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A presumption is favour of development is a good thing, but the government should be more targeted in where it encourages growth, write Nikhil Datta and Amrita Kulka. ... Read more...
25 August 2026
A new Economics of Education Research Centre (EERC) to develop a robust evidence base for education and skills policymaking, is being established by the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), UCL’s Centre for Educa... Read more...
20 May 2026
Lee Elliot Major writes about the use of vulnerability indices in schools to find a way to identify the barriers that may hinder children's learning. ... Read more...
02 April 2026
In an article for The Guardian, Lee Major Elliot writes how Trinity Hall’s plan to target elite schools sends the message that privilege equals talent, when the reality is that poorer students are already on the ba... Read more...
10 January 2026
Paul Cheshire features in this investigation into the UK's housing crisis and whether the government's promise to build 1.5 million new homes by 2029 can be met. ... Read more...
20 October 2025
Congratulations to Philippe Aghion, professor at the College de France and INSEAD, and at the London School of Economics, who has been awarded the 2025 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nob... Read more...
13 October 2025
Lee Elliot Major is a guest on this edition of Rethink, talking about research recommending that the summer holidays should be cut by a week and that break taken instead in the autumn term. ... Read more...
30 June 2025
Congratulations to Jo Blanden, professor of economics at the University of Surrey and an associate in CEP’s education and skills programme, who has been recognised in the King’s Birthday Honours List 2025. P... Read more...
16 June 2025
The UKRI Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has awarded the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) £9.2mn for its five-year programme of work from 2025. This renewed funding will enable CEP to co... Read more...
18 March 2025
Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber comment on proposed changes to the planning system in Britain, arguing the government has shied away from the reform that is needed. ... Read more...
04 March 2025
Congratulations to Daniel Chandler who has been awarded the 2024 Voltaire Lecture Medal for his work on how to create a fair society. Chandler, research director of the LSE’s Programme on Cohesive Capitalism and a... Read more...
12 September 2024
Ucas is reforming personal statements from next year. Lee Elliot Major, a professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, said he believed the reform was a "significant step in making the university admissions ... Read more...
18 July 2024
Lee Elliot Major's research predicts a steady decline in GCSE results of key subjects until 2030, attributing it to the failure to address the academic and social legacies of school closures during the pandemic. ... Read more...
24 April 2024
Lee Elliot Major outlines how the learning loss suffered by pupils during Covid-19 and the resulting decline in social mobility could be the most enduring legacy of the pandemic, explaining why policies that help level t... Read more...
Schools in England must do more to challenge unconscious bias in the classroom against children from working-class backgrounds - Lee Elliot Major discusses practical recommendations schools and policymakers can take to h... Read more...
03 October 2023
Lee Elliot Major explains why England's 2023 school leavers have been unfairly treated over their A-level results. Just under half of A-level entries in the private sector in 2023 were graded A* and A grades, compared wi... Read more...
20 August 2023
CEP researchers Christian Hilber and Paul Cheshire compare the decline in the UK's home ownership rate, from 70 per cent in 2004 to 64 per cent in recent years, to other countries around the world - UK house prices have ... Read more...
25 June 2023
Without inherited wealth or a leg-up from the Bank of Mum and Dad, prospective first-time buyers are forced to abandon dreams of home ownership. Paul Cheshire describes the state of affairs for first-time buyers in Londo... Read more...
27 January 2023
Stephen Machin, director of CEP, is due to give a flagship British Academy lecture on wage controversies at the Bristol Ideas Festival of Economics. Professor Machin will address topics including how does high inflation... Read more...
07 November 2022
Donna Ferguson interviews Lee Elliot Major to find out why he made the move to academia - and his latest plans to improve the life chances for our poorest pupils. ... Read more...
06 November 2022
High energy prices are causing problems, as are the consequences of the Covid pandemic and the effects of Brexit. But research by the Resolution Foundation and the Center for Economic Performance suggests the causes of t... Read more...
15 July 2022
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
The written part of university applications could be changed to provide more support to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, the universities minister has said. The proposal comes after Lee Elliot Major criticise... Read more...
16 February 2022
Lee Elliot Major talks about the implementation of the National Tutoring Programme and the need to support disadvantaged children in post-pandemic recovery plans. ... Read more...
06 October 2021
Paul Cheshire speaks on some of the wider problems of the UK housing market. ... Read more...
01 October 2021
Research from the London School of Economics and Political Science found Volunteering for the NHS during the pandemic felt as good as getting a £1,800 bonus from work. ... Read more...
31 May 2021
An new annual property tax on the value of each home, proposed by economists Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber, would be fairer than current system, according to a new report by think tank Bright Bl... Read more...
20 May 2021
House prices could fall when the stamp duty holiday comes to a close. London is particularly vulnerable because the price of houses rose particularly sharply over 2020, while the population of the capital... Read more...
30 March 2021
LSE study says there has been little exodus to rural areas in past year but buyers have sought space, with detached houses close to the centre of London seeing the biggest price increases over the past year. ... Read more...
Lee Elliot Major explains how teachers have a chance to address the inequalities revealed by the Covid-19 pandemic. ... Read more...
01 March 2021
Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin remember the drive behind Roosevelt's New Deal which created millions of jobs during America's Great Depression in the 1930s and examine how government policy could ... Read more...
08 December 2020
The book What Do We Know and What Should We Do About Social Mobility? has been named as one of the best books on economics this year by the Financial Times. The book by Lee Elliot Major, professor of s... Read more...
17 November 2020
During late September and early October, just 59 per cent of pupils benefitted from “full schooling”, says new report. ... Read more...
26 October 2020
BBC Panorama reports on CEP research, fiding people aged 16-25 were more than twice as likely as older workers to have lost their job, while six in 10 saw their earnings fall, according to new research. ... Read more...
Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin argue how political reform is needed to solve issues with social mobility resulting from Covid-19. They explain that the findings of their review of evidence on social mobil... Read more...
07 October 2020
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 o... Read more...
23 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
CEP's director Professor Stephen Machin, co-author of the report, Covid-19 and social mobility, notes how: "We need to develop bold policies for now and the longer term to ensure the economic rec... Read more...
29 May 2020
A report on self-employed workers mentions the survey conducted by Jack Blundell and Professor Stephen Machin, of the London School of Economics’ Centre for Economic Performance, which showed self-e... Read more...
28 May 2020
Intervention is needed to prevent children entering a 'dark age' of declining social mobility due to social inequalities, says the report Covid-19 and social mobility by Professor Lee Elliot Major... Read more...
The "Covid generation" of under-25s is less likely to fulfil its potential, regardless of background, says the report Covid-19 and social mobility by Professor Lee Elliot Major and Professor Stephen ... Read more...
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
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
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
Professor Stephen Machin, director of CEP, helps explain how many workers are more vulnerable to the economic fallout from the coronavirus than the record-high employment figures suggest. "The last 12 ... Read more...
06 April 2020
Professor Stephen Machin, director of CEP, and Henry Overman, research director of CEP, contribute to an investigation into the differences in wages and opportunities across the country and why some towns and ... Read more...
09 March 2020
Transport upgrades are a key part of the Northern Powerhouse strategy, but there is some criticism about how much large-scale public investment in transport can act as a panacea for economic development. Profe... Read more...
26 February 2020
Adam Swift, professor of political theory at UCL, writes about three books on social mobility: Social Mobility And Its Enemies by Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin, Social Mobility and Education in Britain by Erzs&e... Read more...
23 January 2020
Special report: includes research findings from CEP researchers Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber [paywall] INREV THE ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF HELP TO BUY* Felipe Carozzi London School of Economics & Centre for Economic Pe... Read more...
22 January 2020
Britain has become much less socially mobile in recent decades, especially in areas that voted for Brexit in 2016, according to a new report by the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics.... Read more...
21 November 2019
Downward mobility - the phenomenon of children doing less well than their parents - will become a reality for young people today unless society makes dramatic changes, according to two of the UK's leading experts on soci... Read more...
If, as Aiyar and Ebeke argue, low intergenerational mobility is a good proxy for inequality of opportunity, then its steep decline in Britain has alarming implications for the economy. According to researchers at the Uni... Read more...
11 November 2019
Millennials, many of whom came of age during the 2008 financial crisis, are the first generation ever to be less well-off than their parents. The reasons for this, according to a report released last week by the Institut... Read more...
05 November 2019
A decade of wage stagnation since the financial crisis has left young people financially worse off than their parents were at the same age, according to a report. The Centre for Economic Performance at the London School... Read more...
04 November 2019
The study by the London School of Economics argued that the ban had damaged the local construction and tourism industries. It was claimed that it had caused the pool of available homes to shrink as housebuilders walked a... Read more...
01 November 2019
But their ban has backfired, according to a report by the London School of Economics. The developers have simply walked away, causing the number of new homes being built to shrink and for prices to soar. And ... Read more...
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31 October 2019
However, Professor Christian Hilber believes the ban could increase the "ghost town effect" as it inadvertently reduced the number of available homes due to building companies finding new work in surrounding areas. The ... Read more...
How can social mobility be improved? Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin write that merely tweaking existing policies will not transform society. They outline four major changes that have the potential to actually do so.... Read more...
30 October 2019
Snippet: For example, since 1989, Australia has introduced the system of contingent repayment loans (PARCs) which allow higher education to benefit from public funding supplemented by funding provided by the beneficiarie... Read more...
23 October 2019
In Social Mobility and its Enemies, Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin offer a thought-provoking assessment of the state of social mobility in Britain. In the context of much social and political change and rising level... Read more...
29 September 2019
Young people from less well-off backgrounds are more likely to pursue lower ranked upper-secondary qualifications than their prior attainment would suggest that they can achieve. Recent research from Konstantina Maragko... Read more...
27 September 2019
Home Affairs editor A THOUSAND "commuter villages" with 2.1million new homes should be built on the green belt near railway stations to help solve the housing crisis, a leading government adviser and academic has propose... Read more...
22 September 2019
What is the mechanism of the impact of the size of a native city on an individual's adult income? A general "level solidification" is obviously not fully explained. Therefore, the two authors of the above study, French e... Read more...
20 August 2019
19 August 2019
That's the question at the heart of a new study published in the Journal of Urban Economics. In the study, economists Cleement Bosquet of the University of Cergy-Pontoise in France and Henry G. Overman of the London Scho... Read more...
30 July 2019
Both Christian Hilber, professor of economic geography at LSE, and Rory Meakin, research fellow at the TaxPayers' Alliance, thought stamp duty hindered some from downsizing and meant larger family homes were generally un... Read more...
23 July 2019
A study at the London School of Economics has found that such bans damage local construction and tourism industries. At the same time, outsiders, who are banned from new-build homes, flood the market for older places, pu... Read more...
20 July 2019
Properties on the Lockington Crescent estate were on the market for between £4,500 and £7,000 - considerably cheaper than in London, where homes were up to 30% more expensive, according to economic historian ... Read more...
07 July 2019
What about in the UK? Stephen Machin, Jo Blanden and friends pointed out that those born in the 1950s were more socially mobile than those born in the 1970s, who entered the labour market at the UK's peak of inequality. ... Read more...
22 June 2019
The author of a new paper examining satisfaction with home ownership said the pleasure many buyers take in their increasingly big houses is often undermined by envy. "If I bought a house to feel like 'I'm the king of th... Read more...
13 June 2019
Although the median size for a newly-built single-family house has increased from 1,500 square feet in 1973 to more than 2,400 square feet in 2017 according to Census Bureau data, Americans aren't happier with their big ... Read more...
12 June 2019
But according to a recent paper, Americans aren't getting any happier with their ever bigger homes. "Despite a major upscaling of single-family houses since 1980," writes Clement Bellet, a postdoctoral fellow at the Euro... Read more...
11 June 2019
Snippet ... 80% of new housing is going on so called brownfield land in the south-east but relatively little brownfield land in the right places at the you can develop a reasonable prices that have to build on some green... Read more...
20 May 2019
Young people are now less likely to 'do better' than their parents. Lower wage growth is a key factor, write Jo Blanden, Stephen Machin and Sumaiya Rahman. This blog post is based on 'Falling Absolute Intergeneratio... Read more...
08 May 2019
What makes this idea particularly absurd is that studies repeatedly find that lower-income households experience greater inflation than higher - earning ones. (Researcher Xavier Jaravel dubbed this "inflation inequality"... Read more...
Exbibit C: Inequality is increasing, a point recently acknowledged by the Productivity Commission. At the top it seems to be driven more by the seeking of favours than by productivity, a point persuasively argued by Gigi... Read more...
07 May 2019
... in property. Professor Christian Hilber, professor of economic geography ...... Read more...
27 April 2019
In a new CEP Discussion Paper, "Affordability, Financial Innovation and the Start of the Housing Boom" my coauthors and I study the relationship between the start of the housing boom and the use of non-traditional mortga... Read more...
26 April 2019
Disadvantaged children who qualify for free school meals are twice as likely to be out of work in later life than their better-off peers, and even when they get good qualifications at school the employment gap... Read more...
24 April 2019
by Heidi Allen MP, interim leader of Change UK "I’ve had early sight of research released today that magnifies how the most disadvantaged young people in our country are held back because of... Read more...
Doing better financially than your parents is an important marker of success, and for much of the last half century, real earnings growth in the UK was strong enough that most young people achieved this milestone. But ne... Read more...
15 April 2019
Dr. Federico Rossi, Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Warwick University and Dr. Marta De Philippis of the Bank of Italy's Department of Economics and Statistics investigated the school performance of... Read more...
12 April 2019
Jo Blanden, co-author of the study, said: 'Research and political debate have focused on relative social mobility - that is, whether those with higher incomes are likely to have children who are also relatively well-off'... Read more...
In Episode 4 of the DIAL Podcast, Dr Jo Blanden from the University of Surrey talks about her research using the British Household Panel Survey and Understanding Society to look at home ownership and earnings for younger... Read more...
09 April 2019
House prices indicate the value of canals as an environmental resource to local residents in England and Wales, write Stephen Gibbons, Cong Peng and Cheng Keat Tang. ... Read more...
Our recent research investigates the value of this resource to local residents in England and Wales, using house prices. Analysis of house prices is a well-established method within urban and environmental economics for ... Read more...
02 April 2019
But according to a forthcoming paper from Felipe Carozzi, Christian Hilber and Xiaolun Yu of the London School of Economics, the clearest impact of Help to Buy has been to raise house prices, potentially by as much as 5 ... Read more...
09 March 2019
But Christian Hilber, a professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics, says even if those empty apartments were occupied, they wouldn't help mitigate the affordable housing crisis.... Read more...
05 March 2019
Ross Levine and Yona Rubenstein, economists at University of California, Berkeley, and The London School of Economics, wrote a paper about the shared traits of entrepreneurs in 2013. Guess what? Most were white men who w... Read more...
12 February 2019
One little-known study could, however, help shed light on where the problem really lies. According to Professors Bell and Van Reenen of the LSE, the real issue is not that CEO pay has been inflated, but that worker pay h... Read more...
29 January 2019
The first is a strategy of reversal. This consists of interventions that aim to offset or compensate for the technological and market dynamics that cause cost disadvantages for value creation in left-behind places - plac... Read more...
21 January 2019
One irony is that just as France has scrapped admissions lotteries, some in the UK and US are beginning to wonder whether they might be a good idea - albeit in a much more limited form than the pre- system. In a book pub... Read more...
17 January 2019
Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin explain how Britain has become less mobile, particularly at the top and bottom of society. Social Mobility And Its Enemies, Lee Elliot Major & Stephen Machin, Pelican, October 2018... Read more...
04 January 2019
Snippet: ... Build, build, build! Free exchange (November 24th) argued that there is more to high house prices in Britain than constrained supply. Well, yes, and no. The underlying cause of housing unaffordability is con... Read more...
15 December 2018
The British are destined to stay on the same rungs of the economic or social ladder for successive generations, write Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin.... Read more...
28 November 2018
Innovation is widely viewed as the engine of economic growth. To maximize innovation and growth, all of our brightest youth should have the opportunity to become inventors. But a study we recently conducted, jointly wit... Read more...
21 November 2018
Jan-Emmanuel De Neve discusses the living wage with @EamonnHolmes on @talkRADIO Listen to @talkRADIO at 5.15pm this evening to hear Jan-Emmanuel De Neve discuss the #livingwage with @EamonnHolmes! @jedeneve pic.twitte... Read more...
08 November 2018
Dr Major was told about abuses while researching his book Social Mobility And Its Enemies, with Professor Stephen Machin, director of the Centre for Economic Performance. They talked to parents and teachers in... Read more...
29 September 2018
We cling on to the hope that education can act as the great social leveller, enabling children from poorer backgrounds to overcome the circumstances they are born into. But in our book Social Mobility and Its Enemies, St... Read more...
28 September 2018
Opinion by Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin "Britain is stuck. Too many of us are destined to end up in the same positions occupied by our parents – particularly if we sit on the lowest or ... Read more...
27 September 2018
Article by Josh De Lyon, Elsa Leromain and Maria Molina-Domene: The Brexit debate is intense and continues to dominate the UK policy agenda. It concerns the entire population. The authors use Twitter dat... Read more...
21 June 2018
The £15bn Crossrail will serve the Buckinghamshire village of Taplow, in the green belt, next year, yet no homes can be added there, noted Professor Paul Cheshire of the London School of Economics ... Read more...
10 June 2018
Evidence was submitted to show that nearly all rich foreign investors and their families who came to the UK under the Tier 1 scheme lived in expensive houses, sent their children to public schools and used pri... Read more...
25 May 2018
Examination is therefore a democratic tool of social climbing? Examination is the tool that makes it possible to establish the symbolic value of the graduate from the certification of his apprenticeships. This... Read more...
18 May 2018
By Steve Gibbons The ‘Bedroom Tax’ – or ‘under occupancy penalty’ or ‘removal of the spare room subsidy’ as it has been called officially – is a highly contro... Read more...
16 May 2018
Interview with Stephen Gibbons. “Did the bedroom tax or 'under-occupancy charge' actually work?” ... Read more...
14 May 2018
This is hardly a fringe view. Economists Christian Hilber and Wouter Vermeulen point out that house prices would be 35 per cent lower if the most restrictive parts of the country (the South-East) were merely a... Read more...
08 May 2018
According to research in 2014 by the London School of Economics, wind farms can cut as much as 12 percent off the value of homes within a 2 kilometer radius, reducing property values as far as 14 kilometers aw... Read more...
17 April 2018
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
Numbers bear out this pessimism. As economist Raj Chetty explained in a 2016 lecture at the London School of Economics, the probability of a child born to parents in the bottom fifth of the incomes reaching th... Read more...
28 March 2018
Snippet: ...tests in the third year of primary school are many times more likely than the other 95% to file patents in later life. But the likelihood is still much greater among smart kids from rich families. ... Read more...
22 March 2018
Extreme polarisation is not persistent over time; people are more likely to react to specific events or news, writes Maria Molina-Domene. Social media facilitates communication and an appealing question i... Read more...
16 February 2018
The green belt is associated in most people’s minds with England’s “green and pleasant land” immortalised by William Blake in his poem Jerusalem. But according to Paul Cheshire, profess... Read more...
01 February 2018
The Federation of Master Builders reports that “skyrocketing” skill shortages mean that there are not enough workers available in all the key construction skills. The Black Country Chamber of Comme... Read more...
24 January 2018
The Government and Public Sector Report has been published today. It provides updated in 2018 year analysis of Government and Public Sector Industries. How does education affect economic and social outcomes... Read more...
13 January 2018
... Read more...
02 January 2018
Article by Alex Bell, Raj Chetty, Xavier Jaravel, Neviana Petkova and John Van Reenen: Relatively little is known about the factors that induce people to become inventors. Using data on the lives of over... Read more...
24 December 2017
....And then, among apprenticeships for young people, 60 per cent of places are at intermediate level. New analysis by Sandra McNally for today’s report, of the experience of those aged 16 in 2003 who su... Read more...
30 November 2017
"Disadvantaged youngsters are less likely than their better-off peers to start the best apprenticeships, a new study reveals. Research published by the Sutton Trust showed that seven per cent of yo... Read more...
"Two thirds of apprenticeships are merely “converting” existing employees and could be certifying existing skills, rather than focusing on expanding expertise, a new report has warned. Rese... Read more...
The segmentation of apprenticeship by level puts an artificial break on progression, according to a new report commissioned by the Sutton Trust. The report, entitled Better Apprenticeships – Acces... Read more...
Article by Christian Hilber and Teemu Lyytikainen How replacing stamp duty with better-designed local taxes could alleviate the crisis of housing availability. The SDLT (commonly labelled ‘stamp... Read more...
28 November 2017
When the Industrial Strategy was up for consultation earlier in the year, my colleagues in the Centre for Vocational Education Research (CVER) and I emphasised the importance of well-targeted Active Labour Mar... Read more...
....It is also crucial that the issue of access is tackled. As our latest research shows, disadvantaged young people are less likely to enter the best apprenticeships than their better-off peers. We’ve a... Read more...
20 November 2017
...Chancellor Philip Hammond is looking to reform the planning system by allowing building on the green belt to help more people possibly young people get on the housing ladder this attempt result the housing ... Read more...
06 November 2017
The Sutton Trust’s optimistic slogan on its masthead proclaims that it has been “Improving social mobility for 20 years”. Sadly, its own site includes a disturbing study, commissioned from th... Read more...
26 October 2017
Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Kristoffer Moeller, Sevrin Waights and Nicolai Wendland DOI: 10.1111/ecoj.12454 Related publications Game of Zones: The Economics of Conservation Areas Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Kristo... Read more...
24 October 2017
…a shortfall of more than 109,000 new homes across England alone. Of that figure, 86 per cent were needed in parts ofthe country with the highest housing demand. Paul Cheshire, a professor of economic g... Read more...
07 October 2017
Gill Wyness, a senior lecturer in the economics of education at the UCL Institute of Education, said there might be logic in this approach given that universities were arguably being incentivised at the moment... Read more...
05 October 2017
The U.K. government’s decision to expand its Help to Buy program is drawing criticism because it may stimulate London’s property market again. Unless supply improves, the effect of the program... Read more...
04 October 2017
The cure for the U.K. housing market is more supply, not more demand. It's true that Help to Buy's introduction in 2013 and a market rebound gave developers the incentive to build more, with new starts... Read more...
02 October 2017
Some economists have warned that the UK is heading for a house price collapse London School of Economics professor Paul Cheshire has said we are due "a significant correction". ... Read more...
17 September 2017
Snippet: ... for the first time compared to previous decades they would not receive anything so they are receiving somethings in relative terms to the top they're closing the relative gap but in absolute t... Read more...
10 September 2017
Snippet: down and down and then the NHS within a matter of the housing crisis for napping and all that get blamed on immigrants. Mention of a study done at the London School of Economics looking at the relatio... Read more...
09 September 2017
Over the last full economic cycle, from 1993 to 2008, the cost of a hectare of residential land in London rose by over 300% in real terms, to more than £8m ($15m) and enough green-belt land is available ... Read more...
27 August 2017
Woking has the highest density of golf courses of anywhere in the UK at more than 10% According to The Guardian , Surrey has more land for golf courses than homes thanks to planning policies that ensure the... Read more...
28 July 2017
Dr Ted Pinchbeck, a Fellow in Real Estate Economics and Finance at LSE and one of the authors of the research, said: “Prices of leaseholds of different lengths provide direct new evidence on how peop... Read more...
21 July 2017
Homeowners living in leasehold properties are being asked to pay extortionate prices to extend the leases on their homes. That’s the conclusion of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LS... Read more...
Discussion on possible housing crash – mention of Paul Cheshire. Click to open ... Read more...
18 July 2017
Education has “not done anything” to improve social mobility and has made inequality worse, according to the education economist Stephen Machin. Speaking at a debate held by the Sutton Trust on Wed... Read more...
16 July 2017
Paul Cheshire, professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics, says that a house price correction, or significant fall in prices, is likely within the next two or three years. This is partly... Read more...
14 July 2017
Letter from Edwin Loo, Singapore Singapore is one of only a few jurisdictions in the world to have successfully implemented a comprehensive system of land value capture through betterment taxes and revenues... Read more...
12 July 2017
Newspaper headlines this week have been shouting about a crash in the housing market. Massive collapse! Property prices could plunge! We hear from the man quoted in many of those stories, Professor Paul Cheshi... Read more...
08 July 2017
Construction of McMansions has also increased but people who have smaller homes near where McMansions are built are much, much unhappier with their homes, according to a paper published in the spring by r... Read more...
05 July 2017
Construction of McMansions has also increased but people who have smaller homes near where McMansions are built are much, much unhappier with their homes, according to a paper published in the spring by resear... Read more...
04 July 2017
Prof Christian Hilber from the LSE said: ‘If Brexit leads to a recession and/or sluggish growth for extended periods, then an extended and severe downturn is more likely than a short-lived and mild one.&... Read more...
02 July 2017
The parties all recognised funding shortfalls, rising costs, demographic pressures, increased expectations, and changes in health technology and medical practice, the London School of Economics Centre for Econ... Read more...
25 May 2017
17:20:17 Professor Martin Knapp comments on money for social care in the budget Also on: BBC Wiltshire ... Read more...
09 March 2017
19:00:01 Snippet: ...Martin Knapp discusses the Chancellor’s plans to put an extra £2 billion towards England’s social care systems. Click to open Also on BBC Radio 4, BBC Foyle, BBC... Read more...
08 March 2017
Martin Knapp is director of health and social care at the London school of economics and an economist specialising in health and social care. ... Read more...
24 February 2017
Extreme polarisation is not persistent over time; people are more likely to react to specific events or news, writes Maria Molina-Domene Social media facilitates communication and an appealing question is w... Read more...
16 February 2017
There is considerable geographical variation in the opportunities available to disadvantaged children in the United States, according to research by Raj Chetty, who delivered the 2016 Lionel Robbins Memorial L... Read more...
06 January 2017
Paul Cheshire, economist and emeritus professor of economic geography at the LSE, has been awarded a CBE for services to economics and housing. ... Read more...
04 January 2017
Five housing executives and a professor of economics and housing policy have been awarded medals in the New Year honours list. … Paul Cheshire, professor of economic geography at the London School of... Read more...
30 December 2016
Professor John Van Reenen, who predicted ahead of the referendum that Brexit would cost up to £1,700 per household per year, has been given an OBE for services to economics and public policy making. Othe... Read more...
Shale gas offers the prospect of a low-cost energy future, but invokes fears of environmental catastrophe, write Stephen Gibbons, Stephan Heblich, Esther Lho and Christopher Timmins ... Read more...
16 December 2016
Article by Gill Wyness With UK tuition fees now among the highest in the world, but benefits from having a degree remaining substantial, choosing the right university has never been more important for young... Read more...
09 December 2016
Paul Cheshire, Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics is a longstanding critic of Britain’s byzantine planning system. [No link] ... Read more...
02 December 2016
Trump’s true legacy will be that of rural vandalism on a colossal scale. A unique wilderness at Menie destroyed for a golf course. This was a site of Special Scientific Interest, the highest environmenta... Read more...
01 November 2016
[Jeremy] Corbyn too is proposing a solution ''which would reduce numbers'', despite the fact in its 2015 General Election briefing, the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics observed: ''There ... Read more...
06 October 2016
I am one of those people who, as she anticipated, have a bit of a problem with something Mrs May said about immigration: If you're one of those people who lost their job, who stayed in work but on reduced ... Read more...
05 October 2016
The capital's schools are the best in the country. Can they be copied? According to a report last year by researchers at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the London School of Economics, one-sixth of the improvement ... Read more...
01 October 2016
Prime minister champions grammar system but critics argue reforms will damage social mobility But critics were quick to dismiss the reforms. Professor Sandra McNally, director of education and skills at the London Schoo... Read more...
09 September 2016
A 2015 research paper by the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics found that student test scores improve by 6.4 percent when cell phones are banned at schools and that there are no... Read more...
06 September 2016
...UK-wide, we have increased our school leaver intake by 47 per cent because we have already started to see the positive results that increased social mobility and diversity can have on both your bottom line and wider ... Read more...
25 August 2016
Decades of planning policies that constrain the supply of houses and land and turn them into something like gold or artworks is to blame for the current housing crisis in the UK rather than foreign buyers, according to a... Read more...
17 August 2016
Article by Brian Bell and Stephen Machin Wage inequality was partly behind the vote for Brexit. This column shows how areas with relatively low median wages were substantially more likely to vote ‘Lea... Read more...
16 August 2016
Paul Cheshire argues that golf courses capitalise on green belt planning laws which keep down land prices and contribute to a housing shortage. The interview was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on August 10, 2016 Link to th... Read more...
10 August 2016
Education is not just a vital cornerstone of our culture and economy, it is also potentially one of the great social levellers. However rich or poor our parents, however supportive or dysfunctional our families, a high-q... Read more...
02 August 2016
There is another house price bubble under way in the Dublin area. Notwithstanding the efforts by the Central Bank to keep mortgage credit under control, some extraordinary prices have been quoted recently for the small p... Read more...
07 July 2016
Article by Christian Hilber In the first of a two-part article discussing the British planning system, Christian Hilber, Associate Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics, argues that the UK pl... Read more...
06 July 2016
''You're going to see in increase in consumer prices from Brexit and most of that is going to hit the middle income,'' Swati Dhingra, assistant professor at LSE's Department of Economics and Centre for Economic Performan... Read more...
24 June 2016
Study after study confirms that EU migrants have an overwhelmingly positive effect on the British economy. They have a higher employment rate (78.2%) than people born in the UK (72.5%), those from Poland and other A8 acc... Read more...
10 June 2016
There is enough green-belt land in Greater London to build 1.6m houses at average densities, says Paul Cheshire of the London School of Economics (LSE) - about 30 times the number of new houses London needs a year. But o... Read more...
30 April 2016
Although empirical evidence about the effects of phone access on learning seems to be scarce, the findings of a recent study on student phone access and the achievement gap by Louis-Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy for... Read more...
27 April 2016
Poor land-use regulation is the main reason for Londons crazy prices. Two problems stand out. ... There is enough green-belt land in Greater London to build 1.6m houses at average densities, says Paul Cheshire of the Lo... Read more...
25 April 2016
New research by London school of economics Professor Christian Hilber and Wouter Vermeulen of the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis provides strength and evidence of the connection between high housing pr... Read more...
12 April 2016
It costs a relatively large amount of money to buy a house in the UK - something readers from the UK will almost certainly agree with. But economists differ over why this is. This column argues that strict planning regul... Read more...
10 April 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
Article by Guy Michaels Over the last 30 years, floods have killed more than 500,000 people globally, and displaced about 650 million more. In a recent paper published by the Centre for Economic Performance, we examined... Read more...
09 March 2016
Source: London School of Economics and Political Science Country: World Abstract Does economic activity relocate away from areas that are at high risk of recurring shocks? We examine this question in the context of floo... Read more...
03 March 2016
Article by Guy Michaels Over the last 30 years, floods have killed more than 500,000 people globally, and displaced about 650m more. In a recent paper published by the Centre for Economic Performance, we examined why so... Read more...
01 March 2016
Paul Cheshire is interviewed about building on the green belt in the South East. The interview was broadcast by BBC South East on the Inside Out programme on February 29, 2016 Link to recorded interview here Related... Read more...
29 February 2016
The CBI estimates that leaving the EU would, ''conservatively'' have a significant net negative impact on the UK economy of £78bn annually, or about 4-5 percent of GDP. However, others have made more dire predictio... Read more...
21 January 2016
Article by Adriana Kocornik-Mina, Thomas McDermott, Guy Michaels and Ferdinand Rauch During the past couple of months alone, floods have displaced 100,000 people or more in Kenya, in Paraguay and Uruguay, and in India, ... Read more...
Article by Guy Michaels In a new study published by the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), we examine why so many people are hit by floods year after year. In particular, we ask whether urban populations respond to ... Read more...
11 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...
Professor Paul Cheshire accused the tycoon of hugely exaggerating the size and benefits of his stake in Scotland and said promises made by him were falling apart at the seams. This article was published by the Mail on ... Read more...
10 January 2016
Climate change experts have backed calls for tighter planning restrictions to prevent new building on flood plains after the worst national flooding crisis in a generation. After a major study of city floods around the w... Read more...
07 January 2016
Government initiatives to support home ownership and build new houses will fail to have any real impact in 2016, with UK property prices expected to keep climbing. John Van Reenen, Director, Centre for Economic Performa... Read more...
03 January 2016
The UK taxpayer is left to pick up the cost of flooding because housebuilders do not contribute enough when building homes, giving them an incentive to build on floodplains, according to research. Flooding costs between... Read more...
01 January 2016
The opportunities for social mobility, that higher education and income than the parents, is less in the United Kingdom than in Norway. Professor Stephen Machin at the Centre for Economic Performance in the United Kingdo... Read more...
10 December 2015
The prospects for improving social mobility for future generations remain bleak, an author of a key social study released a decade ago will warn. Stephen Machin, professor of economics and research director at the Centre... Read more...
'Bleak' prospects A seminar on social mobility in the UK, to be held at the London School of Economics on Thursday, will hear that too little progress is being made. It will be addressed by Prof Stephen Machin, res... Read more...
Article by Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin Private tutoring is booming and elite universities remain preserve of middle classes; something must change, say Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin Social mobility is t... Read more...
09 December 2015
On 18 November, representatives from the Centre for Vocational Education Research gave evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on Social Mobility, as part of its inquiry into the transition from school to wor... Read more...
18 November 2015
Social mobility plays a curious and sometimes tortuous role in our national political psyche. We love talking about it even if we can't, or won't, do much about it. Greater mobility is a goal lionised by all politicians ... Read more...
In her address to the Conservative party conference, the home secretary delivered a pointed speech saying that ''there is no case, in the national interest, for immigration of the scale we have experienced over the last ... Read more...
06 October 2015
Professor Alan Manning of the London School of Economics has studied unemployment in former industrial areas and says every city needs the equivalent of an export sector - something to bring money from outside the area,... Read more...
04 October 2015
In the East London case, wrote Paul Cheshire, an emeritus professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics, via email, ''the very early relatively poor but mainly educated/drop-out pioneer gentrifiers - ... Read more...
30 September 2015
This was based on a study by Professor Paul Cheshire, of the London School of Economics, which declared that... This article was published by The Times on September 30, 2015 [Subscription needed to view article.] Re... Read more...
Similar work by Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber, of the London School of Economics, estimated that in the early 2000s this regulatory shadow tax was roughly 300% in Milan and Paris, 450% in the City of London, and 800... Read more...
22 June 2015
Paul Cheshire discusses using limited amount of London's green belt for housing. The interview was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 News on June 14, 2015 [No link available.] Related Publications The Green Belt: A Plac... Read more...
14 June 2015
Britain's politicians say they are keen to reward aspiration, but soaring house prices are a significant block to achieving this. Professor Christian Hilber, from the London School of Economics, explains to Ferdinando Gi... Read more...
09 June 2015
Partly as a result London house prices per square foot are now the second highest in the world after Monaco, according to the London School of Economics' Centre for Economic Performance. The problem is acute: the average... Read more...
02 June 2015
Corporate greed isn't good, but it might not be as bad for inequality as we thought - or at least not in the way we thought. Now it seems pretty obvious that inequality must have something to do with executive pay. After... Read more...
29 May 2015
Both labour and its opponents make too much of a new policy Labour made two housing policy commitments over the weekend, only one of which was interesting. The uninteresting one was the promise to cut stamp duty for fir... Read more...
27 April 2015
The stereotype of concrete London is misleading: a fifth of all land in the Greater London Authority is green belt, according to a report by the London School of Economics, business group London First and planning firm Q... Read more...
27 February 2015
Building an economy upon a massive and growing distortion in the market for land is foolish In a recent paper, Christian Hilber of the London School of Economics and Wouter Vermeulen of the Netherlands bureau for econom... Read more...
05 February 2015
Britain has prized the ideal of economically mixed neighbourhoods since the 19th century. Poverty and disadvantage are intensified when poor people cluster, runs the argument; conversely, the rich are unfairly helped whe... Read more...
29 January 2015
Consider the example of planning policy. On one side of the barricades, there are those opposed to new development - perhaps not in general, but certainly when it comes to any specific attempt to build much-needed new h... Read more...
21 January 2015
LONDON GREENBELT: The London Society was instrumental in formulating London's Green Belt in the 20th century. Tonight, near Farringdon, it hosts a debate about the future of London's Green Belt with Jonathan Manns on beh... Read more...
07 December 2014
[Joshua] Angrist, the Ford Professor of Economics, has long been one of the leading advocates of research that uses ''ceteris paribus'' [other things being equal] principles. Now, along with Jorn-Steffen Pischke of the L... Read more...
01 December 2014
MIT News announced the publication later this month of Mastering Metrics: The Path from Cause to Effect by Joshua Angrist and Jörn-Steffen Pischke. Economists' new book teaches how to conduct cause-and-effect studi... Read more...
Paul Cheshire discusses housing affordability and need to build new housing. This interview was broadcast by BBC South on November 6, 2014 (no link available) Also on: BBC Radio Oxford Related links Paul Ches... Read more...
06 November 2014
Professor Paul Cheshire of the London School of Economics, has written that ''the unstoppable damage they do to societal fairness, housing affordability, the economic efficiency of our cities, even the environment, is de... Read more...
19 October 2014
Alluding to research from the London School of Economics, which showed more of Surrey if devoted to golf courses than housing, Dr Cable said if he was in a middle-income family struggling to find a home in the county, he... Read more...
16 October 2014
New homes should be built on golf courses in an attempt to solve the housing crisis, Vince Cable has suggested. ... Dr Cable was responding to a study by the London School of Economics which suggested that more of Surrey... Read more...
08 October 2014
Liberalisation of planning could therefore lower house prices and rents directly, and there would be a direct boost to building growth. But the real gains would come through a fall in the cost burden associated with prop... Read more...
16 September 2014
Only 10 per cent of the value of land in expensive cities is due to its natural scarcity. The rest is planning restrictions. Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber at the London School of Economics applied the same trick to ... Read more...
16 July 2014
Presenter quotes an earlier appearance by Paul Cheshire on the BBC's 'Sunday Politics Show' discussing the use of the green belt for new housing sites. This mention was on the BBC Radio Bristol News on July 11, 2014... Read more...
11 July 2014
Article by Francesco Caselli, Angus Armstrong, Jaghit Chadha and Wouter den Haan How should UK policy-makers respond to potential dangers to the economy from the housing market? As this column reports, a majority of res... Read more...
08 July 2014
The Government's Help to Buy scheme was also helping first time buyers move into the market, she added but Prof. Cheshire rejected the measures as ''putting fingers in dykes''. ''The help to buy scheme is simply a rec... Read more...
06 July 2014
Barry Sheerman MP mentioned LSE report which highlighted percentage of greenbelt land which could be used for housing. The broadcast was made by BBC Parliament on June 30, 2014 Related publications Turning houses ... Read more...
30 June 2014
As Prof Paul Cheshire points out in London School of Economics journal Centrepiece, more of the county of Surrey is devoted to golf courses than houses. Just 10 per cent of England is built up, and gardens cover nearly h... Read more...
19 June 2014
Stephen Stone, chief executive officer of Crest Nicholson Holdings Plc and Paul Cheshire, professor of economic geography at London School of Economics, discuss U.K. property prices, planning laws and building on green-b... Read more...
17 June 2014
According to Professor Paul Cheshire, you could build 1.6 million homes at average densities if just a fraction of that greenbelt space, much of it riding schools and golf courses, were reclassified. This article was... Read more...
16 June 2014
A debate on why Britain is failing to build enough homes and how best to fix the problem which was held at LSE. Speakers included Paul Cheshire. This programme was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on June 11, 2014 Link... Read more...
11 June 2014
Paul Cheshire talks about the housing crisis. The interview was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on the World at One show on June 6, 2014 Link to programme here Also on: Heart Northampton B... Read more...
06 June 2014
Paul Cheshire discusses need for more housing on greenbelts. This interview was broadcast by BBC Berkshire on May 14, 2014 No link available. Related publications Turning houses into gold: the failure of Britis... Read more...
14 May 2014
Green belt polices that aim to keep ''the urban unwashed out of the Home Counties'' are causing a housing affordability crisis, according to a London School of Economics (LSE) professor. Britain's booming house prices ha... Read more...
02 May 2014
In response to arguments that the 'social mobility problem' has been overstated and that social mobility as a policy aim is futile, Jo Blanden reviews research that her and colleagues have conducted into intergenerationa... Read more...
04 November 2013
The Nordics also have a strong record of drawing on the talents of their entire populations, with the possible exception of their immigrants. They have the world's highest rates of social mobility: in a comparison of soc... Read more...
01 February 2013
Studies of social mobility as far back as the 1950s and 1960s showed that rates of movement in the United States were generally comparable to other developed countries. This finding itself challenged the longstanding ... Read more...
02 October 2012
Organised by British Governement@ LSE and LSE London, this event forms part of the LSE Hot Topics series. House prices in Britain remain exceptionally high. We urgently need more housing, but where should we build it? C... Read more...
26 June 2012
Since 1997, the Labour government has spent considerable sums trying to narrow the gap between poor areas - neighbourhoods, cities and regions - and the rest. The latest CEP Election Analysis from the Centre for Economic... Read more...
26 April 2010