing the Channel is through an agreement with France

Current government policy, whatever its rhetoric, is to muddle on, trying to deter crossings, trying to return migrants to safe countries but recognising that borders are inevitably porous. Muddling on is often an under-...Read more...

Alan Manning

26 November 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
The risks of prolonged higher inflation

With consumer prices rising at the fastest pace for three decades, what are the risks of prolonged higher inflation as a result of the current stance of fiscal and monetary policy, and what is the likely impact of an eas...Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

26 November 2021

Blog
Project Syndicate:
The Keys to Inclusive Growth

One of the COVID-19 pandemic's most important economic lessons is that innovation and inclusion need not be mutually exclusive. By pursuing the right policies, Western governments can promote both and thereby help to bri...Read more...

Philippe Aghion and Aymann Mhammedi

25 November 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Earning less than before Covid-19, the self-employed struggle to make ends meet

Amid the renewed drives for economic growth, self-employed workers still struggle to recover fully from the COVID-19 crisis. Robert Blackburn and Maria Ventura write that In September 2021, 28% of workers reported financ...Read more...

Robert Blackburn and Maria Ventura

24 November 2021

Blog
CVER Blog:
The effects of college capital projects on student outcomes

In the 2020 budget the UK government committed 1.5 billion pounds over five years to improve further education colleges. Stephen Gibbons, Claudia Hupkau, Sandra McNally and Henry Overman write that the policy should help...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons, Claudia Hupkau, Sandra McNally and Henry G. Overman

23 November 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Covid-19 spurred a wave of new technology adoption by UK businesses

The pandemic spurred three-quarters of firms to adopt new technologies, and businesses are keen to continue with this innovation mindset, which could be harnessed to fulfil the UK's net zero commitments. Anna Valero, Cap...Read more...

Juliana Oliveira-Cunha, Capucine Riom and Anna Valero

22 November 2021

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
Some of the self-employed are still struggling amid uncertainty about whether they could claim grants

The self-employed have not recovered from the pandemic despite five rounds of government support, find Robert Blackburn (University of Liverpool), Stephen Machin and Maria Ventura (LSE). More than a quarter are in financ...Read more...

Robert Blackburn, Stephen Machin and Maria Ventura

19 November 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Covid-19 uncertainty: a tale of two tails

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a massive spike in uncertainty. This column uses data from panel surveys of US and UK business executives to document how uncertainty over own-firm sales growth rates over the...Read more...

David E. Altig, Lena Anayi, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Steven J. Davis, Brent Meyer, Emil Mihaylov, Paul Mizen and Gregory Thwaites

16 November 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Social insurance policies in turbulent times: short-time work versus unemployment insurance

While the US aggressively extended generosity of unemployment insurance in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, Europe heavily subsidised reductions in hours worked and temporary layoffs through short-time work or similar ...Read more...

Giulia Giupponi, Camille Landais and Alice Lapeyre

12 November 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
How new technology can help clinical quality, productivity, and the healthcare workforce

Health information and communication technology (HICT) holds enormous potential to improve productivity. Several countries, the UK and the US included, have embraced this idea and spent billions of dollars on promoting H...Read more...

Ari Bronsoler, Joseph Doyle and John Van Reenen

10 November 2021

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Government policy fails to join the dots on the key challenges of innovation, net zero, and levelling up

Anna Valero writes that funding clean technologies, such as ocean and wind energy, can be a triple win, helping to address climate change, generating growth, and contributing to levelling up. Yet the 2021 Budget failed t...Read more...

Anna Valero

9 November 2021

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Firm innovation in the post-pandemic world

In response to CEP research on firms adopting new technology in respons to Covid-19, Matias Belacin writes about the UK innovation strategy and the long-term plans to further boost innovation-led growth....Read more...

Matias Belacin

8 November 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Bureaucracy and development

How does bureaucracy matter for development? Over the last years, an enormous interest in this question has created a large body of research, mostly focused around evidence from field experiments and micro-level administ...Read more...

Timothy Besley, Robin Burgess, Jonathan Old, Adnan Qadir Khan and Guo Xu

8 November 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
The globalisation backlash

As populist parties have surged across advanced democracies so, it seems, has a 'globalisation backlash'. This column provides descriptive evidence on the backlash, discusses its theoretical underpinnings within standard...Read more...

Italo Colantone, Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano and Piero Stanig

1 November 2021

Blog
LSE Politics and Policy:
The Net Zero Strategy provides a foundation which now needs to be cemented in investment, tax, and regulatory decisions

The UK government has delivered on its promise to publish a strategy for driving the country's economy towards net zero emissions by 2050. Esin Serin and Anna Valero write that the economy-wide Net Zero Strategy provides...Read more...

Esin Serin and Anna Valero

29 October 2021

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
What are the local implications of working from home?

Helene Donnat summarises the discussion of the What Works Growth's fourth Economic Recovery workshop, which discussed working from home: whether the trend is likely to persist and how it will affect workers - both in off...Read more...

Helene Donnat

29 October 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Covid-19 and structural change

Covid-19 has had a sizeable impact on where people work and how they shop. This column uses data from the Decision Maker Panel business survey of 3,000 UK firms to assess the longer-run impact. The pandemic is expected t...Read more...

Lena Anayi, Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Gregory Thwaites and Chris Young

28 October 2021

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Sink or swim time? Social mobility and the 2021 Budget

Lee Elliot Major assesses the prospects for social mobility and economic recovery in Rishi Sunak's 2021 Budget....Read more...

Lee Elliot Major

28 October 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
If you lie down with clones you will stagnate your career

We have a tendency to surround ourselves with and ask advice from people just like ourselves, putting us at risk of confirmation bias. When we want personal growth, Grace Lordan writes that we must think again about who ...Read more...

Grace Lordan

26 October 2021

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Nobel prize in economics recognises evidence-based impact evaluation

following the announcement of the 2021 Nobel prize in economics being awarded to David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens for their contributions to an evidence-based research, Gonzalo Nunez-Chaim explains the continu...Read more...

Gonzalo Nunez-Chaim

18 October 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Natural experiments in labour economics and beyond: the 2021 Nobel laureates David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens

The 2021 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences has been awarded to David Card of the University of California, Berkeley, "for his empirical contributions to labour economics", and to Joshua Angrist of MIT and Guido Imbens of ...Read more...

Jörn-Steffen Pischke

16 October 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Return of the guest worker: guest or servant?

Demands for temporary visas are increasing in the UK, but few are discussing the details of how such short-term visas are going to work. Alan Manning writes a nuanced account of the trade-offs involved. The worse the con...Read more...

Alan Manning

11 October 2021

Blog
Buzzsprout:
Emissions: Impossible? What does a Net Zero economy really look like?

Dr Anna Valero - ESRC innovation fellow at London School of Economics - is a guest on 'Emissions: Impossible?' a podcast showcasing some of the most ground-breaking research and innovation in climate change, to reveal wh...Read more...

Anna Valero

11 October 2021

Blog
English Premier League podcast: EPLpod:
Football, alcohol and domestic abuse

Domestic abuse increases following football games - and this increase is driven by alcohol-related abuse, a new study from the London School of Economics and Political Science finds. The research from the LSE's Centre fo...Read more...

Ria Ivandic

11 October 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Inclusion in the workplace: how not to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory

Sitting at a focal point between east and west, Singapore has a nuanced and multi-layered cultural landscape that exemplify the importance of context for behavioural interventions to promote diversity and inclusion (D&I)...Read more...

Grace Lordan and Lutfey Siddiqi

6 October 2021

Blog
Economics Observatory:
How does climate change shape inequality, poverty and economic opportunity?

Climate change and economic inequality are often considered independently of one another. Jonathan Colmer explains how these factors are inextricably linked, and neither can be addressed without engaging with the other....Read more...

Jonathan Colmer

5 October 2021

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
A sense of mutual obligation means that even the rich should see the point of paying their taxes

Creating a strong sense of reciprocity between the state and its citizens makes it more likely they will pay taxes willingly, says Timothy Besley (LSE). As we emerge from a pandemic that emphasised the importance of mutu...Read more...

Timothy Besley

1 October 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
How do internal communication flows change when a new CEO is appointed?

CEO turnovers are significant organisational events that typically mark a discontinuity in firm strategy and operations. These likely changes are visible in internal communication flows. Stephen Michael Impink, Andrea Pr...Read more...

Stephen Michael Impink, Andrea Prat and Raffaella Sadun

27 September 2021

Blog
Economics Observatory:
How has Covid-19 affected part-time jobs?

People in full-time employment have been far more protected from job loss than part-time workers over the course of the pandemic. Jonathan Wadsworth writes how younger workers have lost out in both part-time and full-tim...Read more...

Jonathan Wadsworth

23 September 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Will vaccine mandates boost the economy? Economists think so

A survey explored US economists' views on President Biden's vaccine mandates. Will the mandates promote a faster and stronger economic recovery? Romesh Vaitilingam writes that the 42 economists who took part in the surve...Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

23 September 2021

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Education's biggest challenge is ensuring consistency in what is being done across the system, within each school, and within each classroom

Lee Elliot Major and Andy Eyles write that when it comes to education reform, it is not so much what you do that counts, but how you do it. Policies need to be implemented well to make a difference and delivery needs to ...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major and Andrew Eyles

22 September 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
The impact of trade costs can be weak or strong - depending on how much countries trade

Many countries try to bring down trade costs by striking free trade agreements, forming currency unions or joining the WTO. But when trade costs fall, how much does trade increase? Natalie Chen and Dennis Novy explain th...Read more...

Natalie Chen and Dennis Novy

17 September 2021

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
Covid and voting: how turnout in the 2020 French local elections fell

How did the pandemic affect turnout in French elections in March 2020? Elsa Leromain (LSE) and Gonzague Vannoorenberghe (Universite Catholique de Louvain) find that participation fell, especially in towns more exposed to...Read more...

Elsa Leromain and Gonzague Vannoorenberghe

13 September 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
UK labour shortages and immigration: looking at the evidence

Can the shortages of workers reported by the food and drink sector be solved by making it easier to hire migrants? How will wages in these sectors change? Is there a conflict between short- and long-term fixes? Alan Mann...Read more...

Alan Manning

10 September 2021

Blog
LSE European Politics:
Evidence from East Germany: how young people's education plans are shaped by their environment

The decision to go to university can have a major impact on an individual's financial future and quality of life. Yet we know relatively little about how these decisions are made and adapted within different contexts. Dr...Read more...

Ghazala Azmat and Katja Kaufmann

2 September 2021

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
Narrative traps: how can we avoid them in making decisions about Covid?

How have we made decisions about handling Covid-19? Did they take account of trade-offs to individual welfare, or were they prone to narrative bias? Amanda Henwood (LSE) discusses a recent report written with Paul Dolan ...Read more...

Paul Dolan and Amanda Henwood

31 August 2021

Blog
POID blog:
Risk of Business Failure - POID Tracker

Research by Peter Lambert, Apolline Marion and John Van Reenen find that the number of firms at risk of failing has fallen from that earlier in the pandemic, but that one million jobs are still at risk and advancements c...Read more...

Peter Lambert, Apolline Marion and John Van Reenen

15 August 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Labour market reallocation in the wake of Covid-19

As economies bounce back from Covid-19, our economists question whether the recovery will re-employ all of the workers made redundant during the downturn, and whether they will go back to similar jobs....Read more...

Lena Anayi, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Steven J. Davis, Julia Leather, Brent Meyer, Emil Mihaylov, Paul Mizen, Myrto Oikonomou and Gregory Thwaites

13 August 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
How disruptive technologies diffuse

Nicholas Bloom, Tarek Hassan, Aakash Kalyani, Josh Lerner, Ahmed Tahoun question how technical progress influences income and wealth inequality in the US and its affects on higher and lower-skilled hiring rates....Read more...

Nicholas Bloom, Tarek Alexander Hassan, Aakash Kalyani, Josh Lerner and Ahmed Tahoun

10 August 2021

Blog
Higher Education Policy Institute:
Why highly selective universities need to demystify admissions for student applicants

In light of Covid-19's impact on A-level results, Lee Elliot Major and Kieran Tompkins dispel misconceptions around university admissions, such as the number of students drawn from private and state schools at Russell Gr...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major and Kieran Tompkins

9 August 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Consumer city: evidence from smartphone data

Traditional theories emphasise production decisions and the commuting costs of workers in shaping the spatial concentration of economic activity in cities. However, much of urban travel is related to consumption of non-t...Read more...

Yuhei Miyauchi, Kentaro Nakajima and Stephen J. Redding

4 August 2021

Blog
Vox EU:
Trade and innovation

International trade is a key determinant of firm profitability and survival, so it is natural to expect it to influence both incentives to innovate and the rate of creative destruction. This column highlights four key me...Read more...

Marc J. Melitz and Stephen J. Redding

28 July 2021

Blog
Vox EU:
Service offshoring and export experience

Trade in services is important but difficult to measure. This column introduces a new dataset that helps understand the contribution of services to global value chains and their role in the process of exporting goods. Fi...Read more...

Giuseppe Berlingieri, Luca Marcolin and Emanuel Ornelas

28 July 2021

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
A 'lost generation' of young Indian workers urgently needs job opportunities

A year after the pandemic hit India, urban individuals are facing work without pay and long spells of unemployment. Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli say a national-level commitment to provide job opportunities is need...Read more...

Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli

28 July 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Let me work from home, or I will find another job

Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Steven Davis examine survey data from American employees currently working from home, and find 40% say they would seek another job if employers require a full return to business premis...Read more...

Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom and Steven J. Davis

27 July 2021

Blog
What Works Wellbeing:
Book launch - a handbook for wellbeing policy-making

Christian Krekel gives an overview of his new book, co-authored with Paul Frijters, about the realities of policy-making and how wellbeing measures can improve what the public sector does....Read more...

Paul Frijters and Christian Krekel

21 July 2021

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
Pupils lost a third of their expected learning during Covid, with Wales and Scotland even further behind

Most pupils missed over half of their expected days in the classroom during the pandemic, write Lee Elliot Major, Andrew Eyles and Stephen Machin (LSE). Children in Scotland and Wales lost even more learning than those i...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major, Andrew Eyles and Stephen Machin

7 July 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Corporate taxes: views of leading economists on profit-shifting, tax base and a global minimum rate

Romesh Vaitilingam reports on economists' responses to the IGM Forum poll on issues surrounding the G7 global deal on corporate taxes....Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

3 July 2021

Blog
Economics Observatory:
How has Covid-19 affected India's economy?

India has been hit hard by the pandemic, particularly during the second wave of the virus in the spring of 2021. The sharp drop in GDP is the largest in the country's history, Swati Dhingra and Maitreesh Ghatak point out...Read more...

Swati Dhingra and Maitreesh Ghatak

30 June 2021

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
Locked-in syndrome: why this must all end on 19 July

Zero COVID is unachievable, write Paul Dolan (LSE) and Sunetra Gupta (University of Oxford). Continuing to impose restrictions inflicts disproportionate harm on the young, small businesses and creative industries....Read more...

Paul Dolan and Sunetra Gupta

30 June 2021

Blog
LSE Business review:
Will President Biden's economic stimulus cause inflation? Economists are unsure

Amid fierce public debates about the size of the Biden administration's coronavirus protection and stimulus package, the Initiative on Global Markets Forum (the University of Chicago Booth School of Business) invited a p...Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

29 June 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Start-ups in the time of Covid-19: facing the challenges, seizing the opportunities

Flavio Calvino, Chiara Criscuolo and Rudy Verlhac explore ways for policymakers to incentivise businesses and speed up economic recovery against Covid-19's effect on start-ups and new firms....Read more...

Flavio Calvino, Chiara Criscuolo and Rudy Verlhac

23 June 2021

Blog
Economics Observatory:
School's in: are more of the young staying in education during the downturn?

With Covid-19's effect on the availability of part-time and weekend jobs, more young people are staying on at school. Jonathan Wadsworth examines the links between study and work in the youth labour market....Read more...

Jonathan Wadsworth

23 June 2021

Blog
Economics Observatory:
How should we measure the impact of Covid-19 policies on our wellbeing?

Paul Dolan and Christian Krekel explain how measuring changes in life experience, as well as life expectancy, will enable richer evaluation of policies....Read more...

Paul Dolan and Christian Krekel

22 June 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Pollution reductions during lockdowns can teach us how to build back better a sustainable economy

Though Covid-19 lockdowns prompted a 35-45% reduction in pollution, effects across the world were unequal and policies aimed at combatting climate change must account for such diverse outcomes. This research highlights h...Read more...

Jean-Philippe Bonardi, Quentin Gallea, Dimitrija Kalanoski, Rafael Lalive, Raahil Madhok, Frederik Noac, Dominic Rohner and Tommaso Sonno

21 June 2021

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Reflections on struggling high streets

Henry Overman reflects on the findings from the What Works Centre's Recovery Workshop focusing on the British high street, looking at how an economic recovery from the pandemic focused on policy may best help our high st...Read more...

Henry G. Overman

19 June 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
State capacity and development clusters

The determinants of economic development have been debated for many years. However, some of these determinants have been hard to measure internationally. Tim Besley, Chris Dann and Torsten Persson review evidence from 25...Read more...

Timothy Besley, Chris Dann and Torsten Persson

18 June 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Returning to the office will be hard

The Covid-19 pandemic prompted a collective shift to working from home. This column argues that though the shift was surprisingly easy, returning to the office will be hard. New evidence from a survey of 2,500 employees ...Read more...

Nicholas Bloom, Paul Mizen and Shivani Taneja

15 June 2021

Blog
Knowledge:
Rethinking capitalism: the power of creative destruction

Philippe Aghion and Isabelle Laporte explain how, with the proper safeguards, creative destruction - the process by which the new replaces the old - remains the way to greater economic growth and prosperity....Read more...

Philippe Aghion and Isabelle Laporte

14 June 2021

Blog
LSE Politics and Policy:
Pupils with graduate parents received an unfair advantage in their A-level results last year

Following a disastrous attempt to assign pupil grades using a controversial algorithm, last year's GCSE and A-level grades were eventually determined using Centre Assessed Grades. New survey evidence finds that some pupi...Read more...

Jake Anders, Lindsey Macmillan, Patrick Sturgis and Gill Wyness

10 June 2021

Blog
LSE Review of Books:
Book Review: What Do We Know and What Should We Do About Social Mobility? by Lee Elliott Major and Stephen Machin

In What Do We Know and What Should We Do About Social Mobility? Lee Elliott Major and Stephen Machin give an account of the long experience of social mobility in the UK, its barriers and a possible way out. Offering a st...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin

10 June 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
The 2020 trade impact of the Covid-19 pandemic

Worldwide merchandise trade flows decreased significantly in 2020, as Covid-19 disrupted economic activity across the globe. This column analyses how various pandemic-related factors shaped international trade flows. Spe...Read more...

Xuepeng Liu, Emanuel Ornelas and Huimin Shi

9 June 2021

Blog
LSE Latin American and Caribbean:
The beautiful gain: what can Brazilian football tell us about the effect of non-compete clauses on wages?

With the 1998 Pele Law eliminating transfer fees for players whose contracts had expired, Brazilian football provides an ideal setting to test the effect of non-compete agreements on wages. This analysis reveals that old...Read more...

Bernardo Guimaraes, Joao Paulo Pessoa and Vladimir Ponczek

8 June 2021

Blog
Grantham Institute blogs:
The answer to housing's stubborn carbon emissions problem: green offsets

Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber propose 'green offsets' to reduce property taxes in a way that is strictly scaled to energy efficiency, as a simple intervention to address the UK's urgent need to reduce its residentia...Read more...

Paul Cheshire and Christian A. L. Hilber

7 June 2021

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Retraining: which are the best policies for getting people back to work?

Many people are expected to lose their jobs in the aftermath of the pandemic. Retraining will be one important way to get them back into work. Chiara Cavaglia, Sandra McNally, Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela show there is a good...Read more...

Chiara Cavaglia, Sandra McNally and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela

3 June 2021

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
Happy to help: how a UK micro-volunteering programme increased people's wellbeing

Levels of wellbeing increased significantly for individuals who participated in the NHS Volunteer Responders (NHSVR) programme, with effects lasting months after the volunteering period had ended, write Paul Dolan, Chris...Read more...

Paul Dolan, Christian Krekel, Helen Lee, Claire Marshall, Ganga Shreedhar and Allison Smith

2 June 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
The differing effects of globalisation on trade versus migration

Better communications, enhanced transport links, integration agreements between governments, and other factors have all helped increase global economic interconnectedness over the past few decades. This column compares a...Read more...

Rebecca Freeman and John Lewis

2 June 2021

Blog
Vox EU:
The distinctive character of policy-driven stock market jumps

When the stock market moves in a big way, journalists try to explain why. This column uses next-day newspaper accounts to characterise the drivers of more than 6,000 big daily moves ('jumps') across 16 national stock mar...Read more...

Scott R. Baker, Nicholas Bloom, Steven J. Davis and Marco Sammon

21 May 2021

Blog
Vox EU:
How to improve tax compliance: Evidence from population-wide experiments in Belgium

Tax compliance lies at the heart of well-functioning societies, but the US and Europe spend vast sums annually to enforce it. This column discusses the results of population-wide experiments run in collaboration with the...Read more...

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Clement Imbert, Maarten Luts, Johannes Spinnewijn and Teodora Tsankova

20 May 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Vaccines for developing countries: the costs and benefits of waiving patents

There is much debate about whether the patents on COVID-19 vaccines should be waived to allow low-income countries to produce doses for themselves. The Initiative on Global Markets Forum's survey asked European and US ex...Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

20 May 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Why global uncertainty is declining

The latest update of the World Uncertainty Index indicates that global uncertainty has fallen back to its long-run average after reaching a historical high in 2020. This column describes how this is driven by a significa...Read more...

Hites Ahir, Nicholas Bloom and Davide Furceri

18 May 2021

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
The 2020s will be a crunch decade that will determine the UK's trajectory into the mid-21st century

As vaccines roll out and restrictions are lifted, public debate is turning to the economic recovery from Covid-19 and the deepest annual downturn for 300 years that came in its wake. But viewing the years ahead simply as...Read more...

Torsten Bell, Swati Dhingra, Stephen Machin, Charlie McCurdy, Henry G. Overman, Gregory Thwaites, Daniel Tomlinson and Anna Valero

18 May 2021

Blog
Economics Observatory:
What is the future of commuting to work?

Around half the UK labour force is currently working from home. Paul Mizen, Nick Bloom, Shivani Taneja analyse survey data suggesting that spending two to three days a week at home is the most common expected working pat...Read more...

Nicholas Bloom, Paul Mizen and Shivani Taneja

12 May 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
OPENing up military innovation: The causal effects of 'bottom up' reforms to US defence research

In recent decades, US defence R&D seems to have lost its lustre. To combat the declining innovation, in 2018 the US Air Force reformed its contracting procedures to allow applicants more freedom to suggest projects with ...Read more...

Sabrina T. Howell, Jason Rathje, John Van Reenen and Jun Wong

8 May 2021

Blog
LSE Politics and Policy:
Why the UK-India Young Professionals Scheme might end up benefitting a handful of large companies

The announcement of a new visa for young, professional Indians to work in the UK could prove popular - but an eye needs to be kept on how it ends up being used in practice, writes Alan Manning....Read more...

Alan Manning

6 May 2021

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Update: Which firms and industries have been most affected by Covid-19?

Businesses across the UK have been negatively affected by the pandemic, but the damage has not been equal. Certain sectors and certain firms within them have suffered more than others - and many have faced highly uncerta...Read more...

Nicholas Bloom, Paul Mizen, Pawel Smietanka and Gregory Thwaites

5 May 2021

Blog
LSE Research for the World:
Government urban regeneration initiative failed to improve Britain's most deprived areas

In 1994, John Major's Conservative government launched an initiative to improve a range of societal issues through regeneration. The Single Regeneration Budget ran for nearly a decade, but failed to create opportunities ...Read more...

Henry G. Overman

4 May 2021

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
Don't let fears about the Indian variant stop us thinking rationally about risk

Now that those at greater risk of developing a serious case of COVID-19 have been vaccinated, B.1.617.2 - the 'Indian variant' - is less of a danger to the UK. Paul Dolan, Christian Krekel and George Wharton (LSE) argue ...Read more...

Paul Dolan and Christian Krekel

1 May 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Lockdowns widen the gender gap in mental health

Women, the young, and the less educated have borne the brunt of the economic damage caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns in terms of job and earnings losses. As this column reports, women have also suffered far ...Read more...

Abigail Adams-Prassl, Teodora Boneva, Marta Golin and Christopher Rauh

27 April 2021

Blog
POID Blog:
Risk of Business Failure: POID Tracker

Peter Lambert and John Van Reenen track how UK businesses view their risks of bankruptcy over the next three months, finding extensions to COVID support schemes have helped avert a wave of bankruptcies, but risks remain....Read more...

Peter Lambert and John Van Reenen

27 April 2021

Blog
Notes from Poland:
Why is Poland's economy emerging so strongly from the pandemic? A comparison with the UK

Poland is no longer Europe's "green island" of growth, as it was during the 2008 financial crisis when it was the only country not to fall into recession. Yet its economy has managed to avoid the pandemic-induced trouble...Read more...

Pawel Bukowski and Wojciech Paczos

27 April 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Why housing is built in flood-prone coastal areas

Despite the higher susceptibility to floods and a growing climate crisis, more than 10% of the world's population live in low-elevation coastal zones, and that percentage is growing. Yatang Lin, Thomas McDermott and Guy ...Read more...

Yatang Lin, Thomas K.J. McDermott and Guy Michaels

22 April 2021

Blog
Economics Observatory:
What is the future of working from home?

Working from home has become more common during the pandemic, but only in certain sectors. Jonathan Haskel writes about the likelihood that the practice will be permanently adopted depends on perceptions of workforce pro...Read more...

Jonathan Haskel

20 April 2021

Blog
LSE Politics and Policy:
Contrary to the impression given by the Sewell Report, things for ethnic minorities in the UK labour market are not getting better

Using estimates from the Labour Force Survey, Alan Manning and Rebecca Rose fill in some of the gaps of the government's Sewell Report on race and ethnic disparities. Comparing disparities in pay, employment, and unemplo...Read more...

Alan Manning and Rebecca Rose

19 April 2021

Blog
CVER Blogs:
Apprenticeships, the Levy and Covid-19

Examining the impact of these various changes to the apprenticeship system on recent enrolments, and then briefly describe the initial effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on apprenticeships....Read more...

14 April 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Beyond income inequality: factoring in non-monetary rewards

While many researchers, policy makers, and interest groups are concerned with income inequality and its impact on society, much of the debate has focused on inequality in wages. In contrast, relatively little work has ad...Read more...

Andrew E. Clark, Maria Cotofan and Richard Layard

12 April 2021

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Ethnic minorities and the UK labour market: are things getting better?

Alan Manning and Rebecca Rose compare disparities in pay, employment and unemployment among different ethnic groups in the UK finding that there has been little change over the past 25 years. Indeed, for black, Pakistani...Read more...

Alan Manning and Rebecca Rose

7 April 2021

Blog
Economics Observatory:
A year in the UK labour market: what's happened over the coronavirus pandemic?

Jonathan Wadsworth explains how the performance of the UK labour market during Covid-19 shows that the most notable effects of a downturn caused by restrictions on mobility are the more dynamic aspects: falls in hours, h...Read more...

Jonathan Wadsworth

1 April 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Aiming for zero Covid-19 to ensure economic growth

With the pandemic continuing now for over a year, it has become clear that there is no trade-off between health and wealth. Successful pandemic management has relied on aiming for and protecting Covid-free green zones. T...Read more...

Philippe Aghion, Patrick Artus, Miquel Oliu-Barton and Bary Pradelski

31 March 2021

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
Why central London has seen the biggest rises in house prices, despite Covid

As many predicted, the pandemic led to a demand for bigger homes and gardens. But with supply limited by Britain's strict planning regulations, and the market propped up by a stamp duty waiver and the furlough scheme, pr...Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber and Olivier Schöni

31 March 2021

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Update: How is coronavirus affecting the self-employed?

A year into the Covid-19 crisis, it is widely recognised that the UK's self-employed workers have been among the hardest hit. Survey evidence shows that the latest lockdown is once again leaving the self-employed with lo...Read more...

Jack Blundell and Maria Ventura

29 March 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
UK gender pay gap reporting: a crude but effective policy?

Forcing employers to reveal their gender pay gap has been effective in its main goal of narrowing the gap. The difference between women's and men's pay has shrunk by just under a fifth at affected employers. Jack Blundel...Read more...

Jack Blundell

29 March 2021

Blog
Rebuilding Macroeconomics:
Understanding educational progression at the local level: Portsmouth, the northern city on the south coast

Understanding regional inequalities is likely to be key to understanding the UK's overall macroeconomic performance. In this article, Jo Blanden, Hector Espinoza, Sandra McNally and Guglielmo Ventura analyse the educatio...Read more...

Jo Blanden, Hector Espinoza, Sandra McNally and Guglielmo Ventura

25 March 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Barriers to net-zero: How firms can make or break the green transition

Many countries are striving for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, requiring massive investments over the next decades. But many companies, especially smaller ones, will not be able or willing to invest in cleaner techno...Read more...

Ralph De Haas, Ralf Martin, Mirabelle Muûls and Helena Schweiger

19 March 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
World Happiness Report: living long and living well

The 2021 World Happiness Report comes as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to claim lives and lay waste to livelihoods around the world. Richard Layard and Ekaterina Oparina introduce the WELLBY Approach and look at how we...Read more...

Richard Layard and Ekaterina Oparina

19 March 2021

Blog
UK in a Changing Europe:
Trade after Brexit: the initial numbers

Thomas Sampson argues that, although the full effects of Brexit won't be known for many years, regulatory divergence is likely to further reduce trade, as firms face the challenge of satisfying different regulations in t...Read more...

Thomas Sampson

17 March 2021

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
Almost two-thirds of Black British young people would be reluctant to get a Covid vaccine

We may need to vaccinate under-18s to get the pandemic under control. Patrick Sturgis (LSE), Lindsey Macmillan, Jake Anders and Gill Wyness (UCL Institute of Education) on the findings of a UCL CEPEO / LSE COVID-19 surve...Read more...

Jake Anders, Lindsey Macmillan, Patrick Sturgis and Gill Wyness

17 March 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Working from home is revolutionising the UK labour market

Attitudes towards working from home have changed substantially since the start of the pandemic. This column discusses the findings from a survey of 5,000 working adults in the UK in January and February 2021, which sugge...Read more...

Nicholas Bloom, Paul Mizen and Shivani Taneja

15 March 2021

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Does benchmarking help firms grow?

Gonzalo Nunez-Chaim explores the evidence on the impact of benchmarking - measuring and comparing performance across and within firms. Finding that, for such a popular approach, it's surprising how little we know about t...Read more...

Gonzalo Nunez-Chaim

15 March 2021

Blog
Economics Observatory:
How have school closures affected children's mental health?

Children in year groups that were not priorities to return to school before the 2020 summer holidays experienced greater average declines in their mental health. As schools re-open, it is vital to balance efforts to make...Read more...

Jo Blanden, Claire Crawford, Laura Fumagalli and Birgitta Rabe

15 March 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Work and children: is the motherhood penalty in Spain too high for working women?

Spain has seen a huge influx of women into the workplace, but men and women's experiences of work remain very different. Claudia Hupkau and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela say there is scope for new family-friendly policies to h...Read more...

Claudia Hupkau and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela

12 March 2021

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
How a focus on wellbeing can help us make better policy decisions

Deaths, hospitalisations and cases have been the default metrics for policymakers during the pandemic. Paul Dolan (LSE) and a team of behavioural science experts propose a broader way of measuring policy outcomes that co...Read more...

Celia Blanco-Jimenez, Liam Delaney, Paul Dolan, Georgios Kavetsos, Christian Krekel, Laura Kudrna, Kate Laffan, Richard Layard, Gus O'Donnell and Jet Sanders

5 March 2021

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Budget 2021: while important steps have been taken, bolder and better coordinated action is needed for a sustainable recovery

Anna Valero writes that the underlying and urgent issues that were facing the UK economy before the pandemic, such as high levels of inequality and weak productivity, are still present, and are indeed more pressing than ...Read more...

Anna Valero

4 March 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Covid-19 and self-employment ten months into the crisis

Almost a year into the crisis, the latest lockdown has hit the self-employed hard in the UK. In January 2021, 57% of surveyed self-employed workers were earning less than £1,000 per month, up from 31% in January 2020 an...Read more...

Jack Blundell and Maria Ventura

2 March 2021

Blog
Economics Observatory:
What do new UK trade data reveal about the impact of lockdown and Brexit?

Thomas Sampson writes that lockdown probably contributed to the fall in UK exports and imports reported in the January 2021 trade data. But the bigger declines in trade with the European Union than with other countries a...Read more...

Thomas Sampson

1 March 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Black women are missing in the UK's top 1%

How likely is it that women end up working in jobs that allow them to be among the top 1%, 10%, 20%, and top third of earners? Drawing on the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS), Teresa Almeida, Erika Brodnock, and Grac...Read more...

Teresa Almeida, Erika Brodnock and Grace Lordan

1 March 2021

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
LSE Festival 2021: Many of us will return to offices - but not for the whole week

As the pandemic drags on, employers have got better at organising their staff to work from home, says Daniela Scur (Cornell University and LSE). Not all will return to the office, and many will never go back to the five-...Read more...

Daniela Scur

1 March 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
To recover from Covid and Brexit, the UK must upskill its workforce

The twin forces of Covid-19 and Brexit are altering the skills that people require to succeed in work. Skill levels remain low in the UK, compared to other advanced nations. About 30% of adults have low skill levels in l...Read more...

Josh De Lyon and Swati Dhingra

23 February 2021

Blog
LSE Covid-19 Blog:
We can tackle the climate emergency and grow the economy at the same time

The idea that economic growth is incompatible with tackling the climate emergency is wrong, says John Van Reenen (LSE). He sets out how technological innovation and better management can bring about sustainable growth....Read more...

John Van Reenen

18 February 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Increasing support for clean innovation: a win-win-win strategy?

Political support for government spending to deal with the economic aftermath of the COVID pandemic has grown. It is now greater than during the 2008 financial crisis, and 'build back better' pledges have multiplied. Ral...Read more...

Ralf Martin, Sam Unsworth, Anna Valero and Dennis Verhoeven

11 February 2021

Blog
LSE US Centre:
Trade protection along supply chains: how antidumping measures against China hurt downstream industries

Production processes are often no longer confined to a single country; supply chains can be fragmented across great distances. By contrast, tariffs are often used by individual countries to protect certain industries. In...Read more...

Chad Bown, Paola Conconi, Aksel Erbahar and Lorenzo Trimarchi

10 February 2021

Blog
VoxEu:
After Brexit: views of leading economists on future prospects for the UK and EU economies

The UK's exit from the EU was finally completed on 1 January 2021. The IGM Forum at Chicago Booth invited its panels of leading European and US economists to express their views on the likely long-term effects of Brexit ...Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

8 February 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Trade protection along supply chains: the negative effects of tariffs on downstream sectors

In a world in which production processes are fragmented across countries, the effects of tariffs propagate along supply chains, with firms in downstream industries suffering from protection upstream. This column studies...Read more...

Chad Bown, Paola Conconi, Aksel Erbahar and Lorenzo Trimarchi

3 February 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Disunited Kingdom? Brexit, trade and Scottish independence

The Scottish National Party is calling for a second referendum on independence from the UK. This column examines the likely effect of changes in trade costs resulting from independence and Brexit on the Scottish economy,...Read more...

Hanwei Huang, Thomas Sampson and Patrick Schneider

3 February 2021

Blog
UK in a Changing Europe:
Brexit, trade and Scottish independence

Hanwei Huang, Thomas Sampson, and Patrick Schneider analysed the economics of Scottish independence by looking at its impact on trade. Independence would put a new border between Scotland and the rest of the UK, introduc...Read more...

Hanwei Huang, Thomas Sampson and Patrick Schneider

3 February 2021

Blog
The State of Working Britain:
Covid-19 and the youth labour market. The kids are (probably) alright

Jonathan Wadsworth considers youth unemployment in light of the UK's furlough scheme, the end of lockdowns and economic downturn....Read more...

Jonathan Wadsworth

1 February 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Regulation chills minor (but not radical) technological innovations

While there is suggestive evidence that regulations may have a stifling effect on innovation, there is as yet no rigorous economic framework to quantify the magnitude of such regulatory effects on innovation and the aggr...Read more...

Philippe Aghion, Antonin Bergeaud and John Van Reenen

1 February 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
The trade and welfare benefits of deep trade agreements

Deep trade agreements are widespread and have taken the world beyond tariff liberalisation in goods trade. As the importance of global supply chains and the services sector increased across the world, shallow tariff redu...Read more...

Swati Dhingra, Rebecca Freeman and Hanwei Huang

21 January 2021

Blog
LSE Business Review:
New incentives for businesses to train their employees are needed for economic recovery from Covid-19

The need to retrain or upskill the workforce has become ever more urgent due to sharp changes in skills demand induced by the pandemic, write Jiaqi Li, Guglielmo Ventura and Anna Valero....Read more...

Jiaqi Li, Anna Valero and Guglielmo Ventura

18 January 2021

Blog
Bloomberg Stephanomics Podcasts:
The economic cost of Covid-19's mental health crisis

Richard Layard talks about why the coronavirus should make us rethink how we treat mental illness, how "building back better" should mean services rather than roads and railways, and why money really doesn't make us happ...Read more...

Richard Layard

13 January 2021

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
Further school closures mean bleak prospects for the young

Further closures of schools, while necessary to contain the spread of COVID-19, are likely to exacerbate educational inequalities. Learning losses could have long-term consequences for the life chances of children from d...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major and Andrew Eyles

8 January 2021

Blog
Institute for the Future of Work:
The impact of Covid-19 on technology adoption

Anna Valero and Professor John Van Reenen examine the evidence on technology adoption through the pandemic and what it means for the UK's future of work and productivity crisis. New evidence offers a basis for guarded te...Read more...

Anna Valero and John Van Reenen

7 January 2021

Blog
VoxEU:
Closing the gap between vocational and general education: University Technical Colleges in England

England introduced University Technical Colleges - hybrid education institutions which combine general and vocational education - in 2010. This column presents the results from the first evaluation of the causal effect o...Read more...

Stephen Machin, Sandra McNally, Camille Terrier and Guglielmo Ventura

23 December 2020

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
What happened when parents lost their jobs during lockdown?

Many parents had to cope with losing their jobs or part of their income at the same time as they were forced to home school. How did this affect their children's learning and their mental health? Claudia Hupkau, Ingo Isp...Read more...

Claudia Hupkau, Ingo Isphording, Stephen Machin and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela

21 December 2020

Blog
LSE Covid-19 blog:
Why bike thefts, anti-social behaviour and drug offences have gone up during the pandemic

How has crime evolved in England and Wales during the pandemic? Tom Kirchmaier and Carmen Villa-Llera (Centre for Economic Performance, LSE) look at the effects of lockdown and job loss on the kinds of crimes being commi...Read more...

Tom Kirchmaier and Carmen Villa-Llera

17 December 2020

Blog
FE Week:
Why urgent support is needed to address UK skills deficit

New incentives are needed for businesses to train their employees for a post-Covid world, writes Guglielmo Ventura....Read more...

Guglielmo Ventura

16 December 2020

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Lockdown shows us it is not work that attracts us to big cities - but the social life

Covid-19's effect on the social lives of city dwellers - being able to meet at the pub, restaurants or theatre - may be more relevant for the future of cities than its impact on work, write Gabriel Ahlfeldt, Fabian Bald,...Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Fabian Bald, Duncan Roth and Tobias Seidel

11 December 2020

Blog
LSE Brexit:
Covid-19 has disrupted businesses' ability to prepare for Brexit, but the lack of clarity on the UK-EU relationship is worse

Almost half of businesses report that COVID-19 has negatively affected their ability to prepare for Brexit. More than half listed uncertainty on the future arrangements between the UK and EU as a limitation on their abil...Read more...

Josh De Lyon, Swati Dhingra and Edoardo Tolva

7 December 2020

Blog
LSE History:
The Centre for Economic Performance marks 30 years of world-class research

LSE's Centre for Economic Performance, one of Europe's leading economic research centres, is marking its 30th anniversary in 2020/21. A new video, released to mark the Centre's 30th anniversary, highlights the breadth of...Read more...

Helen Ward

1 December 2020

Blog
The State of Working Britain:
Long-term unemployment and the Covid downturn

With the first signs of rising unemployment under the crisis are beginning to ripple through the labour market, Jonathan Wadsworth examines trends in employment against unemployment, the chances of finding work among tho...Read more...

Jonathan Wadsworth

30 November 2020

Blog
VoxEU:
Work, care, and gender across UK lockdowns

A growing body of research is making clear the unequal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic across gender. This column explores what the likely implications of a second lockdown in the UK are for gender equality at work and i...Read more...

Claudia Hupkau and Barbara Petrongolo

23 November 2020

Blog
LSE Business Review:
How leading economists view antitrust in the digital economy

US and European experts discuss internet giants, and Google's dominance of search and operating practices, writes Romesh Vaitilingam...Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

18 November 2020

Blog
State of Working Britain Blog:
1 million missing immigrants (and 1.2 million more UK-born)

Jonathan Wadsworth examines the Labour Force Survey, highlighting the strange case of a rapid fall of around 750,000 in the immigrant population of working age over the last year contained in the latest ONS labour market...Read more...

Jonathan Wadsworth

11 November 2020

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
How lockdowns have reversed traditional gender roles in some UK households and further entrenched them in others

Claudia Hupkau and Barbara Petrongolo discuss what the likely implications of a second lockdown are for gender equality at work and in the home....Read more...

Claudia Hupkau and Barbara Petrongolo

10 November 2020

Blog
The State of Working Britain:
Who's being made redundant during Covid? Who is staying at work. And is it any different from usual?

Following his previous blog post looking at trends in redundancies over the COVID period relative to previous downturns, Jonathan Wadsworth looks to understand who is being laid off and whether this is any different from...Read more...

Jonathan Wadsworth

9 November 2020

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Schools and England's second lockdown: further closures would have adverse effects on children and a wider effect on family life

Sandra McNally and Jo Blanden explain how school closures have negative effects on both children and parents, hindering educational outcomes, mental health, work, and general resilience....Read more...

Jo Blanden and Sandra McNally

5 November 2020

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Covid-19 and social mobility: the public support key policies that will help limit widening inequalities in employment and education

Lee Elliot Major, Andrew Eyles, and Stephen Machin present new data around public support behind the implementation of job guarantees, the reform of A-level and GCSE exams in 2021, and the abolition of predicted grades f...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major, Andrew Eyles and Stephen Machin

4 November 2020

Blog
The State of Working Britain:
Redundancies and the labour market under Covid. Has furlough helped? And other related things you may have missed

Redundancies are often seen as commensurate with unemployment - but not always. In this blog post, Jonathan Wadsworth analyses the links between the UK's furlough scheme and redundancies....Read more...

Jonathan Wadsworth

2 November 2020

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
The government's furlough scheme has almost certainly helped prevent a large rise in unemployment over Covid-19 (so far)

Jonathan Wadsworth explains why the furlough scheme seems to have done its job in preventing mass layoffs, as well as other reasons why the total entering unemployment is still much lower than in the 2008-2011 downturn....Read more...

Jonathan Wadsworth

1 November 2020

Blog
VoxEU:
The impact of public employment: evidence from West Germany's post-war capital Bonn

Raising the level of public employment is a frequently used policy instrument to support economically lagging regions. This column evaluates the impact of changes in public employment on private sector activity using the...Read more...

Sascha O. Becker, Stephan Heblich and Daniel M. Sturm

1 November 2020

Blog
CVER Blog:
Stark contrast between pre- and post-16 provision in UTCs

At a time when Prime Minister Boris Johnson has put the government’s skills policy agenda in the spotlight, Guglielmo Ventura presents findings from his research seeking to understand whether UTCs were successful at br...Read more...

Guglielmo Ventura

29 October 2020

Blog
LSE Business Review:
The use of designer reputation to build tall in London

Height exemptions are made easier when a world-famous architect is involved, but the process carries hidden costs, writes Paul Cheshire....Read more...

Paul Cheshire

27 October 2020

Blog
LSE American Politics and Policy Blog:
Enslavers dominated Southern politics long after the Civil War ended

Before the Civil War, the politics and economy of the Southern US were dominated by those who practiced immoral - but at the time legally permissible - forced enslavement. In new research, Luna Bellani, Anselm Hager, and...Read more...

Luna Bellani, Anselm Hager and Stephan Maurer

23 October 2020

Blog
LSE Brexit:
The cost of Brexit is likely to be more than double that of Covid - it must be delayed

Whether we face Hard Brexit or No Deal, the long-run costs to the economy are likely to be more than twice that of COVID-19 - at least 2,000 GBP per person, warns John Van Reenen (LSE). He advocates delaying the exit fr...Read more...

John Van Reenen

22 October 2020

Blog
State of Working Britain Blog:
Two things about ethnicity pay gaps that may have passed you by

Last week the ONS published a study setting out recent trends in ethnicity pay gaps. Despite lots of caveats in the article, many papers duly reported the end of pay gaps by ethnicity. There are reasons to think however...Read more...

Jonathan Wadsworth

20 October 2020

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Monetary financing: why the government should not be worrying about the deficit

Alan Manning writes that government should stop worrying about the current deficit, financing it less by issuing debt though being clear that this is a temporary policy for exceptional circumstances. He explains how mone...Read more...

Alan Manning

20 October 2020

Blog
LSE Covid-19 blog:
How zero-carbon investments can allay the coming jobs crisis

Unemployment is going up and will rise further. In an extract from a new LSE Centre for Economic Performance report, Nicholas Stern (LSE) sets out how investment in zero-carbon goods and services can create jobs and rede...Read more...

Nicholas Stern

19 October 2020

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Transport infrastructure expenditure: while there is no strong evidence of significant regional differences, the data available is problematic

The UK government uses a Value for Money framework to help allocate infrastructure expenditure. At the core of this is a benefit-to-cost ratio (BCR), calculated using a set of established monetised impacts and costs. Yet...Read more...

Henry G. Overman

8 October 2020

Blog
CEP Urban and Spatial Programme Blog:
Planning for the future: some solutions for our housing crisis at last?

The white paper, Planning for the future, published in early August 2020 represents the first serious attempt to reform our dysfunctional land use planning system since its inception. Although the Barker report’s diagnos...Read more...

Paul Cheshire

1 October 2020

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Covid has forced many firms to innovate, with possible lasting impacts

A survey reveals greater UK innovation rates than what we might have expected in the absence of a pandemic, write Capucine Riom and Anna Valero....Read more...

Capucine Riom and Anna Valero

1 October 2020

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
Denied jobs and schooling, 'Generation Covid' faces a struggle to catch up

More than a tenth of young people have lost their jobs during the pandemic, and only 38% of pupils were getting the equivalent of a full day's schooling in lockdown. Lee Elliot Major (University of Exeter), Andrew Eyles ...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major, Andrew Eyles and Stephen Machin

1 October 2020

Blog
LSE Covid-19 blog:
How do globalisation and pandemics interact? Surprising insights from a new model

Pandemics are only possible because of international travel. But – perhaps surprisingly – in the absence of social distancing a more globalised country will not necessarily suffer a worse outbreak. Pol Antràs (Harvard), ...Read more...

Pol Antràs, Stephen J. Redding and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg

30 September 2020

Blog
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:
Benefits, costs, and 'levelling up'

Henry Overman examines how transport infrastructure can play an important role in the economic performance of national and local economies. Reducing transport costs for businesses and commuters, improves access to market...Read more...

Henry G. Overman

25 September 2020

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
A no-deal Brexit may still be more costly than Covid-19

Conventional wisdom holds that the impact of COVID-19 on the UK economy dwarfs the potential consequences of Brexit. This has led some Brexiteers to argue there is nothing to fear about a no-deal Brexit. Yet data show th...Read more...

Thomas Sampson

24 September 2020

Blog
The BMJ Opinion:
Taking a wellbeing-years approach to policy choice

Every day, policy makers have to decide whether a policy is desirable. They do so by examining its impact on a whole range of outcomes. But the problem is how to aggregate these disparate outcomes against issues such as ...Read more...

Andrew E. Clark, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Christian Krekel, Richard Layard and Gus O'Donnell

24 September 2020

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Will coronavirus cause a big city exodus?

Big cities thrive because of the economic and social benefits of proximity - but proximity also helps to spread Covid-19. Does this mean an end to the big city revival of recent years? Much will depend on how quickly we ...Read more...

Matthew Clancy, Diane Coyle, Jonathan Dingel, Elena Magrini, Philip McCann, Max Nathan, Henry G. Overman and Helen Simpson

22 September 2020

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Productivity growth in one country affects the relative income and welfare of its trade partners

One of the most dramatic changes in the world economy over the past half century has been the emergence of China as a major force in world trade. A central question in international economics is the implications of such ...Read more...

Benny Kleinman, Ernest Liu and Stephen J. Redding

15 September 2020

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
City of dreams no more: Covid-19 in urban India

COVID-19 has decimated livelihoods in urban India and created a new underclass of workers who are being pushed into poverty. Shania Bhalotia, Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli (LSE) say a national work guarantee is nee...Read more...

Shania Bhalotia, Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli

11 September 2020

Blog
The State of Working Britain:
UK labour market under Covid part 3: layoffs, hiring & wages

Recessions, usually signify a rise in layoffs. Even the last recession, which was accompanied by much more wage moderation than previous ones, generated a significant rise in redundancies. This time it is a little differ...Read more...

Jonathan Wadsworth

4 September 2020

Blog
The State of Working Britain:
What's happening to the UK labour market under Covid-19? Looking for signs of excess and what it shows (so far). Part 1

Six months into the worst pandemic of the modern era, the worst recession of the modern era and yet and yet .... the labour market is proving to be remarkably resilient (so far) – at least along the dimensions normally ...Read more...

Jonathan Wadsworth

4 September 2020

Blog
The State of Working Britain:
What's happening to the labour market under Covid-19? Part 2

So if unemployment, employment or more marginal types of working appear little changed under COVID, things are different from normal if we look elsewhere. Figure 1 shows the percentage of workers who say they had a job b...Read more...

Jonathan Wadsworth

4 September 2020

Blog
LSE Consulting:
Vulnerabilities of supply chains post-Brexit

Nikhil Datta, Jan Bakker, Elitsa Garnizova & Josh De-Lyon show how consumers in the UK are highly dependent on products originating in the EU, where 40 percent of all consumption of food products in the UK comes from EU ...Read more...

Jan David Bakker, Nikhil Datta, Josh De Lyon and Elitsa Garnizova

1 September 2020

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Why we need to do something about the monopsony power of employers

Monopsony decreases worker mobility, keeping wages lower than they would be in a competitive market, writes Alan Manning...Read more...

Alan Manning

26 August 2020

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
Covid-19: cities get hit first, but do not necessarily get hit harder

Is there a link between population density and COVID-19 spread and severity in the United States? Felipe Carozzi, Sandro Provenzano and Sefi Roth (Centre for Economic Performance, LSE) found denser locations were more li...Read more...

Felipe Carozzi, Sandro Provenzano and Sefi Roth

19 August 2020

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
The Covid Generation social mobility test: how to level up an even more unequal playing field created by the pandemic

Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin explain just how badly those aged under 25 appear to be faring in the labour market. They outline five proposals through which the government can help address both the classroom and wo...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin

13 August 2020

Blog
LSE US Centre:
How economists view the US debate on extending jobless benefits

Experts discuss the trade-offs between work incentives and income support; whether top-ups should be reduced, and how economics and public health might determine federal contribution levels, writes Romesh Vaitilingam....Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

8 August 2020

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
The UK labour market and Covid-19: how to measure excess, where to look for it, and what it shows

Think the outlook for the UK labour market in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic looks bad? But just how bad? And along which dimensions? Jonathan Wadsworth answers these questions. He concludes that the crisis was mar...Read more...

Jonathan Wadsworth

28 July 2020

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
Free media help combat the spread of Covid-19

What is the best response to combat the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic? Although some success stories and key lessons are emerging (early response, large-scale testing, effective containment), countries have adopted a s...Read more...

Timothy Besley and Sacha Dray

22 July 2020

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Firms closer to universities tend to have better management practices

Management matters for explaining differentials in productivity between and within countries and sectors. Across countries, management practices – as measured in the World Management Survey (WMS) – explain on average aro...Read more...

Andy Feng and Anna Valero

20 July 2020

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
How to stop UK's declining social mobility amid Covid-19

COVID-19 is increasing the divide in life chances between rich and poor. Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin (LSE) propose urgent actions to tackle economic and educational inequalities in Britain. Social distancing meas...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin

17 July 2020

Blog
LSE Covid-19 blog:
An LSE action plan for a strong and sustainable recovery

What does 'building back better' actually mean? Nicholas Stern, Sam Unsworth, Anna Valero, Dimitri Zenghelis, James Rydge and Nick Robins (LSE) set out the actions the government needs to take to deliver a sustainable re...Read more...

Nick Robins, James Rydge, Nicholas Stern, Sam Unsworth, Anna Valero and Dimitri Zenghelis

8 July 2020

Blog
LSE Business Review:
UK economic problems: diagnosing is easier than coming up with solutions

With Boris Johnson’s launch of his “New Deal” and Michael Gove’s speech on “the privilege of public service”, the government has made clear its intention to press ahead with the domestic agenda of “levelling-up” and refo...Read more...

Alan Manning

8 July 2020

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
We need more progressive taxation, and a wealth tax, to pay for the Covid-19 rescue packages

The cost of COVID-19 rescue packages will likely be partly financed by increased inflation, which will disproportionally affect less-affluent people and workers, including frontline NHS staff. Pawel Bukowski (LSE) and Wo...Read more...

Pawel Bukowski and Wojciech Paczos

7 July 2020

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Dream jobs: managers in internationally active firms have higher lifetime wages

People at managerial level in international companies accumulate strong experience that is useful also in other firms, write Giordano Mion, Luca David Opromolla, and Gianmarco Ottaviano....Read more...

Giordano Mion, Luca David Opromolla and Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano

5 July 2020

Blog
LSE Covid-19 blog:
Home is not a safe place for everyone: domestic abuse between partners increased during lockdown

What has happened to the prevalence and nature of domestic abuse during lockdown? Crime economists Ria Ivandic and Tom Kirchmaier collaborated with the Strategic Insights Unit (SIU), from the Metropolitan Police, to answ...Read more...

Ria Ivandic and Tom Kirchmaier

30 June 2020

Blog
CVER Blog:
What you study vs where you study: how FE choices affect earnings and academic achievement

Read more...

Esteban M. Aucejo, Claudia Hupkau and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela

25 June 2020

Blog
LSE Covid-19 blog:
Parts of the economy less hit by the pandemic are exposed to bigger negative impacts from Brexit

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK has been continuing its preparations to leave the EU by the end of 2020. COVID-19 has had a huge negative impact on the UK economy and Brexit will present another profound change in ...Read more...

Josh De Lyon and Swati Dhingra

23 June 2020

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
No Recourse to Public Funds: More than a quick fix needed for immigration rules

The Prime Minister recently appeared surprised to hear that most non-EEA migrants with temporary leave to remain in the UK are not eligible to claim benefits, and hinted at a review in the light of COVID-19. Alan Manning...Read more...

Alan Manning

2 June 2020

Blog
LSE Covid-19:
Ralf Martin & John van Reenen: The case for a Covid-19 carbon tax

Ralf Martin and John Van Reenen (LSE) explain how a carbon tax could both help pay for the enormous costs of the pandemic and encourage ‘clean’ investment. Crucially, it should be levied in a few years’ time, when the UK...Read more...

Ralf Martin and John Van Reenen

2 June 2020

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Abolishing the NHS surcharge for health and care workers is not as generous as it sounds – a pay rise is needed

The government was recently been forced to re-think its plans to continue charging workers in health and social care for using the NHS. But how many pay the surcharge and how much would it cost to abolish it? In answerin...Read more...

Alan Manning

29 May 2020

Blog
LSE Brexit:
EU trade is just as important to the UK as it was in 2016. Why?

Has EU trade become less important to the UK since the referendum? Thomas Sampson (LSE) finds it has not. He discusses why this might be the case and whether COVID-19 could be the trigger for more UK firms to permanently...Read more...

Thomas Sampson

28 May 2020

Blog
Economics Observatory:
Which firms and industries have been most affected by Covid-19?

Almost all UK businesses have been badly affected by the spread of Covid-19, but some industries have been hit harder than others. Financial market data and surveys of firms themselves provide insights into the scale of ...Read more...

Nicholas Bloom, Rachel Griffith, Peter Levell, Paul Mizen, Pawel Smietanka, Rebekah Stroud and Gregory Thwaites

28 May 2020

Blog
LSE Covid-19 blog:
How a job guarantee scheme can avoid the slide into long-term unemployment

Even if COVID-19 infection rates dwindle, it is now clear that the economy is unlikely to bounce back quickly. This raises the spectre of long-term unemployment. Richard Layard (LSE) explains how the government could dra...Read more...

Richard Layard

21 May 2020

Blog
LSE Business Review:
How will Covid-19 shape the future economic role of the British state?

When the pandemic has passed into history, what will be its implications for the role of the state in our economy? Some think it will (or should be) the replacement of one -ism with another. But to see the issues we face...Read more...

Alan Manning

20 May 2020

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Building back better: policies for a strong and sustainable recovery

The Covid-19 crisis is already inflicting serious damage on both the UK and the global economy. This raises questions on the appropriate policies for a strong and sustainable recovery, contributing to global efforts to a...Read more...

Sam Unsworth and Anna Valero

18 May 2020

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Covid-19 and educational losses: The case for sending the youngest back to school

Jo Blanden and Birgitta Rabe discuss the decision to send the youngest students back to school this summer. They explain why doing so may be important for children’s education and wellbeing, as long as health risks can b...Read more...

Jo Blanden and Birgitta Rabe

15 May 2020

Blog
LSE Business Review:
How is Covid-19 affecting businesses in the UK?

The Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown have highlighted the need for real-time data to understand the spread of the disease, identify vulnerable groups and design policies to mitigate the health and economic fallout of the c...Read more...

Josh De Lyon and Swati Dhingra

7 May 2020

Blog
LSE Business Review:
The future of apprenticeships is in the balance

The unprecedented economic upheaval brought by the Covid-19 pandemic raises several concerns for the functioning of the English apprenticeship system, particularly in the medium-term as economic and social activity resum...Read more...

Guglielmo Ventura

2 May 2020

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Covid-19 and Higher Education: some of the effects on students and institutions and how to alleviate them

Monica Langella discusses some potential negative effects of the pandemic on higher education, particularly those pertaining to online assessment, university offers, and labour market outcomes. She offers evidence-based ...Read more...

Monica Langella

30 April 2020

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Covid-19 and the international trade downturn: lessons from 2008

The current Covid-19 outbreak is raising a number of growing concerns about the UK economy and its capacity to cope with the current situation and recover in the near future. One particular area of concern, in the UK and...Read more...

Giordano Mion

29 April 2020

Blog
LSE Business Review:
Covid-19 is increasing the divide in life chances between rich and poor

Covid-19 is increasing the divide in life chances between rich and poor Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin propose reforms and urgent actions to tackle economic and educational inequalities in the UK....Read more...

Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin

24 April 2020

Blog
VoxEU:
How the UK government should respond to the unequal local economic impacts of Covid-19

The economic crisis caused by COVID-19 will play out unequally across areas. Unfortunately, the unusual nature of this crisis makes its local impacts hard to predict. This complicates attempts to formulate appropriate ar...Read more...

Henry G. Overman

22 April 2020

Blog
VoxEU:
Covid-19 and gender gaps: Latest evidence and lessons from the UK

The social distancing and lockdowns associated with the COVID-19 crisis has hit service sectors with frequent interactions between consumers and providers which cannot be done from home. At the same time, it has added ed...Read more...

Claudia Hupkau and Barbara Petrongolo

22 April 2020

Blog
LSE Business Review:
The Covid-19 recession is creating a crisis of inequality

Earnings may be affected differently by age, gender, and firm size, with large cuts for the young in small firms, write Brian Bell, Nick Bloom, Jack Blundell, and Luigi Pistaferri...Read more...

Brian Bell, Nicholas Bloom and Jack Blundell

18 April 2020

Blog
CEP Urban and Spatial Programme:
Covid-19: crashing the economy so what will it do for the housing market?

To speculate usefully about the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Britain's housing markets one needs a clear analytical understanding of how our housing markets work and what forces cause them to change. Given the ext...Read more...

Paul Cheshire and Christian A. L. Hilber

17 April 2020

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Covid-19 and wages: prepare for large cuts if you are younger and work in a small firm

Brian Bell, Nick Bloom, Jack Blundell, and Luigi Pistaferri estimate how the ongoing pandemic may impact earnings by age group, gender, and firm size. The data suggests that young men working in small firms could see ear...Read more...

Brian Bell, Nicholas Bloom, Jack Blundell and Luigi Pistaferri

8 April 2020

Blog
VoxEU:
Prepare for large wage cuts if you are younger and work in a small firm

The COVID-19 pandemic is turning into a global recession - probably the biggest drop in economic activity since the Great Depression of the 1930s. This column uses over 3 million earnings observations drawn from more tha...Read more...

Brian Bell, Nicholas Bloom, Jack Blundell and Luigi Pistaferri

6 April 2020

Blog
LSE British Politics and Policy:
Covid-19 and housing: while prices may fall, homes will remain unaffordable

Discussing the potential effects of COVID-19 on housing, Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber write that real house prices and rents may initially fall. Yet housing will remain unaffordable for the young and those on lower...Read more...

Paul Cheshire and Christian A. L. Hilber

6 April 2020