Results

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...

CEP discussion paper

Why have house prices risen so much more than rents in superstar cities?

In most countries – particularly in supply constrained superstar cities – house prices have risen much more strongly than rents over the last two decades. We provide an explanation that does not rely on falling interest ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Machiavelli versus concave utility functions: should bads be spread out or concentrated?

Is wellbeing higher if the same number of negative events is spread out rather than bunched in time? Should positive events be spread out or bunched? We answer these questions exploiting quarterly data on six positive an...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The cost of being young: measuring intergenerational consumer prices

The UK's young adults are navigating a very different economic landscape to earlier generations, including low real wage growth, lower likelihood of owning their own home and the uncertain prospects of Brexit. Rahat Sidd...Read more...

Journal article

Fiscal Studies:

Financing Local Police Spending in England and Wales: Fiscal Federalism in Practice

Since 1995, police forces in England and Wales have been able to raise revenues locally to supplement grants from central government. We analyse the variation across police force areas in locally raised police revenues o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Voting with their money: Brexit and outward investment by UK firms

We study the impact of the 2016 Brexit referendum on UK foreign direct investment. Using the synthetic control method to construct appropriate counterfactuals, we show that by March 2019 the Leave vote had led to a 17% i...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Ease versus noise: long-run changes in the value of transport (dis)amenities

For a complete cost-benefit analysis of durable infrastructures, it is important to understand how the value of non-market goods such as transit time and environmental quality changes as incomes rise in the long-run. We ...Read more...

Journal article

International Journal of Industrial Organization:

Flex cars and competition in fuel retail markets

We study how the diffusion of flex (bi-fuel) cars affected competition on ethanol and gasoline retail markets. We propose a model of price competition in which the two fuels become closer substitutes as flex cars penetra...Read more...

Journal article

CESifo Economic Studies:

Weights to address non-parallel trends in panel difference-in-differences models

Causal inference using the difference-in-differences (DD) method relies on the untestable assumption of parallel counterfactual trends across units that are assigned to different treatments. To facilitate the application...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The hospital as a multi-product firm: the effect of hospital competition on value-added indicators of clinical quality

There is increasing international interest in using Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) to assess health care provider performance. PROMs are a fundamental advance on existing indicators of health care quality in t...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Fear of fracking: the impact on UK house prices

Shale gas offers the prospect of a low-cost energy future – but does extracting it invoke anxieties about the possibility of environmental catastrophe among local residents? Research by Steve Gibbons and colleagues detec...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Fear of Fracking? The Impact of the Shale Gas Exploration on House Prices in Britain

Shale gas has grown to become a major new source of energy in countries around the globe. While its importance for energy supply is well recognized, there has also been public concern over potential risks – such as dama...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A unified approach to estimating demand and welfare

The measurement of price changes, economic welfare, and demand parameters is currently based on three disjoint approaches: macroeconomic models derived from time-invariant utility functions, microeconomic estimation base...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The price ain't right? Hospital prices and health spending on the privately insured

We use insurance claims data covering 28 percent of individuals with employer-sponsored health insurance in the US to study the variation in health spending on the privately insured, examine the structure of insurer-hosp...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Role of Education for Amenity Based Sorting in British Cities

This paper investigates the relation between amenities and skills by looking at the sorting behavior of skilled individuals across neighbourhoods within British cities. Using a detailed micro dataset on housing transacti...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Space-time (in)consistency in the national accounts: causes and cures

In early 2014 the World Bank published the main findings of the 2011 International Comparison Program (ICP). The result was surprising: the world is apparently richer and more equal than we would have expected based on e...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Asymptotic Properties of Imputed Hedonic Price Indices

Hedonic price indices are currently considered to be the state-of-the-art approach to computing constant-quality price indices. In particular, hedonic price indices based on imputed prices have become popular both among ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Patents and the Global Diffusion of New Drugs

This paper studies how patent rights and price regulation affect how fast new drugs are launched in different countries, using newly constructed data on launches of 642 new drugs in 76 countries for the period 1983-2002,...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Urban Renewal after the Berlin Wall

Urban renewal areas are popular but empirically understudied spatial planning instruments designed to prevent urban decline and induce renewal. We use a quasi-experimental research design to study the effects of 22 renew...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Flex Cars and Competition in Ethanol and Gasoline Retail Markets

In Brazil, gasoline and ethanol coexist as automotive fuels and are becoming closer substitutes as flex cars become more widely adopted. We employ this source of variation in a large panel of weekly prices at the station...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Free to choose? The impact of healthcare reform

Has the introduction of greater choice and competition in healthcare in England led to improved outcomes for patients? The authors assess changes in the quality of care that hospitals provided for cardiac surgery patient...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Urbanity

I define a composite amenity that provides aesthetic and consumption value to local residents: Urbanity. A novel data set of geo-tagged photos shared in internet communities serves as a proxy for urbanity. From the spati...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

House Prices and Rents: Micro Evidence from a Matched Dataset in Central London

Using the proprietary dataset of a real estate agency, I analyse tens of thousands of housing sale and rental transactions in Central London during the 2005-2011 period. I run hedonic regressions on both prices and rents...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Rocketing Rents The magnitude and attenuation of agglomeration economies in the commercial property market

Rocketing rents in urban areas are likely explained by agglomeration economies. This paper measures the impact of these external economies on commercial property values using unique micro¿]data on commercial rents and em...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Historic Amenities, Income and Sorting of Households

We test the impact of historic amenities on house prices and sorting of households within cities. Conservation area boundaries enable us to employ a semiparametric regression-discontinuity approach to measure the impact ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Free to Choose? Reform and Demand Response in the English National Health Service

The impacts of choice in public services are controversial. We exploit a reform in the English National Health Service to assess the impact of relaxing constraints on patient choice. We estimate a demand model to evaluat...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Economics Implications of House Price Capitalization: A Synthesis

In this article I argue that the extent to which fiscal variables are capitalized into house prices has important economic implications. I synthesize an emerging literature that explores the conditions under which public...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Stock Market Volatility and Learning

We study a standard consumption based asset pricing model with rationally investing agents but allow agents’ prior beliefs about price and dividend behavior to deviate slightly from rational expectations priors. Learning...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Booms and Busts in Asset Prices

We show how low-frequency boom and bust cycles in asset prices can emerge from Bayesian learning by investors. Investors rationally maximize infinite horizon utility but hold subjective priors about the asset return proc...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Valuing Iconic Design: Frank Lloyd Wright Architecture in Oak Park, Illinois

This study investigates the willingness of homebuyers to pay for co-location with iconic architecture. Oak Park, Illinois was chosen as the study area given its unique claim of having 24 residential structures designed b...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

If We Build, Will They Pay? Predicting Property Price Effects of Transport Innovations

In this study I develop a partial equilibrium approach for the prediction of property price effects of transport network extensions. It combines a gravity-type labor market accessibility indicator with a transport decisi...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Amenity Value of English Nature: A Hedonic Price Approach

Using a hedonic property value price approach, we estimate the amenity value associated with proximity to habitats, designated areas, domestic gardens and other natural amenities in England. There is a long tradition of ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

New Housing Supply and the Dilution of Social Capital

This paper examines the role of local housing supply conditions for social capital investment. Using an instrumental variables approach and data from the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, it is documented that t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How to Measure Living Standards and Productivity

This paper sets out a general algorithm for calculating true cost-of-living indices or true producer price indices when demand is not homothetic, i.e. when not all expenditure elasticities are equal to one. In principle,...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Hot and Cold Seasons in the Housing Market

Every year during the second and thirdquarters (the “hot season”) housing markets in the UK and the US experience systematic above-trend increases in both prices and transactions. During the fourth and first quarters (th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Inflation Persistence When Price Stickiness Differs Between Industries

There is much evidence that price-adjustment frequencies vary widely across industries. This paper shows that inflation persistence is lower with heterogeneity in price stickiness than without it, taking as given the deg...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Inflation Premium and Oil Price Volatility

This paper provides a fully micro-founded New Keynesian framework to study the interaction between oil price volatility, pricing behavior of firms and monetary policy. We show that when oil has low substitutability, firm...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Is Numérairology the Future of Monetary Economics? Unbundling numéraire and medium of exchange through a virtual currency and a shadow exchange rate

The paper discusses some fundamental problems in monetary economics associated with the determination and role of the numéraire. The issues are introduced by formalising a proposal, attributed to Eisler, to remove the ze...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Growth of Network Computing: Quality Adjusted Price Changes for Network Servers

In this paper we investigate the evolution of quality adjusted prices for servers motivated by two facts. First, the productivity acceleration in the US economy since the mid 1990s is closely linked to spread of informat...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Factor Price Equality and the Economies of the United States

We develop a methodology for identifying departures from relative factor price equality across regions that is valid under general assumptions about production, markets and factors. Application of this methodology to the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Fallacy of the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level

It is not common for an entire scholarly literature to be based on a fallacy, that is, 'on faulty reasoning; misleading or unsound argument'. The 'fiscal theory of the price level', recently re-developed by Woodford,...Read more...