Innovation drivers

Innovation drivers publications

Defence spending is rising whether voters like it or not. The UK has committed to 2.5% of national income and aims for nearer 3.5% over the next decade, GBP30bn a year for each percentage point. What does the country get...Read more...

John Van Reenen

19 June 2026

CEP report

Catalysing climate resilience

The UK is experiencing increasing impacts from climate change, including more frequent and severe floods, heatwaves and storms. It needs to prepare more for these impacts. It also needs to honour its pledge to support cl...Read more...

Raffaele Della Croce, Daisy Jameson, Maxwell Read, Esin Serin and Anna Valero

14 May 2026

Blog

Vox EU:

Measuring national technological trajectories using 200 years of international patent data

Innovation underpins sustained long-run economic growth, yet measuring technological success is challenging. This column compiles two centuries of patent data and leverages filings in multiple patent offices to document ...Read more...

Antonin Bergeaud, Ruveyda Nur Gozen and John Van Reenen

17 March 2026

Blog

VoxEU:

Firms predict an AI productivity boom is coming

Comparable international survey data on artificial intelligence adoption by firms is still lacking. This column surveys over 5,000 CFOs, CEOs, and executives from stratified firm samples across the US, UK, Germany and Au...Read more...

Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Steven J. Davis, Kevin M. Foster, Aaron Jalca, Brent H. Meyer, Paul Mizen, Michael Navarrete, Pawel Smietanka, Gregory Thwaites, Ben Zhe Wang and Ivan Yotzov

12 March 2026

Blog

VoxDev:

Is quality upgrading in agriculture a path to poverty reduction?

Under standard conditions in the Colombian coffee sector, the benefits of producing better coffee are not passed on to farmers, weakening their incentives to invest in higher-quality production. However, when a large int...Read more...

Mario Bernasconi, Patrick Farrell, Rocco Macchiavello, Josepa Miquel-Florensa, Eric Verhoogen and Nicolas de Roux

25 February 2026

CentrePiece article

Philippe Aghion: explaining sustained growth through creative destruction

How the study of innovation and competition has been transformed....Read more...

John Van Reenen

20 February 2026

CEP report

Pathways to a productive and inclusive net zero

The transition to net zero can bring economic benefits - improving productivity and living standards while tackling climate change and this collection of briefing papers shows how. Pathways to productive and inclusive ne...Read more...

Pia Andres, Chiara Cavaglia, Sam Fankhauser, Ilya Ilin, Francois Lafond, Fulvia Marotta, Ralf Martin, Sandra McNally, Viet Nguyen-Tien, Alice Owen, Emilien Ravigne, Maxwell Read, Xiyu Ren, Misato Sato, Aurelien Saussay, Arjun Shah, Trang Thu Tran, Anna Valero, Guglielmo Ventura, Dennis Verhoeven, Francesco Vona and Golvine de Rochambeau

13 February 2026

CEP discussion paper

Mapping technological trajectories: evidence from two centuries of patent data

We introduce a methodology to measure cross-country trends in innovation capability - "technological trajectories" and implement this on a new rich dataset covering patents between 1836 and 2016 across multiple countries...Read more...

Antonin Bergeaud, Ruveyda Nur Gozen and John Van Reenen

22 January 2026

Blog

Project Syndicate:

Europe does not lack capital - it lacks scale

Even the best start ups cannot thrive sustainably in an environment where each country protects its national champions, and where administrative barriers prevent the emergence of truly European ones. If Europe wants to b...Read more...

Antonin Bergeaud, Andre Loesekrug-Pietri and Jean Tirole

6 January 2026

External report

Innovation in Green Technologies

Demand for cleaner, more efficient technologies is transforming global markets and with it, the geography of innovation. Over the last 15 years, markets for new energy technologies and climate resilience have outpaced gr...Read more...

Samuel Asuquo Edet, Chiara Criscuolo, Ejona Fuli, Selin Gonca Ozyurt, Ralf Martin, Chhavi Rastogi, Samuel Rosenow, Fabian Scheifele, Trang Thu Tran, Verena Wiedemann, Nadege Yameogo and Golvine de Rochambeau

15 July 2025

CentrePiece article

Return innovation: how migration shapes diffusion of new technologies

Novel products, processes and technologies are important drivers of economic growth. Davide Coluccia and Gaia Dossi show how migrants from Britain to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century not only too...Read more...

Davide M. Coluccia and Gaia Dossi

20 June 2025

External report

Strengthening Monitoring and Evaluation of Innovation Programs in the EU : Creating Ecosystems for Innovation in a Post-Coal Region Evidence from an RCT in the Czech Republic (English)

The Usti nad Labem and Karlovy Vary regions face persistent structural challenges as they transition away from coal-based industries. In response to these challenges, national and EU institutions have launched a coordina...Read more...

Stephen Anderson, Leonardo Iacovone, Andreas Menzel, Florian Munch, Mariana Pereira-Lopez and Rahul Suhag

18 June 2025

Blog

World Bank blogs:

Tax incentives for R&D can spur innovation and growth - when done right

As the debate around industrial policy intensifies, there is broad consensus on the rationale for government support to encourage private sector innovation. Economy-wide returns from research and development (R&D) in the...Read more...

Matej Bajgar and Chiara Criscuolo

13 June 2025

CentrePiece article

in brief... Do try this at work: the AI chatbot that can interview at scale

Large language models can conduct interviews at speed and at scale. Friedrich Geiecke and Xavier Jaravel present a new open source platform to support this innovative form of qualitative research....Read more...

Friedrich Geiecke and Xavier Jaravel

20 February 2025

Blog

Vox EU:

Redirecting AI: Privacy regulation and the future of artificial intelligence

Some artificial intelligence technologies are more data intensive than others. This column examines how data privacy regulation shaped the trajectory of AI innovation across countries, looking at patent applications from...Read more...

Pia Andres, Carl Benedikt Frey and Giorgio Presidente

5 January 2025

Blog

INSEAD Knowledge:

Consumers' green conscience fosters clean innovation

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

Philippe Aghion and Alexandra Roulet

25 April 2024

Blog

Productivity Puzzles:

Why does the UK do so well on the Global Innovation Index? (Podcast)

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

Anna Valero, Sacha Wunsch-Vincent and Bart van Ark

9 November 2023

Blog

LSE Review of Books:

Creative destruction for growth and change

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

John Van Reenen

25 September 2023

External report

Ready for change

Britain's productivity shortfall is its foundational economic problem. Debate about this gap and how to fix it typically focus on raising productivity of existing firms, via two routes. First, innovation: investment, R&D...Read more...

Richard Davies, Nadim Hamdan and Gregory Thwaites

25 September 2023

Blog

CATO Institute:

The Impact of Regulation on Innovation

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

Philippe Aghion, Antonin Bergeaud and John Van Reenen

19 April 2023

CentrePiece article

China at the technological frontier

The technology frontier that was dominated by the United States, Europe and Japan in the early 2000s is now much more polarised between the American and Chinese patent offices. Antonin Bergeaud and Cyril Verluise show th...Read more...

Antonin Bergeaud and Cyril Verluise

21 February 2023

Blog

Research Professional News:

Autumn statement delivered reassurance, but not vision

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

Anna Valero and John Van Reenen

28 November 2022

Blog

Macroscope, South China Morning Post:

To become a world leader in innovation, China needs to loosen the economic reins

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

Simon Commander and Saul Estrin

10 November 2022

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Clean technologies for growth and equity

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

Ralf Martin

24 October 2022

27 September 2022

Innovation drivers