Skip to main content
Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake argue that capitalism can be revitalised by promoting ‘further investment’ in what they call ‘intangible capital’. ... Read more...
11 April 2022
Jonathan Haskel and Stain Westlake explain why the UK government's focus on funding overlooks many levers for innovation policy. ... Read more...
30 March 2022
Meanwhile, some studies suggest that research productivity is slowing down, so that it takes more scientists to glean each new insight across a variety of fields. Fighting this slowdown is a worthy goal, but a difficult... Read more...
03 October 2019
A new paper by economists Nicholas Bloom, John Van Reenen and Heidi Williams canvasses the principal policies that governments have used to nurture innovation. A Toolkit of Policies to Promote Innovation, Nicholas Bloom... Read more...
20 September 2019
Recent studies show that scientific progress is decelerating and tends to stagnate on the whole. In the paper “Innovating Harder and Harder to Find?” published in March of this year, four economist... Read more...
24 May 2018
That daunting prospect has received some support from a new paper by economists Nicholas Bloom, Charles I. Jones, John Van Reenen and Michael Webb, entitled “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?” They... Read more...
13 May 2018
The scary idea is that easy-to-discover technology is a finite, exhaustible resource. … That daunting prospect has received some support from a new paper by economists Nicholas Bloom, Charles I. Jones, ... Read more...
02 May 2018
SWINDON, United Kingdom – The Economic and Social Research Council(ESRC) has announced that the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), the Enterprise Research Centre (ERC), the What Works Centre for Loca... Read more...
16 April 2018
The Economic and Social Research Council is delighted to announce that the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), the Enterprise Research Centre (ERC), the What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth Centre (L... Read more...
Nudge-u-cation: Can behavioural science boost education and social mobility? Pro Bono Economics' Annual Lecture featuring Dr David Halpern, Professor Sandra McNally and Chris Brown. Over the last decade, g... Read more...
11 April 2018
Today for the first time, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is to recognise its global centres of excellence with official ESRC Research Institute status. The move acknowledg... Read more...
09 April 2018
Once again, I’m brooding over science’s limits. I recently posted Q&As with three physicists with strong opinions on the topic--David Deutsch, Marcelo Gleiser and Martin Rees--as well as this c... Read more...
07 April 2018
To sustain economic growth, the United States must double its overall research effort every 13 years. That’s because it is taking an increasing amount of effort to generate enough ideas to power the econ... Read more...
02 February 2018
Swati Dhingra has been awared a European Research Council Starting Grant for the BIGlobal project, which will examine the sources of firm growth and market power to provide new insights into welfare and policy... Read more...
01 February 2018
With the UK due to leave the EU at 11pm on 29 March 2019, countries on both sides of the channel are figuring out what Brexit will mean for their economies. We speak to Panmure Gordon’s David B... Read more...
19 January 2018
Anna Valero, Beverley Skeggs, Connson Locke, Emily Jackson, Shani Orgad, Sonia Livingstone and Susanna Khavul Budget 2017: productivity is the focus, but ‘fixes’ are unlikely to be enough ... Read more...
26 December 2017
The possible options for the long-term economic partnership range along a wide spectrum – from a European Economic Area-type broad-based single market access, through a Canada-type free trade agreement, ... Read more...
19 December 2017
John Van Reenen, an economist at MIT and another of the “Ideas” paper’s authors, has performed studies that look at talent cultivation in the U.S. by trying to determine the likelihood of som... Read more...
15 December 2017
The skepticism about future growth potential is becoming international. Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom recently pointed out that innovation as a growth engine has become increasingly costly. "What worr... Read more...
05 December 2017
The four UK Higher Education Funding Bodies have announced the appointment of the chairs of the 34 sub-panels for the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021. ... Read more...
01 December 2017
Economists have a hard time explaining why productivity growth has been shrinking. One theory: true innovation has gotten much harder – and much more expensive. So what should we do next? John V... Read more...
29 November 2017
We’ve picked all the low hanging fruit when it comes to new ideas, and the world is set for more parsimonious times. This is the idea put forward in a recent research paper by Nicholas Bloom, John Van Re... Read more...
23 November 2017
In Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find? (NBER Working Paper No.23782), Nicholas Bloom, Charles I. Jones, John Van Reenen and Michael Webb argue that, to maintain a given rate of economics growth, resources devote... Read more...
10 November 2017
Nicholas Bloom, Charles Jones, John Van Reenen and Michael Webb show through detailed analysis of firms that research productivity is declining even as research efforts are rising. One of their key findings: &... Read more...
30 October 2017
Modern-day inventors–even those in the league of Steve Jobs–will have a tough time measuring up to the productivity of the Thomas Edisons of the past. That’s because big ideas are getting har... Read more...
20 October 2017
Article by Thomas Sampson It is too soon to know whether Brexit will be merely a diversion on the path to greater integration, a sign globalisation has reached its limits, or the start of a new era of prote... Read more...
Article by John Van Reenen: ... “An argument that was made in favor of Brexit was that by restricting Europeans coming into Britain, it would create an economic boon,” said MIT Sloan professo... Read more...
18 October 2017
Awarded an European Research Council Proof of Concept Grant for the NCore project, which aims to develop a mobile app which facilitates access to mental health services and treatments for young peopl... Read more...
12 October 2017
"Ideas, and in particular the exponential growth they entail, are getting harder and harder to find," according to a recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research in the United States. The... Read more...
03 October 2017
There may come a whole range of inventions that we can hardly imagine today. Already existing innovations also need some time to affect productivity in production chains. This concerns robotics and a range of ... Read more...
27 September 2017
A new working paper at the NBER looks into the productivity of research effort, that is, how research effort correlates with an increase in output. ‘Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find‘, authored by N... Read more...
26 September 2017
A study by economists at the London School of Economics has estimated the damage could be as great as 9.5 per cent of GDP if the UK leaves the EU without a free trade deal. Related article ‘Th... Read more...
Nicholas Bloom, a SIEPR senior fellow and co-author of a paper released this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research, contends that so many game-changing inventions have appeared since World War II th... Read more...
25 September 2017
Article by Nicholas Bloom, Charles I. Jones, John Van Reenen and Michael Webb: The rate of productivity growth in advanced economies has been falling. Optimists hope for a fourth industrial revolution, while p... Read more...
20 September 2017
Professor of Finance and Economics, Kevin Dowd (Durham University), Professor David Paton (Nottingham University) and Professor David Blake (University of London) discuss how the UK can benefit from a free tra... Read more...
A fascinating new paper by Nicholas Bloom and colleagues at Stanford and MIT has created waves by claiming that ideas are getting harder to find, which implies that many more researchers are needed to maintain... Read more...
17 September 2017
14 September 2017
…the “dearth of new ideas” thesis still resonates. A new paper from Stanford’s Nicholas Bloom, Charles Jones, Michael Web and MIT’s John Van Reenen examines this particular aspec... Read more...
A team of top boffins is starting to worry that humans are running out of ideas and are citing the tech industry’s inability to come up with a solution for Moore's Law as a case study. Economic resea... Read more...
13 September 2017
Research just isn’t as effective as it used to be In a paper published Monday through the National Bureau of Economic Research, "Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?", economics professors Nich... Read more...
11 September 2017
Snippet...”Mostly, the economists gathered here expressed hope that people would embrace the broader benefits of trade rather than focusing on the narrow costs. “All I can hope is that we are ha... Read more...
25 August 2017
In findings released by think tank Centre for Cities and the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics, the potential impact of either Brexit "type" on major cities in t... Read more...
29 July 2017
Read more...
27 July 2017
While the Prime Minister seems to understand that trade with the European Union is sizeable, she also seems to be under the illusion that Britain can pick and choose during the Brexit negotiations. L... Read more...
26 July 2017
As has become the tradition for our last post of the academic year, we’re featuring summer reading recommendations from special people at LSE. This year, two winners of the LSESU Teaching Excellence Awar... Read more...
26 June 2017
Swati Dhingra, of the LSE, said: “There is near consensus among economists that the hard – or chaotic – form of Brexit…would hurt the UK economy. Although there was little immediate ec... Read more...
22 June 2017
Many commentators are throwing out numbers about the negative impact of Brexit on GDP growth and income across Europe. The Center for Economic Performance has concluded that every EU member will lose income af... Read more...
20 June 2017
19 June 2017
Article by Luis Garicano DONALD TRUMP and Theresa May may have done more to push Europeans together, and open up an opportunity for reform of its institutions, than any pro-European American president or Br... Read more...
02 June 2017
Article by Patrick Stewart. A recent report on the likely impact of Brexit from the London School of Economics has found that all EU countries will lose income after Brexit. The overall GDP fall in the U... Read more...
19 March 2017
Economists from the London School of Economics have estimated that the WTO route would cause an almost 10 per cent hit to UK GDP by 2030. Also in: The i Paper Failure to secure trade deal 'would o... Read more...
02 March 2017
Children with graduate nursery teachers achieve only slightly more by the end of Reception than children with unqualified teachers Children who have access to a qualified teacher at nursery school do only s... Read more...
13 February 2017
Ministers are at loggerheads over whether to quit the European customs union amid warnings it could mean a 4.5 per cent hit to GDP. Papers circulated at a meeting of the Brexit Cabinet committee apparently suggested tha... Read more...
19 October 2016
Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia affect huge numbers of people - a third of all over-80s have some form of dementia, estimates the US CDC. This has two key effects. Firstly, Alzheimer's is a major killer in its o... Read more...
23 September 2016
Before Britons voted to leave the European Union, Swati Dhingra, an assistant professor of economics at the London School of Economics, wrote a series of papers with her colleagues trying to convince them otherwise by po... Read more...
26 July 2016
Britain's decision to leave the European Union (EU) has prompted international conversation about the economic implications. But widespread interest doesn't mean widespread expertise. Economists tell i about some of th... Read more...
21 July 2016
Various analysis have shown that Brexit will adversely affect Britain's economy. According to the Centre for Economic Performance, LSE, Britain's economy will decrease by 1.3 per cent to 2.6 per cent without considering ... Read more...
12 July 2016
UK's EU exit will make transatlantic trade talks even tougher. ''There's every reason to believe that the right-wing lurch of Brexit could turn the U.K. into a paradise for free market capitalism: a TTIP on steroids,'' ... Read more...
28 June 2016
Amy Mollett, Social Media Manager, rounds up how LSE currently uses Twitter for sharing research, interacting with students and alumni, and promoting events. She also looks at what the future of academic social media mig... Read more...
24 March 2016
Weekly recommendations include: On the LSE Business Review blog, work by Nguyen and Van Reenen using an RDD to show that tax credits increased R&D spending and innovation among SMEs in the UK. The item was published by... Read more...
18 March 2016
Scholars who have read the paper say it makes a valuable contribution to the field. The model ''is stylized but rich enough, I think, to capture some of the main features of the sector,'' explains John Van Reenan, an eco... Read more...
15 March 2016
Article by Swati Dhingra and Thomas Sampson In June, UK voters will decide whether to remain part of the EU. This column explores the UK's options if a majority votes in favour of Brexit. One possibility is for the UK, ... Read more...
04 March 2016
Anna Valero suggests ways to deal with deficits in skills, infrastructure and innovation. This article was published online by the LSE Business Review blog on 23 November, 2015 Link to article here Related publicati... Read more...
23 November 2015
Some experts suggest it is more likely than not the UK will vote to leave. LSE Professor John Van Reenen, director of the Centre for Economic Performance, put the chance of an ''Out'' vote at 54%, with very wide uncertai... Read more...
12 October 2015
A third FE research centre has launched just a year after Professor Lady Alison Wolf decried how the sector was ''woefully short of good, up-to-date research''. ... The work of the new centre, said Mr Grainger, would co... Read more...
05 October 2015
We already have two sets of pioneering work being undertaken in the UK to address this very problem. One is the JPMorgan Foundation funded work at the Institute of Public Policy Research working with US business Burning ... Read more...
30 September 2015
Consider a paper presented at the Summer Session of the National Bureau of Economic Research by Raj Chetty, Bloomberg Professor of Economics at Harvard University, ''Innovation Policy and the Lifecycle of Inventors.'' (T... Read more...
10 August 2015
Ralf Martin, Mirabelle Muuls, Laure B. De Preux and Ulrich J. Wagner have received the 2015 Erik Kempe Award for their paper 'Industry Compensation Under Relocation Risk: A Firm-Level Analysis of the EU Emissions Trading... Read more...
29 June 2015
The democratic nature of this debate is a helpful reminder as to why history matters. If Britain does withdraw from the European Union, the cost for families and the national economy will be immense. As reported in the G... Read more...
14 June 2015
A recent study from the Centre for Economic Performance has measured the impact on the UK economy of leaving the EU, which as the second chart shows is still the UK’s biggest trading partner. The study conclu... Read more...
19 April 2015
Lower trade with the EU would knock British economic output down by between 1.1 and 3.1 percentage points, according to a study by the London School of Economics. Foreign investment would surely drop and new roadblocks t... Read more...
31 March 2015
New research from a group of economists at Harvard, the Treasury Department, and the London School of Economics provides a particularly vivid illustration of how disadvantage can harm the economy at large. The researcher... Read more...
16 March 2015
Switzerland's central bank piled fresh pressure on the euro last week when it removed its peg with the franc - a move thought to have been triggered by the prospect of QE by the ECB. Sir Christopher Pissarides, the Cypri... Read more...
20 January 2015
Why have the number of startups increased? The economic downturn has led to the rise in the number of startups over recent years, says John Van Reenen, director at the Centre for Economic Performance and professor of ... Read more...
19 January 2015
Last week, Luis Garicano, a professor at the London School of Economics, and Lucrezia Reichlin, a former head of research at the European Central Bank and now a professor at the London Business School, published a propos... Read more...
17 November 2014
Professor John Van Reenen, Department of Economics and Centre for Economic Performance, has been awarded the European Investment Bank Institute's 2014 'Outstanding Contribution Award'. The accolade, jointly awarded to Pr... Read more...
28 July 2014
In the UK, the Economic and Social Research Council does fund management and business research (such as the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics). In 2013-14, it funded two projects in this a... Read more...
24 July 2014
Progress means putting the old out of business. Mention of LSE researchers in 1993 who ran the world's first conference on a new topic - an economic explanation for happiness. This article was published by the Time... Read more...
26 June 2014
Mention of LSE's research on dementia. The research was mentioned on BBC Radio 4 News on June 19, 2014 Related Links Martin Knapp webpage Wellbeing webpage ... Read more...
19 June 2014
"We owe it to the 44 million people living with dementia across the world to find new treatments for this cruel condition. But with the latest research from the London School of Economics now showing that a treatmen... Read more...
In 2013, Nicholas Bloom and his colleagues published a study they ran with Ctrip, a Chinese travel agency. Bloom et al conducted a randomised controlled trial with employees from the company's call centres. One group of ... Read more...
06 June 2014
Now we have science saying it: management consultants add value. A formal study, sponsored by the World Bank and using a control group of factories as well as a treatment group, quantified the results. First year economi... Read more...
27 January 2013
Prime Minister David Cameron's decision to distance Britain from European efforts to save the euro isn't likely to make the U.K. more independent of the bloc. "Politically the U.K. has lost power and credibility, and its... Read more...
14 December 2011