Skip to main content
Richard Layard writes that Labour must apply the wellbeing-to-cost test to every departmental proposal in the spending review. ... Read more...
03 September 2024
Spending extra cash on mental health services would boost economic growth and improve the nation’s wellbeing more than building new roads, according to an academic analysis from the London School of Economics. Rich... Read more...
Forcing workers to retire later would free up funding for policing and mental health services and "reduce misery" in Britain, a report co-authored by Richard Layard and published by the London School of Economics has sai... Read more...
About half of all firms are struggling to recruit new workers and business confidence is dipping, according to new research from the CEP. Researchers also found that one in five are having issues retaining exi... Read more...
15 December 2021
A million workers are still employed by businesses at risk of closure over the next three months, as the government is poised to withdraw critical Covid support schemes, according to new analysis by Peter Lamb... Read more...
15 August 2021
A report by the Centre for Economic Performance found that seven in 10 firms “expect a no-deal Brexit to negatively impact their business”, adding that the consequences of no deal are "se... Read more...
07 December 2020
A no-deal Brexit means that Britain will revert to WTO rules to trade with the EU and the rest of the world. This means import duties and various controls on trade, which economists at LSE's Centre for Economic Performan... Read more...
12 September 2019
The high level of uncertainty is measurable. A 2016 study by Scott Baker of Northwestern University, Nick Bloom of Stanford University, and Steven Davis of the University of Chicago, quantified political uncertainty in t... Read more...
25 August 2019
Since Trump was elected president, many measures of policy uncertainty have jumped. Take the widely used monthly U.S. Policy Uncertainty Index created by the economists Scott Baker, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven ... Read more...
07 May 2018
BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Organizations need competent management just as much as they need analytical brilliance, argue the winners of this year’s HBR McKinsey Award, which honors the best Harvard Busine... Read more...
17 April 2018
Article by Thomas Sampson. The full economic consequences of Brexit will not be realised for many years. But 21 months after the referendum, we can start to assess how the Brexit vote ha... Read more...
05 April 2018
British businesses want unrestricted access to European workers to continue after Brexit, describing them as better qualified and more motivated than their UK counterparts. The findings came in an interim repo... Read more...
27 March 2018
Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom and his cohort analyzed the federal revenue data from the late 1970s to 2013 and found that the gap has shrunk to 20%. Professor Bloom said: "The big pay has existed for ... Read more...
18 January 2018
Article by Swati Dhingra and Silvana Tenreyro How much of the world price of export crops trickles down to small farmers, who sell through agribusinesses and traders with market power? ... Read more...
04 December 2017
Berlingieri, G., Blanchenay, P. and Criscuolo, C. The Great Divergence(s): CEP Discussion Paper No 1488. (Centre for Economic Performance, 2017) cited in ‘The State of Small Business: Putting UK Entrepre... Read more...
01 November 2017
An excellent study published last month by a research group at the London School of Economics looks at the differences in economic activity in varying parts of the UK. The finding are intriguing and sometimes ... Read more...
26 October 2017
The South-East is not the country’s productivity engine, rather a band stretching west from the capital towards Bristol is, according to a new LSE report which challenges prevailing wisdom on the uneven ... Read more...
12 October 2017
Financial services aren’t as London-centric as the creative industries, and the coast-inland divide is growing, write Sandra Bernick, Richard Davies, and Anna Valero. The UK’s financial services... Read more...
02 October 2017
A society in which poverty does not exist sounds utopian - this society is equal but unfair, so it risks collapse, argues Nicholas Bloom, a professor of economics at Stanford University. "People do not wo... Read more...
01 October 2017
Article by Sandra Bernick, Richard Davies and Anna Valero: The UK’s financial services industry is not nearly as London-centric as the creative industries. Rather than the South East of England being the... Read more...
25 September 2017
British companies are increasingly concerned that Brexit will hit sales and raise costs, according to a survey backed by the Bank of England. Tracking the views of chief executives and chief financial officers... Read more...
The M4 corridor is more productive for the British economy than the southeast, report finds A study into the industrial breakdown of the country by the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London Sc... Read more...
22 September 2017
21 September 2017
Article by John Van Reenen: What are the costs and benefits of regulation? Most countries treat smaller firms more generously when it comes to business regulation, exempting them from some of the burdens on la... Read more...
20 September 2017
Article by Max Nathan: ...Our latest case study summarises Innovate UK's programmes of support for microbusinesses and SMEs: mainly grants but also loans, awarded on a competitive basis, either to in... Read more...
17 August 2017
Uncertainty about a nation’s economic policies can influence both politics and financial markets, and the effects often spread beyond the country’s borders. Building on his research with Northweste... Read more...
14 August 2017
Telford will be among the UK towns least-affected by a hard Brexit, a report claims – although economists today denied its suggestion that a lack of skills in the town will cushion the blow. Researche... Read more...
28 July 2017
Read more...
27 July 2017
Trump and Brexit are rapidly becoming the main threat to the upturn. Once the downturn begins, all fingers will point to them. But the real causes lie somewhere else: Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom points t... Read more...
18 July 2017
A recent study by Erling Bath, Alex Bryson, James Davis, and Richard Freeman showed that the diffusion of individual pay since the 1970s is associated with pay differences between, not within, companies. The S... Read more...
17 July 2017
In the world of business and economics, there’s a bit of a fixation on uncertainty. To start, there's the VIX, a measure of investor fear, that tracks expected volatility in the markets. But the... Read more...
12 July 2017
There are many benefits to putting happiness at the centre of business and policy decisions, says economist Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, a professor at the University of Oxford’s Said Business School. He points... Read more...
06 July 2017
The Impact Factor is the average number of times articles from the journal published in the past two years have been cited in the JCR year. The Impact Factor is calculated by dividing the number of citations i... Read more...
16 June 2017
All of the UK’s main political parties now highlight the importance of an ‘industrial strategy’ with the aim of improving economic growth and achieving more balance in how its gains are distr... Read more...
30 May 2017
From manufacturing to retailing, giant companies have managed to gobble up a larger and larger share of the market. While such concentration has resulted in enormous profits for investors and owners of behemot... Read more...
08 March 2017
Then three economics and finance professors—Scott Baker of Northwestern University, Nick Bloom of Stanford University and Steven Davis of the University of Chicago—created a series of Economic Poli... Read more...
05 March 2017
Von anderen Star-Ökonomen waren eher pessimistische Stimmen zur Wirtschaftsentwicklung unter Trump zu hören. So sagt Stanford-Ökonom Nicholas Bloom, ... Related publications 'Meas... Read more...
14 February 2017
Maria Sanchez Vidal: "the coexistence between Commerce of proximity and large surfaces trade is possible" Is author of a study on the effect of the introduction of superstores in respect of a city... Read more...
24 January 2017
Article by Swati Dhingra No access to EU’s single market and replacement deals potentially decades away heightens uncertainty for UK businesses. Theresa May’s speech on Tuesday was the govern... Read more...
18 January 2017
Dr Swati Dhingra joined the discussion programme. The topic was the demonitization of the 500 and 1000 rupee notes in India. The interview was broadcast by Al Jazeera television on November 15, 2016 ... Read more...
15 November 2016
… "Uncertainty is a real risk," said economist Michael Strain, of the American Enterprise, a right-of-center think tank. "I'd be reluctant to start a business now, and if I had one, I... Read more...
New initiatives planned to end 'unacceptable and unlawful' discrimination against working women Employers are being told to do more to help mothers breastfeed their babies at work, as part of the government's latest i... Read more...
15 August 2016
By Brian Bell, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, and John Van Reenen Director of the Centre for Economic Performance and Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. Originally published at VoxEU... Read more...
08 August 2016
Article by John Denham For the past 20 years and longer, Ministers of all parties have wanted to see more employers support employees and apprentices to gain higher levels skills and higher education. With strong bi-par... Read more...
03 August 2016
What is contraction that leads to uncertainty, or the opposite? Last year, as part of a working paper, the economists Scott R. Baker, Nicholas Bloom and Steven J. Davis built a rate of economic uncertainty (UPR, Economi... Read more...
29 July 2016
A feedback cycle has businesses cautious on investment and consumers unwilling to spend In a 2015 working paper, the economists Scott R. Baker, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven J. Davis constructed Economic Policy Uncertainty... Read more...
21 July 2016
And if income inequality were not related to our kind, our ethnicity or our level of education, but rather to our workplace? Some employers pay better than others. And the gap between those who pay well and those who pay... Read more...
For example, I have obtained an internal Scottish Enterprise document circulated last week among senior managers declaring the consequences of Brexit for the Scottish manufacturing sector ''to be overwhelmingly negative'... Read more...
09 July 2016
The Institute for Fiscal Studies, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research and the Centre for Economic Performance have all predicted lower real wages in the event of Brexit, higher prices for goods and ser... Read more...
22 June 2016
The IMF, the Bank of England, the Treasury, the OECD, the London School of Economics and many more are... (no link available) This article was published by the Western Daily Press on June 20, 2016 [No link available] ... Read more...
20 June 2016
Financial engineering has created a rentier class, a modern feudal system, and the biggest beneficiaries of all that extra debt have been the bankers. John Van Reenen and Brian Bell, of the Centre for Economic Performanc... Read more...
11 June 2016
Comedian Colm O'Regan takes a look at productivity and its decline in the UK since the financial crisis in 2008. He speaks to Anna Valero from the London School of Economics and Richard Cullen, managing director of ... Read more...
10 June 2016
Pro-EU forces have warned that if Britain votes to exit the union on June 23, the country could lose almost a million jobs. Recruiters say the damage has already begun. ''Companies are pushing the pause button,'' said Ki... Read more...
09 June 2016
As the EU referendum draws closer, our expert panel answers a question from one of our readers about the potential effect on small businesses' intellectual property. What would Brexit mean for my business's intellectual... Read more...
18 May 2016
Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of economic inequality has been the role that firms play in it. It's safe to say that a significant part of the growing gap in how well different firms pay can be attributed to the lat... Read more...
11 May 2016
If you're reading this you probably don't need convincing, but one of the most significant milestones in economic research over the last several years was documenting empirically that it really is true. A new paper buil... Read more...
11 April 2016
The article is an in depth summary of Nicholas Bloom and John Van Reenen's research on the difference in management practices. Ideally, this summary highlights the key points of focus as established by the authors. Th... Read more...
07 April 2016
A new RISE working paper, describing the development of an expanded survey tool, presents research findings that could be used to help systematically measure management practices in schools in developing countries, and p... Read more...
05 April 2016
The CBI also said savings from reduced contributions to the EU's budget and regulation would be greatly outweighed by the negative impact on trade and investment. Last week a report by the Centre for Economic Performance... Read more...
21 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
In the run up to the vote on June 23 we'll be putting a selection of your questions to our panel, which includes business groups, academics, trade experts and journalists. The panel includes: Swati Dhingra is an assista... Read more...
15 March 2016
According to studies conducted by John Van Reenen, director at the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics and Political Science, differences in productivity between other countries and the US c... Read more...
11 March 2016
CEP's Anna Valero written evidence for the Government's Productivity Plan Inquiry contributed to the final report. The Government's heralded 'Productivity Plan' lacks clear, measurable objectives and largely amounts to ... Read more...
29 January 2016
There is an overall increase in new companies for a range of reasons. One reason has certainly been the economic downturn, which has resulted in people having difficulty find a job and turning to entrepreneurship, accord... Read more...
21 January 2016
Dr Tom McDermott of the School of Economics and the Environmental Research Institute at University College Cork has been working with colleagues from the London School of Economics and Oxford University to examine overpo... Read more...
11 January 2016
Article by Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun, Daniela Scur and John Van Reenen There is a long history of debate within business, policy, and economic literature regarding whether firms can improve their performance by tr... Read more...
18 December 2015
In December talks in Paris involving more than 200 countries may result in a new agreement aimed at reducing carbon emissions. In the months leading up to the conference, The Economist will be publishing guest columns by... Read more...
11 December 2015
On video: Vince Cable, Diane Coyle, Bronwyn Curtis and Anna Leach, with John Van Reenen and Robin Mansell LSE Business Review's official launch event took place on 2 December. A panel of top UK economists discussed How ... Read more...
07 December 2015
The Economist quoted a study by John Van Reenen, director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, which conducted 14,000 interviews and discovered that UK employees score their bosses le... Read more...
04 December 2015
THE low productivity of British workers has several possible culprits. Inefficient family-run companies are sometimes blamed, as are poor workforce skills. But whereas these problems are well documented, another factor i... Read more...
28 November 2015
Sustained public investment in research can boost business, writes Romesh Vaitilingam In the government's recent Spending Review, Chancellor George Osborne had surprisingly good news for UK researchers and UK businesses... Read more...
26 November 2015
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
John Van Reenen, director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, has studied some of the less high-profile strategies employed by companies that are successful over the long term. This... Read more...
11 November 2015
John Van Reenen, Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, joins us to discuss the economics of management, productivity, and information technology. Li... Read more...
09 November 2015
John Van Reenen interviewed about the economics of management, productivity, and information technology. This interview was broadcast by Economic Frontiers on November 9, 2015 Link to article here Related Publicati... Read more...
Henry Overman interviewed by Philip Salter It's easy to make policy, but it's hard to make the right ones. These are the sorts of questions the excellent What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth looks at. It recently... Read more...
25 September 2015
That time difference adds 2.6 percent extra productivity for the professionals, finds an LSE-Columbia-Harvard team. An emerging body of evidence indicates that family management may actually be detrimental for performan... Read more...
14 September 2015
Article by Anna Valero In the 2015 summer budget, George Osborne at last identified the UK's productivity performance as an important issue that needs to be tackled. Here, Anna Valero reviews some of the measures ahea... Read more...
09 July 2015
Article by Max Nathan Despite the recent hype, London's digital sector appears to have shrunk since 2010, with much of the 2000s surge wiped out, and has only recently turned the corner. This article was published onl... Read more...
06 July 2015
Having a politician relative adds an average of 500 euros a year to one's salary, according to a new study by two Italian economists. This is equal to a 3 percent increase in an average paycheck. In comparison, every a... Read more...
02 June 2015
Dennis Novy (CEP) interviewed on the comment by Lord Bamford, Chairman of JCB, that leaving the EU would not necessarily be a big problem for British business. This interview was broadcast by BBC Radio Coventry &... Read more...
18 May 2015
Anna Sivropoulos-Valero interviewed, on productivity. The interview was broadcast live on BBC Radio 5 on May 13, 2015 Related publications Productivity and Business Policies, Isabelle Roland and Anna Valero, CEP... Read more...
13 May 2015
John Van Reenen of the LSE, who also disagreed with austerity, said ''UK GDP is about 15 percent below where we would have expected on pre-crisis trends... Premature austerity has damaged UK welfare and, as I and others ... Read more...
01 April 2015
Alan Manning, an economist at the London School of Economics, takes issue with the assertion that economic trends observed in the US are caused by technological unemployment. While he agrees US data shows rising producti... Read more...
09 February 2015
As the economy recovers, wages should rise and the relative cost of capital to firms should fall, which would increase the appeal of investing in productivity-enhancing technology. This, at least, is what Professors Joao... Read more...
29 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
Highams Park was not mentioned in material promoting business in Waltham Forest on the advice of London School of Economics (LSE) research, the council has said. There has been outcry after the area, long recognised as a... Read more...
20 July 2014
Blog by Diane Coyle The new book by Richard Layard and co-author David Clark arrived in the post yesterday, Thrive: The Power of Evidence Based Psychological Therapies. It continues Professor Layard's campaign for great... Read more...
27 June 2014
Com'è la giornata tipo di un manager nel mondo? Quante ore lavora e cosa fa in quelle ore? Uno studio su amministratori delegati europei, americani, indiani e brasiliani condotto da Raffaella Sadun (che insegna Bu... Read more...
03 June 2014