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Occasional papers

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

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Prices and inflation in the UK - a new dataset

Richard Davies analyses UK price changes between 1988 and 2020 comparing shocks such as the 2008 crash and the Brexit referendum and Covid-19, finding a pattern that closely matches other countries. Read more...
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Are happier people more compliant?

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Daisy Fancourt, Christian Krekel and Sarah Swanke examine the relationship between people's levels of happiness and their willingness to comply with lockdown measures during the Covid-19 pandemic. Read more...

All Occasional papers

CEP occasional paper
Prices and inflation in the UK - A new dataset

This paper presents a new dataset of 41 million UK consumer prices, providing facts on the frequency, size and timing of price changes between 1988 and 2020. The micro data are the ‘price quotes’ of individual consumer p...Read more...

Richard Davies

5 February 2021

CEP occasional paper
Are happier people more compliant? Global evidence from three large-scale surveys during Covid-19 lockdowns

Around the world, governments have been asking their citizens to practice physical distancing and stay at home to contain the spread of Covid-19. Are happier people more willing to comply with these measures? Using three...Read more...

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Daisy Fancourt, Christian Krekel and Sarah Swanke

28 September 2020

CEP occasional paper
Regional differences in UK transport BCRs: an empirical assessment

The UK government uses a Value for Money (VfM) framework to help allocate infrastructure expenditure. At the core of this framework is a benefit to cost ratio (BCR) that is calculated using a set of established monetised...Read more...

Nicolás González-Pampillón and Henry G. Overman

21 September 2020

CEP occasional paper
Labour markets in the time of Coronavirus: measuring excess

Recessions are usually accompanied by some combination of job loss, hiring freezes, wage cuts or hours reductions. In a rapidly evolving economic crisis there is a need for timely information to assess labour market perf...Read more...

Jonathan Wadsworth

3 July 2020

CEP occasional paper
Preserving job matches during the Covid-19 pandemic: firm-level evidence on the role of government aid

We analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and government policies on firms’ aid takeup, layoff and furlough decisions. We collect new survey data for 10,642 small, medium and large Danish firms, and match to governm...Read more...

Morten Bennedsen, Berthe Larsen, Ian M. Schmutte and Daniela Scur

1 July 2020

CEP occasional paper
The early impact of Covid-19 on local commerce: changes in spend across neighborhoods and online

We document a number of striking features about the initial impact of the pandemic on local commerce across 16 US cities. There are two novel contributions from this analysis: exploration of neighborhood-level effects an...Read more...

Diana Farrell, Lindsay E. Relihan, Marvin W. Ward Jr. and Chris W. Wheat

11 June 2020

CEP occasional paper
When to release the lockdown: A wellbeing framework for analysing costs and benefits

In choosing when to end the lockdown, policy-makers have to balance the impact of the decision upon incomes, unemployment, mental health, public confidence and many other factors, as well as (of course) upon the number o...Read more...

Andrew Clark, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Daisy Fancourt, Nancy Hey, Christian Krekel, Richard Layard and Gus O'Donnell

24 April 2020

CEP occasional paper
Clusters in UK Self-Employment

UK Self-employment has soared in recent years. With existing labour market policy designed to cater for conventional employee relationships, policymakers in this field are increasingly seeking to better understand these ...Read more...

Jack Blundell

1 March 2020

CEP occasional paper
Immigration

Immigration remains a highly contentious issue and its purported effects on the labour market and the wider economy are still highly contested. The discussion below is intended as an overview of what we know and what we ...Read more...

Jonathan Wadsworth

28 November 2019

CEP occasional paper
International Data on Measuring Management Practices

We examine methods used to survey firms on their management and organizational practices. We contrast the strengths and weaknesses of “open ended questions” (like the World Management Survey) with “closed questions” (lik...Read more...

Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun, Daniela Scur and John Van Reenen

19 January 2016

CEP occasional paper
The UK's Productivity Puzzle

The 2008 Great Recession was notable in the UK for three things: the enormity of the output shock; the muted unemployment response; and the very slow rate of recovery. We review the literature which finds most of the dec...Read more...

Alex Bryson and John Forth

29 May 2015

CEP occasional paper
Mapping Information Economy Businesses with Big Data: Findings for the UK

Governments around the world want to develop their ICT and digital industries. Policymakers thus need a clear sense of the size and characteristics of digital businesses, but this is hard to do with conventional datasets...Read more...

Max Nathan and Anna Rosso

8 December 2014

CEP occasional paper
Knowledge-based Hierarchies: Using Organizations to Understand the Economy

We argue that incorporating the decision of how to organize the acquisition, use, and communication of knowledge into economic models is essential to understand a wide variety of economic phenomena. We survey the literat...Read more...

Luis Garicano and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg

16 October 2014

CEP occasional paper
Dynemp: A Stata® Routine for Distributed Micro-data Analysis of Business Dynamics

This paper introduces a new Stata® command, dynemp, which implements a distributed micro-data analysis of business and employment dynamics and firm demographics. The data source it requires are business registers or comp...Read more...

Chiara Criscuolo, Peter N. Gal and Carlo Menon

6 June 2014

CEP occasional paper
The new empirical economics of management

Over the last decade the World Management Survey (WMS) has collected firm-level management practices data across multiple sectors and countries. We developed the survey to try to explain the large and persistent TFP diff...Read more...

Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun, Daniela Scur and John Van Reenen

28 April 2014

CEP occasional paper
Gender and the Labor Market: What Have We Learned from Field and Lab Experiments?

We discuss the contribution of the experimental literature to the understanding of both traditional and previously unexplored dimensions of gender differences and discuss their bearings on labor market outcomes. Experime...Read more...

Ghazala Azmat and Barbara Petrongolo

14 March 2014

CEP occasional paper
Money, Well-being and Loss Aversion: Does an Income Loss Have a Greater Effect on Well-being than an Equivalent Income Gain?

Higher income is associated with greater well-being, but do income gains and losses impact on well-being differently? Loss aversion, whereby losses loom larger than gains, is typically examined with relation to decisions...Read more...

Christopher J. Boyce, Alex M. Wood, James Banks, Andrew E. Clark and Gordon D.A. Brown

9 January 2014

CEP occasional paper
Fluctuations in Uncertainty

This review article tries to answer four questions: (i) what are the stylized facts about uncertainty over time; (ii) why does uncertainty vary; (iii) do fluctuations in uncertainty matter; and (iv) did higher uncertaint...Read more...

Nicholas Bloom

13 December 2013

CEP occasional paper
Medium and Long Run Prospects for UK Growth in the Aftermath of the Financial Crisis

The productivity performance of the UK economy in the period 1990-2007 was excellent. Based entirely on pre-crisis data, and using a two-sector growth model, I project the future growth rate of GDP per hour in the market...Read more...

Nicholas Oulton

22 October 2013

CEP occasional paper
Incomplete Contracts and the Internal Organisation of Firms

We survey the theoretical and empirical literature on decentralization within firms. We first discuss how the concept of incomplete contracts shapes our views about the organization of decision-making within firms. We th...Read more...

Phillipe Aghion, Nicholas Bloom and John Van Reenen

13 March 2013

CEP occasional paper
Bankers and their bonuses

The pay of financial sector workers (“bankers”) is a focus of public concern especially since the onset of the financial crisis. We document the remarkable rise in the share of aggregate pay going to those at the very to...Read more...

Brian Bell and John Van Reenen

18 February 2013

CEP occasional paper
Extreme Wage Inequality: Pay at the Very Top

We provide new evidence on the growth in pay at the very top of the wage distribution in the UK. Sectoral decompositions show that workers in the financial sector have accounted for the majority of the gains at the top o...Read more...

Brian Bell and John Van Reenen

4 February 2013

CEP occasional paper
Has the Growth of Real GDP in the UK been Overstated because of Mis-Measurement of Banking Output?

If official figures overstated the growth of banking output in the UK in the recent boom, does this mean that GDP growth was overstated too? The answer is no. It is truer to say that if banking output was overstated then...Read more...

Nicholas Oulton

22 January 2013

CEP occasional paper
Social Policies and Labor Market Outcomes in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Review of the Existing Evidence

Latin America and the Caribbean have become in the last decade or so a formidable laboratory for the design and implementation of innovative social policies. In the face of an unprecedented surge in the number of non-con...Read more...

Mariano Bosch and Marco Manacorda

22 January 2013

CEP occasional paper
What Do We Know About China's CEO's? Evidence from Across the Whole Economy

All that we know about the CEO labour market in China comes from studies of public listed companies and state-owned enterprises (SOEs). This paper is the first to examine the operation of the CEO labour market across all...Read more...

Alex Bryson, John Forth and Minghai Zhou

27 September 2012

CEP occasional paper
Hooray for GDP!

Should raising the growth rate of GDP per capita be a policy goal of governments in general, and of the British government in particular? Many people would say no, for the following reasons: 1) GDP is hopelessly flawed a...Read more...

Nicholas Oulton

6 August 2012

CEP occasional paper
Houses and Schools: Valuation of School Quality through then Housing Market - EALE 2010 Presidential Address

This paper offers a critical appraisal of the now sizable empirical literature that values school quality and performance through housing valuations. This literature consistently finds housing valuations to be significan...Read more...

Stephen Machin

May 2011

CEP occasional paper
Wage Inequality,Technology and Trade: 21st Century Evidence

This paper describes and explains some of the principal trends in the wage and skill distribution in recent decades. There have been sharp increases in wage inequality across the OECD, beginning with the US and UK at the...Read more...

John Van Reenen

May 2011

CEP occasional paper
Climate Change Policy and Business in Europe. Evidence from Interviewing Managers

This report presents new evidence relating to the effects of climate policy in Europe, particularly the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). The evidence is based on new data from almost 800 phone interviews...Read more...

Barry Anderson, Jorg Leib, Ralf Martin, Marty McGuigan, Mirabelle Muûls, Ulrich J. Wagner and Laure B. de Preux

March 2011

CEP occasional paper
Why do Management Practices Differ Across Firms and Countries?

Economists have long puzzled over the astounding differences in productivity between firms and countries. For example, looking at disaggregated data on U.S. manufacturing industries, Syverson (2004a) found that plants at...Read more...

Nick Bloom and John Van Reenen

September 2010

CEP occasional paper
The UK Labour Market and the 2008 - 2009 Recession

The recession of 2008-2009 inflicted a larger cumulative loss of UK output than any of the other post-war recessions. Nevertheless, employment rates remained higher than might have been expected given the experience of p...Read more...

Paul Gregg and Jonathan Wadsworth

June 2010

CEP occasional paper
Do Private Equity Owned Firms Have Better Management Practices?

We use an innovative survey tool to collect management practice data from over 4,000 medium sized manufacturing firms across Asia, Europe and the US. These measures of managerial practice are strongly associated with fir...Read more...

Nick Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

July 2009

CEP occasional paper
The Impact of Policy Change on Job Retention and Advancement

This paper examines the impact of the Working Families Tax Credit (WFTC) on employment retention and advancement. The WFTC, which replaced Family Credit in October 1999, supplemented earnings of low paid workers living i...Read more...

Richard Dickens and Abigail McKnight

October 2008

CEP occasional paper
Assimilation of Migrants into the British Labour Market

This paper discusses the extent to which migrants to Britain have been assimilated into the workforce. Migration into Britain has increased over the last 25 years, with a big increase in inflows in recent years. The pape...Read more...

Richard Dickens and Abigail McKnight

October 2008

CEP occasional paper
Changes in Earnings Inequality and Mobility in Great Britain 1978/9-2005/6

This paper examines changes in earnings inequality and mobility between 1978/9 and 2005/6 using a unique dataset that includes both those with secure patterns of employment and a wider group who experience periods withou...Read more...

Richard Dickens and Abigail McKnight

October 2008

CEP occasional paper
Lisbon Five Years Later. What future for European employment and growth?

At the Lisbon summit of 2000 the European Union (EU) set an agenda for making Europe the most competitive economy in the world. The targets that were set then are unlikely to be achieved. European countries need to conce...Read more...

Christopher A. Pissarides

July 2006

CEP occasional paper
Good Jobs and Bad Jobs

1. Human happiness is more affected by whether or not one has a job than by what kind of job it is. 2. Thus, when jobs are to hand, we should insist that unemployed people take them. This involves a much more pro-active ...Read more...

Richard Layard

April 2004

CEP occasional paper
Finding Our Way: Vocational Education in England

Charles Clarke has recently described England as having 'a weak offer for those who want a vocational orientation to their studies.' This discussion paper analyzes the weaknesses of vocational education in this country a...Read more...

Hilary Steedman and M West

May 2003

CEP occasional paper
Exchange Rate Arrangements in EU Accession Countries: What Are the Options?

Several countries in eastern Europe may accede to the European Union in about two years time, making them candidates to join Europe¿s single currency from 2006. Some well-known economists have advocated that countries in...Read more...

Ellen E. Meade, Nikolas Müller-Plantenberg and Massimiliano Pisani

November 2002

CEP occasional paper
Making Sense of Globalisation

This paper, originally written as an encyclopaedia survey, considers as globalisation all the consequences of the long-term cheapening of, and expansion of the technical possibilities of -transport and communication; a p...Read more...

Ron Dore

January 2001

CEP occasional paper
Welfare to Work and the New Deal

'This paper addresses two questions: -Can Welfare-to-Work expand employment and -Has Britain's New Deal for young people actually done so, and have its benefits justified the cost? There is ample evidence that unemploym...Read more...

Richard Layard

January 2001

CEP occasional paper
Growth, Productivity and Employment

Productivity comparisons need to be based on a careful definition of the objectives. Labour productivity per hour worked is the best measure of prosperity per effort at any time, but can sometimes be achieved at the expe...Read more...

A Turner

December 2000

CEP occasional paper
Open Macroeconomics in an Open Economy

There are three pillars of the new Labour Government's approach to economic policy: delivering macroeconomic stability, tackling the supply-side barriers to growth and delivering employment and economic opportunities to...Read more...

Edward Balls

November 1997

CEP occasional paper
The Invisible Hand and the Weightless Economy

As modern economies grow, production and consumption shift towards economic value that reside in bits and bytes, and away from that embedded in atoms and molecules. This paper discusses the implications of such changes f...Read more...

Danny Quah

May 1996

CEP occasional paper
The End of Jobs for Life? Corporate Employment Systems: Japan and Elsewhere

'It is not only in Japan that traditional employment systems are being called into question. It has become conventional wisdom on the OECD conference circuit that we are entering a new era of intensified global competiti...Read more...

Ron Dore

March 1996

CEP occasional paper
The Road Back to Full Employment

This is the paper of a lecture held in honour of Rudolf Meidner, attempting to answer the following questions: How far can recovery go before the labour market becomes so tight that inflationary pressures once more get o...Read more...

Richard Layard

April 1996

CEP occasional paper
Lifelong Learning

'The main proposals in this paper have a highly focussed aim: to prevent the continuation in Britain of an increasingly depressed group of under-skilled workers. The main intention is to ensure that all 16-19 year olds a...Read more...

Richard Layard and Hilary Steedman

December 1995

CEP occasional paper
The Current State and Future of Economic Reform

In this paper I give an impressionistic account of the situation in Russia in September 1994 and its implications for Western aid priorities. Considering the starting point, the progress of the reform has been remarkable...Read more...

Richard Layard

May 1995

CEP occasional paper
Unemployment: The Way Forward for Europe

This paper was originally delivered as a TSB Forum lecture in Glasgow on Thursday 28 October, 1993. Professor Layard argues that unemployment must be reduced permanently below the intolerable levels of the 1980s and earl...Read more...

Richard Layard

August 1994

CEP occasional paper
Incurable Unemployment: A Progressive Disease of Modern Societies?

'It is widely acknowledged that the contemporary unemployment problem is very largely a problem of unemployed unskilled workers. This paper argues a. that high levels of unemployment and increasing dispersion in the prim...Read more...

Ron Dore

July 1994

CEP occasional paper
Lessons from Economic Transformation and the Road Forward

This paper contains the text of a guest lecture delivered by Dr Gomulka to the Nordic Finance Committee at its meeting in Lillehammer, Norway on 21 January 1994. The paper looks at empirical evidence, both economic and p...Read more...

Stanislaw Gomulka and Danny Quah

May 1994

CEP occasional paper
Japanese Capitalism, Anglo-Saxon Capitalism; How Will the Darwinian Contest Turn Out?

Economic organization and economic behaviour in Japan - notably the employment relation, trading relations between business firms and the financing of industrial enterprise - are sufficiently different from prevailing pa...Read more...

Ron Dore and Richard Layard

October 1992

CEP occasional paper
A Code of Conduct for Inter-State Trade

This paper was prepared for a conference of economic representatives of the states of the former Soviet Union. The paper argues the case for a code of conduct for inter-state trade and proposes such a code. The paper als...Read more...

Richard Layard and Andre Sapir

April 1992

CEP occasional paper
The Eastern Transition to a Market Economy: A Global Perspective

This paper contains the text of a series of public lectures given by Professor Williamson at the LSE on February 24 and 25 1992. Professor Williamson is the first holder of the British Petroleum Professorship, awarded an...Read more...

J Williamson

March 1992

CEP occasional paper
The Accord: An Economic and Social Success Story

From 1983, Australia operated an Incomes Policy - the Accord. Senator Peter Cook, Australian Industrial Relations Minister, gave a Centre for Economic Performance-sponsored public lecture on the Accord in June 1991. In v...Read more...

P Cook

December 1991