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Discussion papers

Findings from CEP's academic research are first published in our open-access discussion paper series.

Latest Discussion papers

CEP discussion paper
Migrant entrepreneurship, high-growth firms and cities

High-growth firms represent a small share of businesses in OECD countries, but disproportionately drive national economic activity. This paper examines migrants' role in founding high-growth firms, and the urban nature o...Read more...

Tom Kemeny, Max Nathan, Ceren Ozgen, Guido Pialli, Anna Rosso, Mateo Sere and Anna Valero

9 November 2026

CEP discussion paper
Money, time, and the demand for children

US fertility has fallen well below replacement, even as stated fertility ideals have not. We ask how much money and time women are willing to trade off for additional children, a question that is difficult to answer usin...Read more...

Guy Michaels and Evie Thompson

5 November 2026

CEP discussion paper
Severance pay reforms, worker flows, and labor market duality

This paper studies how cuts to statutory severance pay affect worker flows, contractual allocation, firm-level hiring composition, and wages in the Portuguese labor market. The analysis exploits the 2011-2013 reforms, wh...Read more...

Gabriel Andrade, Priscila Ferreira and Hugo de Almeida Vilares

5 November 2026

CEP discussion paper
Lost in translation: financial barriers to new technologies

Advanced economies are reshaped by transitions from old to new technological paradigms. These transitions rely on complementary innovations that spread new technologies across industries. What happens when a financial cr...Read more...

Philippe Aghion, Antonin Bergeaud, John Van Reenen and Maarten de Ridder

4 November 2026

CEP discussion paper
Thin markets, thick subsidies: local competition and the incidence of heat pump grants

We study how local supply shapes the incidence and quantity response of clean-technology subsidies. In October 2023, the UK government increased the grant for air-source heat pumps from 5,000 to 7,500 GBP in England and ...Read more...

Shefali Khanna, Ralf Martin, Florian Anselm Munch and Aurelien Saussay

28 October 2026

CEP discussion paper
Losing their religion

This paper studies whether governments can change social norms that constrain women's education and work, and through which mechanism. Albania's 1967 religion ban, which created the world's first atheist state, provides ...Read more...

Richard Murphy and Shqiponja Telhaj

23 October 2026

CEP discussion paper
Which types of education raise firm productivity? Evidence for managers and workers in the UK

This paper estimates the firm productivity returns to degree field, institution quality, and degree level, and compares them with wage returns. I link a LinkedIn panel from Revelio Labs to Orbis financial accounts for ov...Read more...

Tessa Hall

23 October 2026

CEP discussion paper
A double-differences approach to inference in regression discontinuity designs with a discrete running variable

We present a new approach to nonparametric inference in regression discontinuity designs where the running variable is discrete and may have few support points. The approach is based on an intuitive and comparatively wea...Read more...

Georg Graetz and Mattias Nordin

23 October 2026

CEP discussion paper
Innovation partnerships for development along green value chains

Growth and development success stories are often linked to new technological waves and innovation success. Green technologies emerge as a new technology category in which innovation quality in Emerging and Developing Eco...Read more...

Samuel Asuquo Edet, Ralf Martin, Trang Thu Tran, Dennis Verhoeven and Golvine de Rochambeau

19 October 2026

CEP discussion paper
A network approach to geopolitics

We develop a tractable framework for analyzing geopolitics as a network of coordination and strategic influence. Countries choose geopolitical actions that trade off domestic interests against incentives to align with co...Read more...

Ernest Liu, Stephen J. Redding, Bennett Smith-Worthington and David Y. Yang

19 October 2026

CEP discussion paper
Who can produce what? Firm capabilities and product entry

Which firms supply which products? Modelling multi-product firms under heterogeneous markups, we recover firms? costs for produced products and develop an algorithm inspired by recommender systems to predict costs for un...Read more...

Luca Macedoni, John Morrow and Vladimir Tyazhelnikov

12 October 2026

CEP discussion paper
Quantifying non-tariff barriers: Brexit, input sourcing and firm performance

How successful is European integration in removing non-tariff trade barriers? We study how Brexit affected UK firms' input sourcing and sales. The post-Brexit Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) reduced sales and input...Read more...

Gustaf Dillner, Rebecca Freeman, Kalina Manova and Thomas Sampson

30 September 2026

CEP discussion paper
Organizing expertise with externalities: evidence from primary care

Many modern organizations use knowledge hierarchies, where frontline workers try to resolve tasks and pass those they cannot resolve to experts. But the implications of this organization of expertise are not well underst...Read more...

Amanda Dahlstrand, Shan Huang, Nestor Le Nestour and Guy Michaels

30 September 2026

CEP discussion paper
The labour market dynamics of households: eyes down for a full house

Little is known about the dynamic factors that shape movements in household labour market stocks. Expanding on the literature used to analyse individual labour market flows, we apply and extend dynamic techniques to the ...Read more...

Paul Gregg and Jonathan Wadsworth

30 September 2026

CEP discussion paper
Is it psychologically dangerous to live in a rich area? Evidence from census-matched micro data on UK suicides

This paper uses micro data on UK suicides to implement a new test of relative-deprivation theory. Research into the potential consequences of relative comparisons had in the past had to rely on subjective data on wellbei...Read more...

Caspar Kaiser, Ekaterina Oparina and Andrew J. Oswald

30 September 2026

CEP discussion paper
Measuring the prevalence and direction of innovation: a pilot approach using LLMs

This paper pilots a method for measuring firms' product and process innovation at scale. Our approach uses LLMs to complete a detailed innovation survey for a sample of 600,000 companies operating across 40 countries. Th...Read more...

Prashant Garg, Peter John Lambert, Ralf Martin and Denis Medvedev

28 September 2026

CEP discussion paper
The role of information frictions in study habit choice and academic performance

We study whether information frictions about the relative effectiveness of study methods distort how college students allocate multidimensional learning efforts and, in turn, affect their academic performance. Our baseli...Read more...

Agustina Affonso, Esteban M. Aucejo, Stephanie El Khoury and Tomas Larroucau

28 September 2026

CEP discussion paper
Revisiting test score forecasts and teacher value-added

We develop a framework for comparing forecasts in teacher value-added models. We apply it to interpret the teacher-switching test of Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff (2014), showing that the teacher-switching coefficient ca...Read more...

Tom Ahn, Esteban M. Aucejo and Jonathan James

28 September 2026

CEP discussion paper
Productivity in teams: double crewing for police

Whether working in a team or alone results in higher productivity has been extensively studied in many settings, often being a controversial issue. This is none more so than for the police. Whether single or double crewi...Read more...

Tom Kirchmaier, Stephen Machin, Matteo Sandi and Robert Witt

28 September 2026

CEP discussion paper
Explaining the predictive performance of police in cases of domestic abuse

Police in England and Wales are asked to predict the likelihood of serious recidivism in domestic abuse cases, with little support beyond a flawed questionnaire. To analyze their decisions, we first develop methods to de...Read more...

Jeffrey Grogger, Andrew Jordan and Tom Kirchmaier

26 August 2026

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