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Occasional papers

Occasional papers provide commentaries on policy or on topics outside the CEP mainstream.

Latest Occasional papers

CEP occasional paper
UK national productivity trends: getting the data right - August 2026 update

We compare standard productivity estimates of UK output per worker derived from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) with newly released estimates based on more reliable "Real Time Information" (RTI) administrative data. LFS-ba...Read more...

Niki Barbas, Anna Valero and John Van Reenen

24 August 2026

CEP occasional paper
Nature: Green and blue space in urban areas and engagement with nature

The natural environment has been shown to improve wellbeing, mental and physical health and a range of wider positive outcomes. But what can the government do? And are investments in "nature" value for money? There are ...Read more...

Sara MacLennan

23 July 2026

CEP occasional paper
CEP wellbeing coefficient database

Wellbeing cost-benefit analysis requires credible estimates of how much specific life circumstances change subjective wellbeing. This paper documents and contextualises a compendium of 123 such estimates, drawn from 19 d...Read more...

David Frayman, Christian Krekel, Richard Layard, Sara MacLennan, Isaac Parkes and Janey Tietz

22 July 2026

CEP occasional paper
UK national productivity trends: getting the data right

We compare standard productivity estimates of UK output per worker derived from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) with newly released estimates based on more reliable "Real Time Information" (RTI) administrative data. LFS-ba...Read more...

Niki Barbas, Anna Valero and John Van Reenen

20 July 2026

CEP occasional paper
Wellbeing appraisal for Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. Underpinning evidence and assumptions

Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) are a series of measures to reduce traffic volumes and increase active modes of travel in residential areas. They typically restrict cars from certain streets and can include bollards or...Read more...

Sara MacLennan

11 June 2026

CEP occasional paper
Structured wellbeing curriculum in schools

Some argue that school is a means to an end, and time spent in lessons may be unpleasant, but it helps these children in the future. The question is 'to what end'. Are school years something which have to be tolerated i...Read more...

Sara MacLennan

13 October 2025

CEP occasional paper
The full returns to higher education in the UK

University education is known to generate significant earnings returns, but its full value may be understated without considering its wider effects on individual wellbeing. This paper estimates the complete lifetime retu...Read more...

David Frayman

10 July 2025

CEP occasional paper
Mapping Functions for Wellbeing Measures to Generate WELLBYs for Use in Economic Evaluation

Ideally, outcome measurements for interventions that affect wellbeing would report the standard, ONS recommended, life satisfaction question. Responses to this question directly correspond to WELLBYs, which can be moneti...Read more...

Isaac Parkes

3 June 2025

CEP occasional paper
The C-WELLBY: Towards a Universal Measure of Children's Wellbeing for Policy Analysis

There is a pressing need for a universal measure of children's wellbeing, parallel to the WELLBY, for use in cost-benefit analysis. Currently, there is no consensus on how to value the wellbeing of children, raising conc...Read more...

Isaac Parkes

15 April 2025

CEP occasional paper
The high price of doing nothing: evaluating an expansion of employment support for health-related inactivity

Employment support for those with mild-to-moderate health conditions is estimated to deliver large benefits to the individual and government finances, paying for itself within 5 years. This suggests enabling inactive ind...Read more...

David Frayman

12 December 2024

CEP occasional paper
Has work from home shifted the US electoral map?

Since 2020, the dramatic rise in remote work has coincided with increased geographic mobility in the United States. We examine the relationship between these trends and their effects on the electoral landscape. Using IRS...Read more...

Peter Lambert and Chris Larkin

4 November 2024

CEP occasional paper
A wellbeing cost-benefit analysis of raising the state pension age

Governments of developed countries are facing growing pressures from the fiscal demands of an ageing population. To cope with this, they have tried to get individuals to work longer, primarily by raising the ages at whic...Read more...

David Frayman

4 September 2024

CEP occasional paper
The Lower Thames crossing

Being on the move can spiral our mood up or down. There is well-known evidence that walking and cycling can directly improve our mental health as well as our physical health; many of us have experienced feelings of freed...Read more...

Sara MacLennan

4 September 2024

CEP occasional paper
The apprenticeship guarantee

The UK has a poor record of providing opportunities to learn skills for the around half of young people that do not attend university. Over a third of 18-year-olds in England are not undertaking any education or training...Read more...

David Frayman

4 September 2024

CEP occasional paper
Mental health support teams in schools: Evidence and assumptions

In this paper we examine the cost-effectiveness of providing NICE recommended psychological therapy to young people. For each type of mental health problem we show: (i) the assumptions used to derive the impact of treati...Read more...

Sara MacLennan

4 September 2024

CEP occasional paper
Mental health and employment

In this report we evaluate the benefits and costs of providing NICE recommended treatment for addiction or severe mental health problems over a two-year time horizon for one individual. We separately investigate addictio...Read more...

Isaac Parkes

4 September 2024

CEP occasional paper
A micro-geographic house price index for England and Wales

We generate a mix-adjusted house price index for England and Wales from 2010 to 2020 at the level of lower-layer super output areas. To this end, we blend parametric and non-parametric estimation techniques and leverage ...Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Felipe Carozzi and Lukas Makovsky

1 December 2023

CEP occasional paper
Projecting UK net migration

Predicting migration is notoriously difficult but unavoidable if, for example, we want projections of future population. We present a new 'bottom-up' approach to projecting net migration, whereby emigration is estimated ...Read more...

Tessa Hall, Alan Manning and Madeleine Sumption

16 October 2023

CEP occasional paper
The trouble with inactivity

Elevated concerns over the consequences of recent rises in the UK economic inactivity rate for growth, wages and prices have prominently featured in recent public debate about the labour market and the economy. This pape...Read more...

Stephen Machin and Jonathan Wadsworth

25 July 2023

CEP occasional paper
The linear algebra of economic geography models

We provide sufficient statistics for nominal and real wage exposure to productivity shocks in a constant elasticity economic geography model. These exposure measures summarize the first-order general equilibrium elastici...Read more...

Benny Kleinman, Ernest Liu and Stephen J. Redding

11 July 2023

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