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Books

Books by CEP researchers cover a broad range of subjects, from the use of core economic research tools to the effects of decreasing social mobility in Britain.

Screenshot of book cover
Innovation for the masses: how to share the benefits of the high-tech economy

Neil Lee draws on case studies of various countries around the world, to set out how innovation can be successfully balanced toward equity.
Wellbeing: Science and Policy
Wellbeing: science and policy

Richard Layard and Jan Emmanuel De Neve show how wellbeing can be measured, what causes it and how it can be improved in the first ever textbook on wellbeing.

All Books

Book
Innovation for the Masses
How to Share the Benefits of the High-Tech Economy

From San Francisco to Shanghai, many of the world's most innovative places are highly unequal, with the benefits going to a small few. Rather than simply asking how we can create more high-tech cities and nations, Innova...Read more...

Neil Lee

11 January 2024

Book
Handbook of the Economics of Education
Volume 7

Handbook of the Economics of Education, Volume Seven describes the research frontier in key topical areas and sets the agenda for further work. Sections in this new release include Methods for Measuring School Effectiven...Read more...

Edited by Eric A. Hanushek; Stephen Machin; Ludger Woessmann

26 October 2023

Book
Equity in education: Levelling the playing field of learning - a practical guide for teachers

Equity in Education sets out a new equity-based approach in education to help teachers improve the prospects of under-resourced and working-class pupils. The equity approach recognises that we must address our own cultu...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major, Emily Briant

6 October 2023

Book
The Economics of Creative Destruction
New Research on Themes from Aghion and Howitt

A stellar cast of economists examines the roles of creative destruction in addressing today’s most important political and social questions. Inequality is rising, growth is stagnant while rents accumulate, the env...Read more...

Ufuk Akcigit and John Van Reenen

22 August 2023

Book
Free and Equal
What Would a Fair Society Look Like?

Imagine: you are designing a society, but you don't know who you'll be within it - rich or poor, man or woman, gay or straight. What would you want that society to look like? This is the revolutionary thought experiment...Read more...

Daniel Chandler

20 April 2023

Book
Wellbeing: Science and Policy

What produces a happy society and a happy life? Thanks to the new science of wellbeing, we can now answer this question using state-of-the-art empirical evidence. This transforms our ability to base our decisions on the ...Read more...

Richard Layard and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve

6 March 2023

Book
Handbook of the Economics of Education
Volume 6

The Handbook of the Economics of Education describes the research frontier in key topical areas and sets the agenda for further work. Modern analysis in the economics of education has made tremendous strides in understan...Read more...

Edited by Eric A. Hanushek; Stephen Machin; Ludger Woessmann

18 January 2023

Book
Restarting the future
How to fix the intangible economy

The past two decades have witnessed sluggish economic growth, mounting inequality, dysfunctional competition, and a host of other ills that have left people wondering what has happened to the future they were promised. R...Read more...

Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake

22 March 2022

Book
A Handbook for Wellbeing Policy-Making
History, Theory, Measurement, Implementation, and Examples

Around the world, governments are starting to directly measure the subjective wellbeing of their citizens and to use it for policy evaluation and appraisal. What would happen if a country were to move from using GDP to u...Read more...

Paul Frijters and Christian Krekel

23 May 2021

Book
The Power of Creative Destruction
Economic Upheaval and the Wealth of Nations

Crisis seems to follow crisis. Inequality is rising, growth is stagnant, the environment is suffering, and the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed every crack in the system. We hear more and more calls for radical change, even...Read more...

Philippe Aghion, Celine Antonin and Simon Bunel

20 April 2021

Book
What Do We Know and What Should We Do About Social Mobility?

In this vital new book, Britain's first Professor of Social Mobility Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin, reveal the causes of the UK's low social mobility, explain why it's getting worse, and outline how we reverse this...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin

30 September 2020

Book
Can We Be Happier? Evidence and Ethics

Most people now realise that economic growth, however desirable, will not solve all our problems. Instead, we need a philosophy and a science which encompasses a much fuller range of human need and experience.This book a...Read more...

Richard Layard

23 January 2020

Book
Extreme Economies
Survival, Failure, Future ? Lessons from the World's Limits

In search of a fresh perspective on the modern economy, Extreme Economies takes the reader off the beaten path, introducing people living at the world's margins. From disaster zones and displaced societies to failed stat...Read more...

Richard Davies

5 September 2019

Book
Social Mobility and its Enemies

Apart from the USA, Britain has the lowest social mobility in the Western world. The lack of movement in who gets where in society - particularly when people are stuck at the bottom and the top - costs the nation dea...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin

27 September 2018

Book
Origins of Happiness

What makes people happy? Why should governments care about people's well-being? How would policy change if well-being were the main objective? The Origins of Happiness seeks to revolutionize how we think about human prio...Read more...

Andrew E. Clark, Sarah Flèche, Richard Layard, Nattavudh Powdthavee and George Ward

27 January 2017

Book
Handbook of the Economics of Education
Volume 5

The volume of research into the economics of education has grown rapidly in recent years. In this comprehensive new Handbook, editors Eric Hanushek, Stephen Machin, and Ludger Woessmann assemble original contributions fr...Read more...

Edited by Eric A. Hanushek; Stephen Machin; Ludger Woessmann

27 April 2016

Book
Making a Difference in Education

This book discusses whether education policy has really been guided by the evidence, and explores why the failings of Britain's educational system have been so resistant to change, as well as the success stories that hav...Read more...

Robert Cassen, Sandra McNally and Anna Vignoles

1 April 2015

Book
Mastering 'Metrics
The Path from Cause to Effect

Applied econometrics, known to aficionados as 'metrics, is the original data science. 'Metrics encompasses the statistical methods economists use to untangle cause and effect in human affairs. Through accessible disc...Read more...

Joshua D. Angrist and Jorn-Steffen Pischke

21 December 2014

Book
Thrive
The power of evidence-based psychological therapies

A ground-breaking argument for better treatment of mental health from Richard Layard (author of Happiness) and David M. Clark. Britain has become a world leader in providing psychological therapies thanks to the wor...Read more...

Richard Layard and David M. Clark

1 July 2014

Book
Urban Economics and Urban Policy
Challenging Conventional Policy Wisdom Hardcover

In this bold, exciting and readable volume, Paul Cheshire, Max Nathan and Henry Overman illustrate the insights that recent economic research brings to our understanding of cities, and the lessons for urban policy-making...Read more...

Paul C. Cheshire, Max Nathan and Henry G. Overman

30 May 2014

Book
El dilema de España
Spain's Dilemma

Spain is at a historic crossroads. On the one hand, the country could follow the easy path of populism and statism - a 'Hispanic' road to underdevelopment that is exemplified by Venezuela and Argentina, and which has...Read more...

Luis Garicano

1 January 2014

Book
Lessons from the Economics of Crime
What Reduces Offending?

Research from the United States, Europe, and South America demonstrates the usefulness of the tools of economic analysis for the study of crime. Economists who bring the tools of economic analysis to bear on the stu...Read more...

Edited by Philip J. Cook, Stephen Machin, Olivier Marie and Giovanni Mastrobuoni

1 October 2013

Book
Investing for Prosperity
A manifesto for growth

Why is economic growth such a rare and elusive butterfly in the UK garden? What institutions and policies are needed to sustain UK economic growth in the dynamic global economy of the twenty-first century? After yea...Read more...

Edited by Tim Besley and John Van Reenen

1 September 2013

Book
Handbook of the Economics of Education
Volume 4

What is the value of an education? Volume 4 of the Handbooks in the Economics of Education combines recent data with new methodologies to examine this and related questions from diverse perspectives. School choice and sc...Read more...

Edited by Eric A. Hanushek; Stephen Machin; Ludger Woessmann

13 July 2011

Book
Combatting Unemployment
IZA Prize in Labor Economics

Combatting Unemployment is a collection of key papers from seminal labour economists Richard Layard and Stephen J. Nickell. The authors received the IZA Prize in Labor Economics in 2008 for their path-breaking work o...Read more...

Richard Layard and Stephen J. Nickell; Edited by Werner Eichhorst and Klaus F. Zimmermann

1 May 2011

Book
Happiness
Lessons from a New Science

In this new edition of his landmark book, Richard Layard shows that there is a paradox at the heart of our lives. Most people want more income. Yet as societies become richer, they do not become happier. This is not...Read more...

Richard Layard

1 April 2011

Book
The Labour Market in Winter
The State of Working Britain

This collection of essays - by leading economic experts on the UK labour market - provides an overview of the key issues concerning the performance of the labour market, and the policy issues surrounding it, with a f...Read more...

Edited by Paul Gregg and Jonathan Wadsworth

1 January 2011

Book
The Comingled Code
Open Source and Economic Development

Discussions of the economic impact of open source software often generate more heat than light. Advocates passionately assert the benefits of open source while critics decry its effects. Missing from the debate is ri...Read more...

Josh Lerner and Mark Schankerman

1 December 2010

Book
Handbook of the Economics of Education
Volume 3

How does education affect economic and social outcomes, and how can it inform public policy? Volume 3 of the Handbooks in the Economics of Education uses newly available high-quality data from around the world to address...Read more...

Edited by Eric A. Hanushek; Stephen Machin; Ludger Woessmann

10 November 2010

Book
The Future of Finance
The LSE Report

This book presents a novel approach to the reform of the world’s financial system, starting with the basic question, what is a financial system for? It shows that the existing system has become far more complic...Read more...

Adair Turner, Richard Layard, Peter Boone, Charles Goodhart, Andrew Haldane, Simon Johnson, John Kay, Andrew Large, Andrew Smithers, Sushil Wadhwani, Martin Wolf and Paul Woolley

1 September 2010

Book
A Good Childhood
Searching for Values in a Competitive Age

Every day the newspapers lament the problems facing our children - broken homes, pressures to eat and drink, the stress of exams. The same issues are discussed in every pub and at every dinner party. But is life really...Read more...

Richard Layard and Judy Dunn

5 February 2009

Book
Mostly Harmless Econometrics
An Empiricist's Companion

The core methods in today's econometric toolkit are linear regression for statistical control, instrumental variables methods for the analysis of natural experiments, and differences-in-differences methods that explo...Read more...

Joshua D. Angrist and Jorn-Steffen Pischke

4 January 2009

Book
The Economics of Education and Training
Studies in Empirical Economics

Education and training are key to explain the current competitive strengths of national economies, and to secure future competitiveness.  While in the past educational and training institutions were often seen as p...Read more...

Edited by Christian Dustmann, Bernd Fitzenberger and Stephen Machin

1 January 2008

Book
Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market

This book aims to provide a basis for better unemployment policy: showing how the lessons learned from experience and theory can be applied to greatly reduce the waste and misery of high unemployment. The book surveys th...Read more...

Richard Layard, Stephen Nickell and Richard Jackman

1 August 2005

Book
What's the Good of Education?
The Economics of Education in the UK

Volumes have been written about the value of more and better education. But is there sufficient evidence to support the commonly held belief that we, as individuals and as a community, should be investing more in educati...Read more...

Stephen Machin and Anna Vignoles

8 May 2005

Book
Monopsony in Motion: Imperfect Competition in Labor Markets

What happens if an employer cuts wages by one cent? Much of labor economics is built on the assumption that all the workers will quit immediately. Here, Alan Manning mounts a systematic challenge to the standard mo...Read more...

Alan Manning

30 January 2005

Book
The Wage Curve

The Wage Curve casts doubt on some of the most important ideas in macroeconomics, labor economics, and regional economics. According to macroeconomic orthodoxy, there is a relationship between unemployment and the ra...Read more...

David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald

1 January 2003

Book
The Spatial Economy
Cities, Regions, and International Trade

The authors show how a common approach that emphasizes the three-way interaction among increasing returns, transportation costs, and the movement of productive factors can be applied to a wide range of issues in urba...Read more...

Masahisa Fujita, Paul Krugman, and Anthony J. Venables

1 July 2001

Book
The State of Working Britain

What are the prospects for the British labour market at the start of the new century? Since the 1960s Britain has experienced a series of profound changes affecting the way of life and work. This overview and analys...Read more...

Edited by Paul Gregg and Jonathan Wadsworth

18 November 1999

Book
Tackling Inequality

Richard Layard is one of Britain's foremost applied economists, whose work has had a profound impact on the policy debate in Britain and abroad.  This book contains his most influential articles on the subject of u...Read more...

Richard Layard

19 June 1999

Book
Tackling Unemployment

Richard Layard is one of Britain's foremost applied economists whose work has had a profound impact on the policy debate in Britain and abroad. This book contains his most influential articles on unemployment. It is publ...Read more...

Richard Layard

12 April 1999