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India has been struggling with an unemployment problem and the coronavirus pandemic. New research by Shania Bhalotia, Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli, finds Federal and state governments recogniz... Read more...
01 September 2020
With evidence emerging that Covid-19 is increasing the divide in life chances between rich and poor. Steve Machin and Lee Elliot Major consider reform to avoid a decline in social mobility and e... Read more...
17 July 2020
The assumption has been that remote workers slack without direct supervision. But do they? Economist Nick Bloom staged a trial – the first of its kind – involving 250 members of a Ctrip call cen... Read more...
14 July 2020
In India, the pandemic reportedly tripled the unemployment rate in just three weeks, and the vast majority of those newly unemployed worked were in the informal sector. The government respo... Read more...
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)... Read more...
30 June 2020
The self-employed are being hit particularly hard by the Covid-19 crisis. Many have been offered a lifeline through the government’s Self-Employment Income Support Scheme – but does it go far enoug... Read more...
04 June 2020
Ralf Martin and John Van Reenen 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&r... Read more...
02 June 2020
The economic impact of coronavirus. Presented by Ben Chu (economics editor of The Independent) with Lizzy Burden (economics reporter of The Daily Telegraph). This episode features Miatta Fahnbulleh, chief e... Read more...
28 May 2020
The survey, published by the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), finds that the self-employed have been hit particularly hard by the Covid-19 crisis, with around three out of every four responde... Read more...
22 May 2020
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... Read more...
21 May 2020
With our sizeable state and private sector, the question is more whether the state will be a bit bigger or a bit smaller, writes Alan Manning. ... Read more...
20 May 2020
Countries with existing cash-transfer programs can immediately broaden eligibility and increase the size of the benefit. India is doing just that, according to LSE Professor Swati Dhingra. Given the scale of t... Read more...
19 May 2020
There's an opportunity to build a new social contract, tackle inequality, foster innovation and adopt a long-term industrial strategy, write Sam Unsworth and Anna Valero. ... Read more...
18 May 2020
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 wellbein... Read more...
15 May 2020
But the short-term productivity hit of a workforce partly hamstrung by childcare, could be dwarfed by the longer-run economic blow to the children missing school and the wider economy, according to education e... Read more...
14 May 2020
The UK chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has now implemented two-thirds of the reform programme outlined by Richard Layard (“How to save pandemic survivors from the scourge of unemployment”, Opinion, May 9)... Read more...
Real-time survey data shows that 50% of companies had a lower volume of business in April, and the situation is expected to get worse over the next three months, write Swati Dhingra and Josh De Lyon. ... Read more...
07 May 2020
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 f... Read more...
06 May 2020
05 May 2020
The Covid-19 lockdown implemented in India is estimated to have tripled the urban unemployment rate. Most low-income urban workers will fall through the cracks of the provisions being put in place to supp... Read more...
02 May 2020
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 o... Read more...
30 April 2020
More than 50 northern MPs and peers have called for a ‘catch-up premium’ for poorer pupils Lee Elliot Major, professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, and Stephen Machin, professor ... Read more...
29 April 2020
Trade recovered quickly after 2008 because the collapse wasn't long enough for firms to dismantle their portfolios, writes Giordano Mion. ... Read more...
How hoax information on social media about covid-19 might be worsening the pandemic. ... Read more...
24 April 2020
This report sets out a framework which brings together economic, health, and social factors through a ‘common currency’ of wellbeing measurement, as a way of informing a decision on when to lift lo... Read more...
This column combines survey data from the UK with occupation classifications to show that that – unlike previous recessions – the current crisis is harming women’s labour market prospects mor... Read more...
22 April 2020
The economic crisis caused by COVID-19 will play out unequally across areas. This column focuses on the UK and argues that, in the short run, we will need to target immediate support through existing mechanism... Read more...
Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin propose reforms and urgent actions to tackle economic and educational inequalities in the UK. ... Read more...
21 April 2020
The coronavirus has not yet exploded in the developing world, but poor countries are already suffering from the pandemic. Their economies have been battered by lockdowns, falling commodity prices, declining re... Read more...
20 April 2020
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 chan... Read more...
17 April 2020
Research on childcare and gender norms in Sweden, shows that policy changes had a bigger effect if they were in line with people's norms than if they worked against them. Published 2019. ... Read more...
This paper looks at the effects of changing teachers on children's GCSE grades. Published 2018. ... Read more...
This study on wellbeing finds that there is a large initial shock to becoming unemployed, and then as people stay unemployed over time their levels of life satisfaction remain low. Published 2017. ... Read more...
Research showing that when people are forced to change their behaviour, some find a better way of doing things. Published 2015. ... Read more...
An investigation of the determinants of trade collapse in Belgium in 2008-09. The paper highlights the extent to which firms factor in sunk costs. Published 2010. ... Read more...
This research finds that workers in atypical employment, such as gig economy workers, are willing to give up approximately 50% of their hourly wage for a permanent contract and around 35% of their hourly wage ... Read more...
This paper uses evidence of increased productivity among two samples of call centre staff working from home to highlight the potential in new management methods. Published 2013. ... Read more...
Jack Blundell identifies groups among self-employed workers, to aid in finding methods to support and protect workers through public policy. ... Read more...
Published 2015, this paper takes household data to analyse links between unemployment, life-satisfaction and mental health. Finding evidence that mental illness is a significant cause of deprivation. ... Read more...
Job insecurity will dramatically affect educational outcomes for the families involved, writes Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela. ... Read more...
14 April 2020
John Van Reenen says success in restarting our economy depends on trust in the government, the quality of our health care, and our ability to monitor those with covid-19. ... Read more...
13 April 2020
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 ... Read more...
08 April 2020
The spread of COVID-19 has already had a large negative impact on labour supply and earnings of workers in many countries. In this column, the authors leverage newly collected data from the US and the UK to sh... Read more...
Steve Gibbons and Sandra McNally review research on the causal effects of school resources on secondary education. ... Read more...
This paper finds strong evidence supporting the theory that male and female unemployment rates have opposite effects on domestic violence against women. The results suggest higher unemployment for women increa... Read more...
Published February 2020, this paper finds evidence that the use of machine-learning can be an effective tool in assessing risk in domestic abuse cases, and so informing priorities for police response. ... Read more...
This CEP discussion paper, published in June 2017, provides evidence from survey data on USA, Australia, Britain and Indonesia which indicate the things that matter most to people’s life satisfaction are social relations... Read more...
07 April 2020
The U.K. has record-high employment and the lowest jobless rate since the 1970s. But the labor market - and many workers - are more vulnerable to the economic fallout from the coronavirus than those headline n... Read more...
06 April 2020
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Older workers are more likely to be relatively secure with salaries and jobs which can be done from home during the lockdown. ... Read more...
03 April 2020
As schools prepare to replace exam results with predicted grades in response to lockdown, Gill Wyness questions the accuracy - and potential - of this approach. ... Read more...
Short-time work is a subsidy for temporary reductions in the number of hours worked in firms affected by temporary shocks. Evidence suggests that it can have large positive effects on employment and ... Read more...
01 April 2020
If we handle the coronavirus crisis right, we can come out of it better than we went into it, says Richard Layard. ... Read more...
25 March 2020
Jan-Emmanuel De Neve considers the economic impact of Covid-19, and it's effects on work and wellbeing. ... Read more...
24 March 2020
A selection of comments from academics, journalists and other experts on the crisis facing many countries across Europe. ... Read more...
20 March 2020
Remote work works best if it’s by choice and not every day. Many people are being forced to work from home for the first time during the coronavirus outbreak. That could have negative impacts on our... Read more...
Anne McElvoy discusses economic futures with demographer Danny Dorling and economists Richard Davies and Petr Barton. ... Read more...
17 March 2020
While the 2020 Budget offers an overall adequate response to the challenges currently posed by coronavirus, there are three issues that need to be addressed further, especially as the outbreak becomes more wid... Read more...
12 March 2020