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Policy analyses and reports

Summaries and analysis of current policy and economic developments. These reports are written in an accessible way for non-specialists. Issues covered include: Brexit, education, immigration, growth, social mobility and the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Image from the cover of CEP's Covid series, credit: Raphael Whittle
Covid-19 and local crime rates in England and Wales - two years into the pandemic

Shubhangi Agrawal, Tom Kirchmaier and Carmen Villa-Llera analyse how Covid-19 affected crime and which trends are likely to persist after the pandemic. Read more...
Image from CEP Covid series cover. Designer: Raphael Whittle
Real-time updates on the UK economy

Josh De Lyon and Swati Dhingra examine how labour shortages are affecting UK firms, with half reporting difficulty recruiting new workers while around one in five firms report issues retaining existing staff. Read more...

Latest Policy analyses and reports

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Covid-19 and local crime rates in England and Wales - two years into the pandemic

We analyse how crime trends evolved during the Covid-19 pandemic leveraging public data on local crimes. Police have recorded fewer crimes overall during the pandemic, and the decrease is driven by a large decrease in ac...Read more...

Shubhangi Agrawal, Tom Kirchmaier and Carmen Villa-Llera

17 March 2022

Submission to a parliamentary inquiry and government consultation
Meeting housing demand

House of Lords: Built Environment Committee, 1st Report of Session 2021 to 22....Read more...

Christian A. L. Hilber

10 January 2022

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Real-time updates on the UK economy: trends, expectations and implications from business survey data

Covid-19 has caused substantial shocks to the UK economy, highlighting a need for real-time data to analyse trends. We use monthly business survey data from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) to document recent ...Read more...

Josh De Lyon and Swati Dhingra

15 December 2021

Submission to a parliamentary inquiry and government consultation
House of Lords COVID-19 Committee - The long-term impact of the pandemic on towns and cities

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed our relationship with towns and cities, and the dynamic within those areas. This inquiry looks at the long-term impact of the pandemic on large towns and smaller cities, con...Read more...

Tom Kirchmaier and Carmen Villa-Llera

7 December 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Covid-19 and the self-employed - 18 months into the crisis

A year and a half into the Covid-19 pandemic, growth and economic recovery are the latest watchwords amongst labour market commentators in the UK. In this report we continue to monitor the situation of the self-employed ...Read more...

Robert Blackburn, Stephen Machin and Maria Ventura

18 November 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
The business response to Covid-19 one year on: findings from the second wave of the CEP-CBI survey on technology adoption

We present new data from a survey of 425 UK businesses conducted in July 2021 in partnership with the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), which seeks to understand the ways in which firms have innovated one year on ...Read more...

Juliana Oliveira-Cunha, Capucine Riom and Anna Valero

10 November 2021

CEP report
Are 'green' jobs good jobs?

The transition to net-zero will have far-reaching but unequal effects, as 'dirty' jobs disappear while new jobs aligned with or supportive of the net-zero objective - which we refer to as 'green' - are created. As govern...Read more...

Mirko Draca, Jiaqi Li, Sabrina Muller, Viet Nguyen-Tien, Capucine Riom and Anna Valero

28 October 2021

CEP report
Seizing sustainable growth opportunities from carbon capture, usage and storage in the UK

Seizing opportunities from the CCUS value chain can be part of an economy-wide, net-zero-aligned growth path in the UK. The UK has responded to the climate emergency facing the world with an economy-wide target to reach...Read more...

Pia Andres, Ralf Martin, Penny Mealy, Esin Serin, Arjun Shah and Anna Valero

22 September 2021

Submission to a parliamentary inquiry and government consultation
A Response to the Consultation Document: 'A new pro-competition regime for digital markets'

Professor John Van Reenen writing to submit his views on the government's consultation document 'A new pro-competition regime for digital markets'....Read more...

John Van Reenen

1 September 2021

Submission to a parliamentary inquiry and government consultation
Jobs, growth, and productivity after coronavirus

The Committee will examine how the Government can reduce and mitigate economic scarring and job losses after the pandemic, how much difference the Government can make to economic growth, and what has caused the UK's prod...Read more...

Anna Valero

12 July 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Learning loss since lockdown: variation across the home nations

Empirical analysis of secondary microdata, bespoke social mobility surveys and administrative school attendance data reveal the extent of learning losses that have evolved in the four nations of the UK over the year of t...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major, Andrew Eyles and Stephen Machin

7 July 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
City of dreams no more, a year on: worklessness and active labour market policies in urban India

This report provides key findings from a new field survey to assess the long-term impact of Covid-19 on urban workers in low-income areas of India. The survey took place during February and March 2021, just before the s...Read more...

Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli

2 July 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
The impacts of Covid-19 and Brexit on the UK economy: early evidence in 2021

We use real-time firm survey data to describe trends in the UK economy in early 2021. As of April 2021, business activity and expectations for the future have improved. However, real wage growth is down and firms are rep...Read more...

Josh De Lyon and Swati Dhingra

6 May 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
The pandemic and the housing market: a British story

When Covid-19 struck, the British housing market went into free-fall. Land Registry data show prices, transactions and construction all tumbled. But demand was boosted both by the general measures taken to support the ec...Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber and Olivier Schöni

30 March 2021

Submission to a parliamentary inquiry and government consultation
Covid-19: Education

Submission to the House of Commons Select Committee....Read more...

Lee Elliot Major and Andrew Eyles

25 March 2021

Submission to a parliamentary inquiry and government consultation
The impact of Covid-19 on education and children's services

Submission to the House of Commons Select Committee....Read more...

Lee Elliot Major and Andrew Eyles

23 March 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Covid-19 and the self-employed - ten months into the crisis

Almost a year into the Covid-19 crisis, it has become widely acknowledged that UK self-employment has been particularly hard hit. Here we continue our series investigating the experience of self-employed workers througho...Read more...

Jack Blundell, Stephen Machin and Maria Ventura

2 March 2021

Submission to a parliamentary inquiry and government consultation
Home Office preparedness for Covid-19 (Coronavirus)

In March 2020 the Home Affairs Committee launched an inquiry into Home Office preparedness for Covid-19. Between April and August it reported on different aspects of Home Office policy and operations during the first ph...Read more...

Ria Ivandic and Tom Kirchmaier

24 February 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Recovering from the first Covid-19 lockdown: Economic impacts of the UK's Eat Out to Help Out scheme

We evaluate some of the economic impacts of the UK’s Eat Out to Help Out (EOTHO) scheme on the food service sector. EOTHO subsidised the cost of eating out, with a 50% discount Mondays to Wednesdays in August 2020. We ex...Read more...

Nicolás González-Pampillón, Gonzalo Nunez-Chaim and Katharina Ziegler

10 February 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Prices and inflation in a pandemic - a micro data approach

The Covid-19 lockdowns and recession are the most exceptional economic events in living memory and will impact the economy for years to come. One vital channel is via price changes. Price rises and cuts alter real wages,...Read more...

Richard Davies

4 February 2021

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