Results

Blog

VoxEU:

The trade and welfare benefits of deep trade agreements

Deep trade agreements are widespread and have taken the world beyond tariff liberalisation in goods trade. As the importance of global supply chains and the services sector increased across the world, shallow tariff redu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The impact of regulation on innovation

Does regulation affect the pace and nature of innovation and if so, by how much? We build a tractable and quantifiable endogenous growth model with size-contingent regulations. We apply this to population administrative ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

New incentives for businesses to train their employees are needed for economic recovery from COVID-19

The need to retrain or upskill the workforce has become ever more urgent due to sharp changes in skills demand induced by the pandemic, write Jiaqi Li, Guglielmo Ventura and Anna Valero....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...

Blog

Bloomberg Stephanomics Podcasts:

The economic cost of Covid-19's mental health crisis

Richard Layard talks about why the coronavirus should make us rethink how we treat mental illness, how "building back better" should mean services rather than roads and railways, and why money really doesn't make us happ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The impact of non-tariff barriers on trade and welfare

Deep trade agreements are widespread and have taken the world beyond tariff liberalization in goods trade. As the importance of global supply chains and the services sector increased across the world, shallow tariff redu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Worker and firm responses to trade shocks: The UK-China case

We exploit the recent surge in Chinese export growth to study the effects of a trade shock on workers and firms in a foreign market, the UK, in the period 2000-2007. We find that individuals initially employed in sectors...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Markups, intangible capital and heterogeneous financial frictions

This paper studies the interaction between financial frictions, intangible investment decisions, and markups at the firm level. In our model, heterogeneous credit constraints distort firms' decisions to invest in cost-re...Read more...

Blog

Institute for the Future of Work:

The impact of Covid-19 on technology adoption

Anna Valero and Professor John Van Reenen examine the evidence on technology adoption through the pandemic and what it means for the UK's future of work and productivity crisis. New evidence offers a basis for guarded te...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade protection along supply chains

During the last decades, the United States has applied increasingly high trade protection against China. We combine detailed information on US antidumping (AD) duties— the most widely used trade barrier — with US input-o...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Closing the gap between vocational and general education: University Technical Colleges in England

England introduced University Technical Colleges - hybrid education institutions which combine general and vocational education - in 2010. This column presents the results from the first evaluation of the causal effect o...Read more...

Blog

LSE Blogs:

What happened when parents lost their jobs during lockdown?

Many parents had to cope with losing their jobs or part of their income at the same time as they were forced to home school. How did this affect their children's learning and their mental health? Claudia Hupkau, Ingo Isp...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Labour market shocks during the Covid-19 pandemic: inequalities and child outcomes

We study the effect of negative labour market shocks borne by parents during the Covid-19 crisis on resource and time investments in children and the channels through which negative labour market shocks experienced by pa...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Innovation for a strong and sustainable recovery

In the recovery from Covid-19, innovation and diffusion will be key to addressing several structural challenges facing the UK economy. These include improving the UK’s longstanding poor productivity performance, addressi...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Covid-19 and changing crime trends in England and Wales

We document changing crime trends in England and Wales in the context of the current global pandemic. During the first lockdown that span from mid-March to mid-May 2020 there was a decrease in all crime categories except...Read more...

Blog

FE Week:

Why urgent support is needed to address UK skills deficit

New incentives are needed for businesses to train their employees for a post-Covid world, writes Guglielmo Ventura....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Quantifying the externalities of renewable energy plants using wellbeing data: The case of biogas

Although there is strong support for renewable energy plants, they are often met with local resistance. We quantify the externalities of renewable energy plants using well-being data. We focus on the example of biogas, o...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Trends in job-related training and policies for building future skills into the recovery

The trends outlined in this paper and the broader evidence suggest that new or enhanced policies to increase the quantity and quality of job-related training are required, particularly for younger workers or those with l...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The UK's great demand and supply recession

We revisit UK’s poor productivity performance since the Great Recession by means of both a suitable theoretical framework and firm-level prices and quantities data for detailed products allowing us to both measure demand...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Lockdown shows us it is not work that attracts us to big cities - but the social life

Covid-19's effect on the social lives of city dwellers - being able to meet at the pub, restaurants or theatre - may be more relevant for the future of cities than its impact on work, write Gabriel Ahlfeldt, Fabian Bald,...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Quality of life in a dynamic spatial model

We develop a dynamic spatial model in which heterogeneous workers are imperfectly mobile and forward-looking and yet all structural fundamentals can be inverted without assuming that the economy is in a stationary spatia...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Are bigger banks better? Firm-level evidence from Germany

The effects of large banks on the real economy are theoretically ambiguous and politically controversial. I identify quasi-exogenous increases in bank size in post-war Germany. I show that firms did not grow faster after...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

All aboard: the effects of port development

This paper examines the effects of port development on the economy. By using scarce local land intensively, ports put pressure on local land prices and crowd out other forms of economic activity. We use the introduction ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Brexit:

COVID-19 has disrupted businesses' ability to prepare for Brexit, but the lack of clarity on the UK-EU relationship is worse

Almost half of businesses report that COVID-19 has negatively affected their ability to prepare for Brexit. More than half listed uncertainty on the future arrangements between the UK and EU as a limitation on their abil...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The grandkids aren't alright: the intergenerational effects of prenatal pollution exposure

Evidence shows that environmental quality shapes human capital at birth with long-run effects on health and welfare. Do these effects, in turn, affect the economic opportunities of future generations? Using newly linked ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Heterogeneity in criminal behaviour after child birth: the role of ethnicity

This paper documents behavioral differences in parental criminality between majority and minority ethnic groups after child birth. The particular effect we exploit is that of the gender of the first-born child on fathers...Read more...

Blog

The State of Working Britain:

Long-Term Unemployment and the Covid Downturn

With the first signs of rising unemployment under the crisis are beginning to ripple through the labour market, Jonathan Wadsworth examines trends in employment against unemployment, the chances of finding work among tho...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

No inventor is an island: social connectedness and the geography of knowledge flows in the US

Do informal social ties connecting inventors across distant places promote knowledge flows between them? To measure informal ties, we use a new and direct index of social connectedness of regions based on aggregate Faceb...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Work, care, and gender across UK lockdowns

A growing body of research is making clear the unequal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic across gender. This column explores what the likely implications of a second lockdown in the UK are for gender equality at work and i...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Pandemics, global supply chains and local labor demand: evidence from 100 million posted jobs in China

This paper studies how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected labor demand, using over 100 million posted jobs on one of the largest online platforms in China. Our data reveal that the number of newly posted jobs within the ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

How leading economists view antitrust in the digital economy

US and European experts discuss internet giants, and Google's dominance of search and operating practices, writes Romesh Vaitilingam...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Changing patterns of domestic abuse during Covid-19 lockdown

The effects of preventing a COVID-19 health crisis have had unintended consequences on domestic abuse (DA) victimization. We contribute to the literature on domestic abuse in lockdown by providing insight on how changing...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does pricing carbon mitigate climate change? Firm-level evidence from the European Union emissions trading scheme

In theory, market-based regulatory instruments correct market failures at least cost. However, evidence on their efficacy remains scarce. We evaluate the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) – the world’s fir...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

School indiscipline and crime

This paper studies the impact of compulsory schooling on violent behaviour and victimization in school using individual-level administrative data matching education and criminal records from Queensland (Australia). Explo...Read more...

Blog

State of Working Britain Blog:

1 Million Missing Immigrants (And 1.2 Million More UK-Born)

Jonathan Wadsworth examines the Labour Force Survey, highlighting the strange case of a rapid fall of around 750,000 in the immigrant population of working age over the last year contained in the latest ONS labour market...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

How lockdowns have reversed traditional gender roles in some UK households and further entrenched them in others

Claudia Hupkau and Barbara Petrongolo discuss what the likely implications of a second lockdown are for gender equality at work and in the home....Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Covid-19 and the self-employed: six months into the crisis

Six months after Covid-19 first hit, it is clear that it is the greatest economic crisis of the modern age. The economy has contracted far more rapidly than in previous crises, with GDP dropping by a record 19.5 per cent...Read more...

Blog

State of Working Britain Blog:

Who's being made redundant during COVID? Who is staying at work. And is it any different from usual?

Following his previous blog post looking at trends in redundancies over the COVID period relative to previous downturns, Jonathan Wadsworth looks to understand who is being laid off and whether this is any different from...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Schools and England's second lockdown: further closures would have adverse effects on children and a wider effect on family life

Sandra McNally and Jo Blanden explain how school closures have negative effects on both children and parents, hindering educational outcomes, mental health, work, and general resilience....Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

COVID-19 and social mobility: the public support key policies that will help limit widening inequalities in employment and education

Lee Elliot Major, Andrew Eyles, and Stephen Machin present new data around public support behind the implementation of job guarantees, the reform of A-level and GCSE exams in 2021, and the abolition of predicted grades f...Read more...

Blog

State of Working Britain Blog:

Redundancies and the labour market under Covid. Has furlough helped? And other related things you may have missed

Redundancies are often seen as commensurate with unemployment - but not always. In this blog post, Jonathan Wadsworth analyses the links between the UK's furlough scheme and redundancies....Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... The lasting impact of epidemics

What can we learn about the potential effects of Covid-19 by looking at plagues of the past? According to Jeremiah Dittmar and Ralf Meisenzahl, history suggests that experiences of severe suffering can lead populations t...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Lessons in resilience from extreme economies

Covid-19 has shifted attention away from day-to-day matters to a question that is more fundamental, yet rarely asked by economists: how can we ensure resilience in the most pressurised times imaginable? Richard Davies dr...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Monopsony in labour markets: what it is, why it matters

Many firms are able to exploit the fact that it is hard for workers to move from one employer to another, keeping wages lower than they would be in a competitive market. As Alan Manning explains, labour markets are becom...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Globalisation and pandemics: surprising interactions

Pandemics are only possible because of international travel. But perhaps surprisingly, in the absence of social distancing, a more globalised country will not necessarily suffer a worse outbreak. Pol Antràs, Stephen Redd...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Innovation in the time of Covid-19

Businesses have rapidly adopted new technologies and new ways of working in response to the massive disruptions caused by the pandemic. A CEP report by Capucine Riom and Anna Valero suggests that if such innovation conti...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Economics of skyscrapers

Many tall buildings appear to be out of scale given contemporary perceptions. But according to Gabriel Ahlfeldt and Jason Barr, the vast majority have a solid economic case for their construction....Read more...

CentrePiece article

Happier lives: exploring what matters

Can we teach people to live happier and more pro-social lives? Are there cost-effective and scalable interventions? And could the effects be sustained over time? Christian Krekel and colleagues have evaluated the impact ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... City of dreams no more: Covid-19 in urban India

The pandemic has decimated livelihoods in urban India and created a new underclass of workers who are being pushed into poverty. A CEP report by Shania Bhalotia, Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli calls for a national w...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

The impact of public employment: evidence from West Germany's post-war capital Bonn

Raising the level of public employment is a frequently used policy instrument to support economically lagging regions. This column evaluates the impact of changes in public employment on private sector activity using the...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

The government's furlough scheme has almost certainly helped prevent a large rise in unemployment over COVID-19 (so far)

Jonathan Wadsworth explains why the furlough scheme seems to have done its job in preventing mass layoffs, as well as other reasons why the total entering unemployment is still much lower than in the 2008-2011 downturn....Read more...

Blog

CVER blogs:

Stark contrast between pre- and post-16 provision in UTCs

At a time when Prime Minister Boris Johnson has put the government’s skills policy agenda in the spotlight, Guglielmo Ventura presents findings from his research seeking to understand whether UTCs were successful at br...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

The use of designer reputation to build tall in London

Height exemptions are made easier when a world-famous architect is involved, but the process carries hidden costs, writes Paul Cheshire....Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Generation COVID: emerging work and education inequalities

The purpose of this brief paper is to present initial findings from the recently collected LSE-CEP Social Mobility survey, which was undertaken as part of our UKRI project ‘Generation COVID and Social Mobility: Evidence ...Read more...

Blog

LSE American Politics and Policy Blog:

Enslavers dominated Southern politics long after the Civil War ended

Before the Civil War, the politics and economy of the Southern US were dominated by those who practiced immoral - but at the time legally permissible - forced enslavement. In new research, Luna Bellani, Anselm Hager, and...Read more...

Blog

LSE Brexit:

The cost of Brexit is likely to be more than double that of COVID - it must be delayed

Whether we face Hard Brexit or No Deal, the long-run costs to the economy are likely to be more than twice that of COVID-19 - at least 2,000 GBP per person, warns John Van Reenen (LSE). He advocates delaying the exit fr...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Monetary financing: why the government should not be worrying about the deficit

Alan Manning writes that government should stop worrying about the current deficit, financing it less by issuing debt though being clear that this is a temporary policy for exceptional circumstances. He explains how mone...Read more...

Blog

State of Working Britain Blog:

Two Things About Ethnicity Pay Gaps that May Have Passed You By

Last week the ONS published a study setting out recent trends in ethnicity pay gaps. Despite lots of caveats in the article, many papers duly reported the end of pay gaps by ethnicity. There are reasons to think however...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Gender, achievement, and subject choice in English education

In common with other OECD countries, there is a gender gap in educational achievement in England favouring girls. This carries through to tertiary education. On the other hand, boys are far more likely to engage in STEM ...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Jobs for a strong and sustainable recovery from Covid-19

The UK’s future economic, social and environmental prosperity will be shaped by how it deals with, and recovers from, the impact of Covid-19. This paper sets out coordinated net-zero-aligned investments which the UK can ...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Closing the Gap Between Vocational and General Education? Evidence from University Technical Colleges in England

Some countries, notably those which have long had a weak history of vocational education like the UK and the US, have recently seen a rapid expansion of hybrid schools which provide both general and vocational education....Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economic Studies:

Face-to-Face Communication in Organisations

Communication is integral to organizations and yet field evidence on the relation between communication and worker productivity remains scarce. We argue that a core role of communication is to transmit information that h...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Place-based policies and spatial disparities across European cities

Spatial disparities in income levels and worklessness in the European Union are profound, persistent and may be widening. We describe disparities across metropolitan regions and discuss theories and empirical evidence th...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Transport infrastructure expenditure: while there is no strong evidence of significant regional differences, the data available is problematic

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

CEP discussion paper

Prime locations

We harness big data to detect prime locations - large clusters of knowledge-based tradable services - in 125 global cities and track changes in the within-city geography of prime service jobs over a century. Historically...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The social determinants of choice quality: evidence from health insurance in the Netherlands

Market provision of impure public goods such as insurance, retirement savings and education is common and growing as policy makers seek to offer more choice and gain efficiencies. This approach induces an important trade...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Work, care and gender during the Covid-19 crisis

We explore impacts of the pandemic crisis and associated restrictions to economic activity on paid and unpaid work for men and women in the UK. Using data from the Covid-19 supplement of Understanding Society, we find ev...Read more...

Blog

LSE Blogs:

Denied jobs and schooling, 'Generation COVID' faces a struggle to catch up

More than a tenth of young people have lost their jobs during the pandemic, and only 38% of pupils were getting the equivalent of a full day's schooling in lockdown. Lee Elliot Major (University of Exeter), Andrew Eyles ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

COVID has forced many firms to innovate, with possible lasting impacts

A survey reveals greater UK innovation rates than what we might have expected in the absence of a pandemic, write Capucine Riom and Anna Valero....Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Job polarization and the declining quality of knowledge workers: Evidence from the UK and Germany

Across the developed world, employment has polarized clearly by occupation, but changes to the wage structure have been harder to interpret. We examine changes to the wage structure in the UK and Germany, two countries w...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

Solo self-employment and alternative work arrangements: a cross-country perspective on the changing composition of jobs

The nature of self-employment is changing in most OECD countries. Solo self-employment is increasing relative to self-employment with dependent employees, often being associated with the development of gig economy work a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Selection into entrepreneurship and self-employment

We study the effects of ability and liquidity constraints on entrepreneurship. We develop a three sector Roy model that differentiates between entrepreneurs and other self-employed to address puzzling gaps that have emer...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender differences in tertiary education: what explains STEM participation?

The share of women achieving tertiary education has increased rapidly over time and now exceeds that of men in most OECD countries. However, women are severely under-represented in maths-intensive science fields, which a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Partial lockdown and the spread of Covid-19: lessons from the Italian case

This paper investigates the effect of exemption of essential sectors from the lockdown enacted in Italy in Spring 2020 on COVID-19 infections and mortality. We exploit the distribution of the density of essential workers...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The crisis and job guarantees in urban India

This paper uses a new field survey of low-wage areas of urban India to show that employment and earnings were decimated by the lockdown resulting from the Covid-19 crisis. It examines workers’ desire for a job guarantee ...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

The business response to Covid-19: the CEP-CBI survey on technology adoption

We present new data from a survey of 375 UK businesses conducted in July 2020 in partnership with the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), which seeks to understand the way in which firms have innovated in response t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade and geography

This paper reviews recent research on geography and trade. One of the key empirical findings over the last decade has been the role of geography in shaping the distributional consequences of trade. One of the major theor...Read more...

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...

Blog

What works well centre for local economic growth:

Benefits, costs, and 'levelling up'

Henry Overman examines how transport infrastructure can play an important role in the economic performance of national and local economies. Reducing transport costs for businesses and commuters, improves access to market...Read more...

Blog

The BMJ Opinion:

Taking a wellbeing-years approach to policy choice

Every day, policy makers have to decide whether a policy is desirable. They do so by examining its impact on a whole range of outcomes. But the problem is how to aggregate these disparate outcomes against issues such as ...Read more...

Blog

LSE blogs:

A no-deal Brexit may still be more costly than COVID-19

Conventional wisdom holds that the impact of COVID-19 on the UK economy dwarfs the potential consequences of Brexit. This has led some Brexiteers to argue there is nothing to fear about a no-deal Brexit. Yet data show th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Globalization and pandemics

We develop a model of human interaction to analyze the relationship between globalization and pandemics. Our framework provides joint microfoundations for the gravity equation for international trade and the Susceptible-...Read more...

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...

Submissions to parliamentary inquiries and government consultations

Post-pandemic economic growth: Industrial Strategy

In our inquiry into Post-pandemic economic growth: Industrial strategy we will look at the options available to Government to secure our economic recovery from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. We will want to exa...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Productivity growth in one country affects the relative income and welfare of its trade partners

One of the most dramatic changes in the world economy over the past half century has been the emergence of China as a major force in world trade. A central question in international economics is the implications of such ...Read more...

Blog

LSE blogs:

City of dreams no more: COVID-19 in urban India

COVID-19 has decimated livelihoods in urban India and created a new underclass of workers who are being pushed into poverty. Shania Bhalotia, Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli (LSE) say a national work guarantee is nee...Read more...

CVER Briefing Note

Post-18 education – who is taking the different routes and how much do they earn?

This paper describes the educational trajectories and labour market outcomes for people who completed their GCSEs between 2002 and 2006. Our long span of longitudinal data enables us to follow these individuals through t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Growing like China: firm performance and global production line position

Global value chains have fundamentally transformed international trade and development in recent decades. We use matched firm-level customs and manufacturing survey data, together with Input-Output tables for China, to e...Read more...

Blog

The State of Working Britain blog:

UK Labour Market Under COVID Part 3: Layoffs, Hiring & Wages

Recessions, usually signify a rise in layoffs. Even the last recession, which was accompanied by much more wage moderation than previous ones, generated a significant rise in redundancies. This time it is a little differ...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Industrial Organization:

Critically important: the heterogeneous effect of diplomatic tensions on trade

With global value chains interlocking today’s economies, what is the impact of diplomatic tensions on international trade? We exploit variation in monthly data on imports, a measure of imported input use in the domesti...Read more...

Journal article

SERIEs:

Job loss at home: children's school performance during the Great Recession

This paper studies the intergenerational impact of parental job loss on school performance during the Great Recession in Spain. Collecting data through parental surveys in a school in the province of Barcelona, I obtain ...Read more...

Journal article

Economica:

'Trophy architects' and design as rent-seeking: quantifying deadweight losses in a tightly regulated office market

Britain tightly restricts the supply of office space, creating substantial economic rents, but its development restrictions are politically administered and therefore gameable, inducing rent-seeking activity. We find tha...Read more...

Submissions to parliamentary inquiries and government consultations

Employment and Covid-19

The Committee will examine the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the labour market and consider what urgent measures should be taken to protect and create jobs. It will also examine how the labour market may change as ...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

City of dreams no more: the impact of Covid-19 on urban workers in India

Many developing economies have large informal sectors and growing urban youth populations, who lack basic social protections at work. The CEP surveyed 8,500 workers aged 18 to 40 in urban India to understand their experi...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Why we need to do something about the monopsony power of employers

Monopsony decreases worker mobility, keeping wages lower than they would be in a competitive market, writes Alan Manning...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The long shadow of slavery: the persistence of slave owners in Southern law-making

This paper documents the persistence of the Southern slave owning elite in political power after the end of the American Civil War. We draw on a database of Texan state legislators between 1860 and 1900 and link them to ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Parental well-being in times of Covid-19 in Germany

We examine the differential effects of Covid-19 and related restrictions on individuals with dependent children in Germany. We specifically focus on the role of school and day care center closures, which may be regarded ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Subjective job insecurity and the rise of the precariat: evidence from the UK, Germany and the United States

There is a widespread belief that work is less secure than in the past, that an increasing share of workers are part of the ’precariat’. It has been hard to find evidence for this is objective measures of job security bu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Urban density and Covid-19

This paper estimates the link between population density and COVID-19 spread and severity in the contiguous United States. To overcome confounding factors, we use two Instrumental Variable (IV) strategies that exploit ge...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

What can previous recessions tell us about the Covid-19 downturn?

The labour market effects of the Covid-19 crisis measured as of June 2020 are compared with the three most recent UK recessions: the early 1980s, the early 1990s, and the downturn induced by the global financial crisis i...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Center-based care and parenting activities

We estimate the effects of center-based care on parenting activities with children using data from time diaries and a family survey for Germany. Our estimates imply that usage of center-based care reduces the amount of t...Read more...

Blog

LSE US Centre:

How economists view the US debate on extending jobless benefits

Experts discuss the trade-offs between work incentives and income support; whether top-ups should be reduced, and how economics and public health might determine federal contribution levels, writes Romesh Vaitilingam....Read more...

Journal article

Fiscal Studies:

Devolving skills: the case of the apprenticeship grant for employers

One rationale for devolution is that local decision makers may be well placed to adapt national policies to the local context. We test whether such adaptation helps meet programme objectives in the case of the Apprentice...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics:

Product mix and firm productivity responses to trade competition

We document how demand shocks in export markets lead French multi-product exporters to re-allocate the mix of products sold in those destinations. In response to positive demand shocks, French firms skew their export sal...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Generalized linear competition: from pass-through to policy

Economic policy and shifts in input market prices often have significant effects on the marginal costs of firms and can prompt strategic responses that make their impact hard to predict. We introduce "generalized linear ...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Covid-19 and Brexit: Real-time updates on business performance in the United Kingdom

Nearly four months have passed since the UK went into lockdown to restrict the spread of Covid-19. The health effects have been severe, and an inevitable consequence of the lockdown was a huge 20 per cent decline in GDP ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

International friends and enemies

We develop sufficient statistics of countries’ bilateral income and welfare exposure to foreign productivity shocks that are exact for small shocks in the class of models with a constant trade elasticity. For large shock...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Globalisation and urban polarisation

External trade affects the internal spatial structure of an economy, promoting growth in some cities or regions and decline in others. Internal adjustment to these changes has often proved to be extremely slow and painfu...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Covid-19 and the work patterns of men and women

Claudia Hupkau and Barbara Petrongolo explore the impact of the pandemic on women's labour market prospects and ‘home production' responsibilities...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Covid-19 and the future of self-employment

Jack Blundell reports how self-employed workers have been particularly hard hit by the crisis....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Better together? Heterogeneous effects of tracking on student achievement

I study the effects of early between-school ability tracking on student achievement, exploiting institutional differences between German federal states. In all states, about 40% of students transition to separate academi...Read more...

CVER Briefing Note

What future for apprenticeships after coronavirus?

The Covid-19 pandemic outbreak and the ensuing economic uncertainty caused interruptions to apprenticeship training. This is putting the future of apprenticeships at risk just at the time when they will be most needed ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Dream jobs

Understanding why certain jobs are ‘better’ than others and what implications they have for a worker’s career is clearly an important but still relatively unexplored question. We provide both a theoretical framework and ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The economics of skyscrapers: a synthesis

This paper provides a synthesis of the state of knowledge on the economics of skyscrapers. First, we document how vertical urban growth has gained pace over the course of the 20th century. Second, we lay out a simple the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gravity in international finance: evidence from fees on equity transactions

We shed light on the impact of institutional quality and information barriers on trade in financial services using a novel panel data set on revenue earned on domestic and cross-border equity securities underwriting tran...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Dream jobs: managers in internationally active firms have higher lifetime wages

People at managerial level in international companies accumulate strong experience that is useful also in other firms, write Giordano Mion, Luca David Opromolla, and Gianmarco Ottaviano....Read more...

Journal article

Education Economics:

Minority report: the impact of predicted grades on university admissions of disadvantaged groups

We study the UK's university application system, in which students apply based on predicted examination grades, rather than actual results. Using three years of UK university applications data we find that only 16% of ap...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Why are pollution damages lower in developed countries? Insights from high income, high-particulate matter Hong Kong

Conventional wisdom suggests that pollution damages are high in less-developed countries because they are highly polluted. Using administrative data on the universe of births and deaths, we explore the morbidity and mort...Read more...

Journal article

European Journal of Finance:

Is firm-level clean or dirty innovation valued more?

We examine how Tobin's Q is linked to 'clean' and 'dirty' innovation and innovation efficiency at the firm level. Clean innovation relates to patented technologies in areas such as renewable energy generation and electri...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Strategy, investment and policy for a strong and sustainable recovery: an action plan

The UK and the world have suffered disruption and hardship from the COVID-19 pandemic on an immense scale. Together with the tragic consequences of the health crisis, there is now a real risk of protracted global depress...Read more...

Journal article

Regional Science and Urban Economics:

The effects of supporting local business: evidence from the UK

This paper assesses the effects of a significant place-based intervention that targeted local businesses in deprived areas in the UK. To gain identification, we use data at a fine spatial scale and a regression discontin...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Entry through the narrow door: the costs of just failing high stakes exams

In many countries, important thresholds in examinations act as a gateway to higher levels of education and/or improved employment prospects. This paper examines the consequences of just failing a particularly important h...Read more...

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...

CEP discussion paper

Offices scarce but housing scarcer: estimating the premium for London office conversions

The British system of land use planning is one of the most restrictive in the world. It substantially increases the costs of office space (Cheshire & Hilber, 2008; Cheshire & Dericks, 2020) and, especially in London, inc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Immigrant inventors and diversity in the age of mass migration

A possible unintended but damaging consequence of anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the policies it inspires, is that they may put high-skilled immigrants off more than low-skilled ones at times when countries and businesses ...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Where versus What: College Value-Added and Returns to Field of Study in Further Education

Enrolling in vocational education and training programs constitutes a natural response to the current dynamics of the labour market, which is being reshaped by routinisation, automation, and outsourcing. We estimate the ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Bank default risk propagation along supply chains: evidence from the UK

How does banks’ default risk affect the probability of default of non-financial businesses? The literature has addressed this question by focusing on the direct effects on the banks’ corporate customers – demonstrating t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Family background and the responses to higher SAT scores

Using discontinuities within the Swedish SAT system, we show that additional admission opportunities causally affect college choices. Students with high-educated parents change timing, colleges, and fields in ways that a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

International financial flows and misallocation

We study the impact of international financial flows on credit allocation exploiting the early 2000s boom of capital inflows in Italy. Using detailed bank-firm matched data we compare the patterns of credit allocation of...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

Place-based policies and spatial disparities across European cities

Spatial disparities in income and worklessness across areas of the European Union are profound and persistent. Concerns about these disparities and the appropriate policy response are longstanding. Two trends have re-ene...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control:

Comments on "labor market trends and the changing value of time"

The last century was characterized by a well-documented marked increase in income inequality in the US (see Alvaredo et al., 2018, among many others), which fostered a vast debate among academics and policy makers about ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Disrupted schooling: impacts on achievement from the Chilean school occupations

Disrupted schooling can heavily impact the amount of education pupils receive. Starting in early June of 2011 a huge social outburst of pupil protests, walk-outs, riots and school occupations called the Chilean Winter ca...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Automation, globalization and vanishing jobs: a labor market sorting view

We show, theoretically and empirically, that the effects of technological change associated with automation and offshoring on the labor market can substantially deviate from standard neoclassical conclusions when search ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Damned by dams? Infrastructure and conflict

This study investigates the impact of dams on local conflict across the world with georeferenced location information on dams and conflict events for the years 1989 to 2016. The identification strategy exploits exogenous...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Covid-19 and social mobility

Governments are having to balance short- and long-term interests, and the trade-offs they generate, as they try to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. Social distancing measures may limit the number of immediate deaths f...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Self-employment in the Covid-19 crisis

The Covid-19 shock is one of the largest economic shocks that has taken place in living memory. The crisis has served to highlight the challenges governments face in extending social insurance to self-employed workers, f...Read more...

Blog

LSE Covid-19 blog:

How a job guarantee scheme can avoid the slide into long-term unemployment

Even if COVID-19 infection rates dwindle, it is now clear that the economy is unlikely to bounce back quickly. This raises the spectre of long-term unemployment. Richard Layard (LSE) explains how the government could dra...Read more...

External publication

World Happiness Report 2020

The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness that ranks 156 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be. The World Happiness Report 2020 for the first time ranks ci...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Covid-19, lockdowns and well-being: evidence from Google trends

The COVID-19 pandemic has led many governments to implement lockdowns. While lockdowns may help to contain the spread of the virus, they may result in substantial damage to population well-being. We use Google Trends dat...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

All these worlds are yours, except India: the effectiveness of cash subsidies to export in Nepal

This paper studies the impact of a `textbook' ad-valorem export subsidy on firm-level export performance. The Cash Incentive Scheme for Exports (CISE) program offered by the government of Nepal offers a cash subsidy to f...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Work, care and gender during the Covid-19 crisis

The Covid-19 crisis has especially hit service sectors with frequent social interactions, in which women are over-represented. At the same time, if not directly subject to the lock-down, women are more likely to hold job...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

O brother, where start thou? Sibling spillovers on college and major choice in four countries

Family and social networks are widely believed to influence important life decisions but identifying their causal effects is notoriously difficult. Using admissions thresholds that directly affect older but not younger s...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Monopsony and the wage effects of migration

In a competitive labor market, immigration affects native wages only through its impact on marginal products. Under the sole assumption of constant returns, we show that a larger supply of migrants (keeping their skill m...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Covid-19 school shutdowns: what will they do to our children's education?

Evidence from unexpected temporary school closures and reduced instruction time suggests school closures will reduce educational achievement, both in the short and long term. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are ...Read more...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

The making of the modern metropolis: evidence from London

Using newly constructed spatially disaggregated data for London from 1801 to 1921, we show that the invention of the steam railway led to the first large-scale separation of workplace and residence. We show that a class ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

The role of demand in land re-development

Vacant, previously-developed land in cities can generate negative externalities on surrounding areas, and is often the target of policies to promote re-development. This paper provides estimates of the price sensitivity ...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Skill-biased management: evidence from manufacturing firms

This article investigates the link between management practices and workforce skills in manufacturing firms, exploiting geographical variation in the supply of human capital. Skills measures are constructed using newly c...Read more...

Journal article

The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization:

In-house and arms length: productivity heterogeneity and variation in organizational form

This paper analyzes firm boundaries in the US hotel industry. Hotel properties of a given brand are often managed either by a chain employee or by a franchisee. We document that brand properties with the lowest and the h...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Managing global production: theory and evidence from just-in-time supply chains

Global value chains are highly fragmented across countries and dominated by a few large multinational firms. But the challenges of an increasingly difficult international business environment are raising the question of ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A survey of gender gaps through the lens of the industry structure and local labor markets

In this paper we discuss some strands of the recent literature on the evolution of gender gaps and their driving forces. We will revisit key stylized facts about gender gaps in employment and wages in a few high-income c...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Covid-19 is increasing the divide in life chances between rich and poor

Covid-19 is increasing the divide in life chances between rich and poor Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin propose reforms and urgent actions to tackle economic and educational inequalities in the UK....Read more...

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...

Blog

VoxEU:

How the UK government should respond to the unequal local economic impacts of COVID-19

The economic crisis caused by COVID-19 will play out unequally across areas. Unfortunately, the unusual nature of this crisis makes its local impacts hard to predict. This complicates attempts to formulate appropriate ar...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

COVID-19 and gender gaps: Latest evidence and lessons from the UK

The social distancing and lockdowns associated with the COVID-19 crisis has hit service sectors with frequent interactions between consumers and providers which cannot be done from home. At the same time, it has added ed...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

On the productivity advantage of cities

Ever since Marshall (1890) agglomeration externalities have been viewed as the key factor explaining the existence of cities and their size. However, while the various micro foundations of agglomeration externalities str...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

The Covid-19 recession is creating a crisis of inequality

Earnings may be affected differently by age, gender, and firm size, with large cuts for the young in small firms, write Brian Bell, Nick Bloom, Jack Blundell, and Luigi Pistaferri...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A natural experiment on job insecurity and fertility in France

Job insecurity can have wide-ranging consequences outside of the labour market. We here argue that it reduces fertility amongst the employed. The 1999 rise in the French Delalande tax, paid by large private firms when th...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

COVID-19 and wages: prepare for large cuts if you are younger and work in a small firm

Brian Bell, Nick Bloom, Jack Blundell, and Luigi Pistaferri estimate how the ongoing pandemic may impact earnings by age group, gender, and firm size. The data suggests that young men working in small firms could see ear...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

COVID-19 and housing: while prices may fall, homes will remain unaffordable

Discussing the potential effects of COVID-19 on housing, Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber write that real house prices and rents may initially fall. Yet housing will remain unaffordable for the young and those on lower...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Prepare for large wage cuts if you are younger and work in a small firm

The COVID-19 pandemic is turning into a global recession - probably the biggest drop in economic activity since the Great Depression of the 1930s. This column uses over 3 million earnings observations drawn from more tha...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics:

Do apprenticeships pay? Evidence for England

The importance of apprenticeships for early labour market transitions varies across countries and over time. In recent times, there has been a policy drive to increase the number of people undertaking apprenticeships in ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Prices, Policing and Policy: The Dynamics of Crime Booms and Busts

In many historical episodes, the extent of criminal activity has displayed booms and busts. One very clear example is the case of metal crime, where in the face of big increases in value driven by world commodity prices,...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does homeownership reduce crime? A radical housing reform in Britain

“Right to Buy” (RTB), a large-scale natural experiment by which incumbent tenants in public housing could buy properties at heavily-subsidised prices, increased the homeownership rate in Britain by over 10 percentage poi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Environmental preferences and technological choices: is market competition clean or dirty?

This paper investigates the joint effect of consumers' environmental concerns and product-market competition on firms’ decisions whether to innovate “clean” or “dirty”. We first develop a step-by-step innovation model to...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Labor demand in the past, present and future

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, technological change has led to the automation of existing tasks and the creation of new ones, as well as the reallocation of labor across occupations and industries. The...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Rising protectionism and global value chains: quantifying the general equilibrium effects

Quantifying the effects of trade policy in the age of ’global value chains’ (GVCs) requires an enhanced analytical framework that takes the observed international input-output relations in due account. However, existing ...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Gender and Socio-Economic Differences in STEM Uptake and Attainment

The underrepresentation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) occupations is a world-wide phenomenon and a concern for policy makers. This is the case in the UK where a shortage of STEM skills is ...Read more...

Blog

CVER Blog:

Training grants: a useful policy to address skills and productivity gaps?

As work changes, firm-provided training may become more relevant for good economic and social outcomes. However, so far there is little or no causal evidence about the effects of training on firms. Pedro Martins looks at...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

On the economic impacts of mortgage credit expansion policies: evidence from help to buy

Mortgage credit expansion policies – such as UK’s Help to Buy (HtB) – aim to increase access to and affordability of owner-occupied housing and are widespread around the world. We take advantage of spatial discontinuitie...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...

CVER Research Paper

Employee Training and Firm Performance:Quasi-experimental evidence from the European Social Fund

As work changes, firm-provided training may become more relevant for good economic and social outcomes. However, so far there is little or no causal evidence about the effects of training on firms. This paper studies a l...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Budget 2020: will it move the economy onto a sustainable and inclusive growth path?

The UK's challenges around productivity, regional disparities and the transition to net zero emissions are complex and interconnected, made even more so by the coronavirus outbreak and Brexit. Anna Valero argues that whi...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Budget 2020: a bold response to coronavirus, but more must be done if it becomes widespread in the UK

While the 2020 Budget offers an overall adequate response to the challenges currently posed by coronavirus, there are three issues that need to be addressed further, especially as the outbreak becomes more widespread, wr...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Measuring the impact of malfunctioning credit markets on productivity

Since the Global Crisis, there has been a renewed awareness of how frictions in credit markets can damage economic efficiency due to a higher cost of capital and/or capital being misallocated away from its most productiv...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief...Pupil exclusion in academy schools

Schools in England that became academies before 2010 typically began to exclude significant numbers of their more disruptive pupils. Research by Stephen Machin and Matteo Sandi suggests that this was the result of the st...Read more...

CentrePiece article

TV superstars: how a new technology disrupted the entertainment industry

The rollout of television to virtually every household in the United States in the mid-twentieth century created a potentially huge audience for people working in the entertainment industry. As Felix Koenig explains, thi...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief...Mismatched students and universities

Higher education has long been thought of as a tool to equalise opportunities. But according to research by Gill Wyness and colleagues, if we really want to improve the life chances of disadvantaged students, we need to ...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...

CentrePiece article

In brief...Swings and silicon roundabouts: does cluster policy work?

Despite scepticism among researchers, policies to promote geographical clusters of firms in the same sector remain popular. Max Nathan evaluates a flagship programme set up a decade ago to accelerate the growth of Tech C...Read more...

CentrePiece article

People, places and politics: the challenge of 'levelling up' the UK

As has been much discussed since the election, economic performance varies widely among the towns, cities and regions of the UK. Henry Overman argues that policies to address these spatial disparities should be judged on...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The UK's self-employed workers: who they are and what they need

One in seven people in the UK workforce is now in self-employment – but this is a very diverse community. Jack Blundell is developing a typology of self-employed workers, which can then be used to assess differences in h...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

We can increase happiness through public policy - and in our jobs and private lives too

As research shows us what makes us happy, a world happiness movement is being born, write Richard Layard and George Ward....Read more...

Blog

UK in a Changing Europe:

New chancellor, new challenge: evaluating the coronavirus budget

Thomas Sampson examines the first UK budget to balance the shocks of Covid-19 and Brexit....Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Covid-19: We shouldn't give priority to sustaining the GDP over the wellbeing of the people

If we handle the coronavirus crisis right, we can come out of it better than we went into it, says Richard Layard...Read more...

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...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Technology can benefit a few superstar workers, at the expense of everyone else

The rollout of television provides a natural experiment, creating an opportunity to isolate the impact of a technical disruption on the labour market, writes Felix Koenig....Read more...

Blog

LSE News:

Artificial intelligence could help protect victims of domestic violence

Ria Ivandic finds in the United States, roughly one in four women experience serious intimate partner violence over their lifetimes...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Automating labor: evidence from firm-level patent data

Do higher wages lead to more automation innovation? To answer this question, we first introduce a new measure of automation by using the frequency of certain keywords in patent text to identify automation innovations in ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The contribution of immigration to local labor market adjustment

The US suffers from persistent regional disparities in employment rates. In principle, these disparities should be eliminated by population mobility. Can immigration fulfil this role? Remarkably, since 1960, I show that ...Read more...

CEP report

Seizing sustainable growth opportunities from zero emission passenger vehicles in the UK

This is a Special report for the LSE Growth Commission, produced with the Centre for Economic Performance, that provides a set of actionable recommendations to the UK government to drive sustainable growth in the context...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Post-Compulsory Education Pathways and Labour Market Outcomes

We employ sequence analysis techniques to evaluate the myriad of different pathways individuals take through the education system into the labour market. Using data from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England ...Read more...

CEP industrial strategy paper

Has the Financial Crisis Undermined Credit Reallocation in the United Kingdom?

The global financial crisis and its aftermath heightened awareness of the role of credit frictions in affecting aggregate economic performance. An important question is whether capital is being allocated to its most prod...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The rise of agribusiness and the distributional consequences of policies on intermediated trade

Policies to encourage agribusinesses-led development of crop markets are high on the agenda of many policy-makers. Since the 1980s, several countries have moved to a model in which agribusinesses provide market access to...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Comparing conventional and machine-learning approaches to risk assessment in domestic abuse cases

We compare predictions from a conventional protocol-based approach to risk assessment with those based on a machine-learning approach. We first show that the conventional predictions are less accurate than, and have simi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Who's paying for the U.S. tariffs? A longer-term perspective

Using data from 2018, a number of studies have found that recent U.S tariffs have been passed on entirely to U.S. importers and consumers. These results are surprising given that trade theory has long stressed that tarif...Read more...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

The fall of the labor share and the rise of superstar firms

The fall of labor's share of GDP in the United States and many other countries in recent decades is well documented but its causes remain uncertain. Existing empirical assessments typically rely on industry or macro data...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Import competition, heterogeneous preferences of managers and productivity

When managers have objectives beyond maximizing monetary profits, inefficiencies may arise. An increase in competition may then force managers to improve the productivity of the firm in order to ensure survival. While th...Read more...

CVER Briefing Note

Exploring trends in apprenticeship training around the introduction of the Apprenticeship Levy: emerging evidence using a matched apprentice-employer dataset

Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Intellectual property and the organization of the global value chain

This paper introduces the concept of intangible assets in a property rights model of sequential supply chains. Firms transmit knowledge to their suppliers to facilitate input customization. Yet, to avoid knowledge dissip...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The aggregate consequences of default risk: evidence from firm-level data

This paper studies the implications of perceived default risk for aggregate output and productivity. Using a model of credit contracts with moral hazard, we show that a firm’s probability of default is a sufficient stati...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A local community course that raises mental wellbeing and pro-sociality

Although correlates of mental wellbeing have been extensively studied, relatively little is known about how to effectively raise mental wellbeing in local communities by means of intervention. We conduct a randomised con...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Public investment in defence research can increase business innovation

That doesn't mean that defence R&D is the most efficient way to stimulate private sector innovation and productivity, write Enrico Moretti, Claudia Steinwender and John van Reenen....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Globalization and conflicts: the good, the bad and the ugly of corporations in Africa

Using georeferenced data on the affiliates and headquarters of multinational enterprises together with georeferenced conflict data, this work is the first to establish a causal link between the activities of multinationa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Immigration, local crowd-out and undercoverage bias

Using decadal census data since 1960, I cannot reject the hypothesis that new immigrants crowd out existing residents from US commuting zones and states one-for-one. My estimate accounts explicitly for dynamic local adju...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade, productivity and (mis)allocation

We examine the gains from globalization in the presence of firm heterogeneity and potential resource misallocation. We show theoretically that without distortions, bilateral and export liberalizations increase aggregate ...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Peer Effects and Social Influence in Post-16 Educational Choice

This paper investigates the impact of peers' ability on an individual's post-compulsory educational choices in terms of whether they select an academic route or a vocational route. In order to overcome the common problem...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Intergenerational effects of employment protection reforms

Job insecurity has worsened in most OECD countries in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Using Labour Force Survey data, I estimate the link between parental job insecurity (as measured by the contract type held by pa...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Autonomous Schools and Strategic Pupil Exclusion

This paper studies whether pupil performance gains in autonomous schools in England can be attributed to the strategic exclusion of poorly performing pupils. England has had two phases of academy school introduction, the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Exchange rates and consumer prices: evidence from Brexit

This paper studies how the depreciation of sterling following the Brexit referendum affected consumer prices in the United Kingdom. Our identification strategy uses input-output linkages to account for heterogeneity in e...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade liberalization, input intermediaries and firm productivity: evidence from China

We investigate theoretically and empirically the role of wholesalers in mediating the productivity effects of trade liberalization. Intermediaries provide indirect access to foreign produced inputs. The productivity effe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The innovation premium to soft skills in low-skilled occupations

Matched employee-employer data from the UK are used to analyze the wage premium to working in an innovative firm. We find that firms that are more R&D intensive pay higher wages on average, and this is particularly true ...Read more...

CEP election analysis

#GE2019Economists: the research evidence on key issues for voters in the 2019 UK General Election

The general election of 2019 was called after negotiations over how the UK should leave the European Union became increasingly tortuous. While Brexit may have been the trigger for the election, it was far from being the ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Brexit:

Immigration is no longer the most pressing concern among the electorate

Immigration is no longer the most pressing concern among the electorate going into this election that it was prior to the Brexit referendum, writes Jonathan Wadsworth (LSE). More than three years on, concerns about Europ...Read more...

Blog

CEP Urban and Spatial Programme Blog:

Housing: 'no shortage' - is it nonsense?

Paul Cheshire questions arguments that Britain is not suffering from a housing shortage, pointing out errors in common understanding....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...

Journal article

Fiscal Studies:

Have R&D Spillovers Declined in the 21st Century?

Slow growth over the last decade has prompted policy attention towards increasing R&D spending, often via the tax system. We examine the impact of R&D on firm performance, both by the firm's own investments and through p...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Brexit will leave the UK worse off economically in all scenarios

Since the UK voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, Brexit has dominated UK politics and economic policy. Three and a half years after the referendum, the UK is yet to leave the EU, there is no certainty over if...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

The UK’s housing crisis: what should the next government do?

Since 2015, neither the government nor any opposition party has had any effective policy to tackle our housing crisis symbolised most starkly by Starter Homes. To the extent there has been action, it is largely ineffecti...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Policing and crime

A long period of austerity and budget cuts in policing that started when Theresa May became Home Secretary may be coming to an end. As austerity bit and budget cuts were implemented, this considerably reduced the size of...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Energy and climate change

UK greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are declining and have been declining for some time. As of 2018, the UK emitted 449 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e). That corresponds to a reduction of 43% relative to 1990 lev...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Health and social care

The National Health Service (NHS) is arguably the one national institution that unifies the country in terms of general public support. But there is growing concern about the long-term sustainability of the NHS, with 57%...Read more...

CEP election analysis

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 in this briefing is intended as a short overview of what we k...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Housing

Housing affordability is a key concern of an ever-larger fraction of UK voters who are crammed into artificially limited space. It also underlies the sense of being shut out of prosperity and unable to escape declining l...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The motivational cost of inequality: pay gaps reduce the willingness to pursue rewards

Factors beyond a person’s control, such as demographic characteristics at birth, often influence the availability of rewards an individual can expect for their efforts. We know surprisingly little how such pay-gaps due t...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Education and skills

Debates about how to improve education and skills are likely to be an important theme in the run-up to the general election. This briefing summarises evidence on education and skills from the Centre for Economic Performa...Read more...

Blog

LSE Brexit:

Economic consequences of Brexit are overwhelmingly negative

The economic consequences of Brexit are overwhelmingly negative, estimate Swati Dhingra and Thomas Sampson (LSE). The more the UK distances itself from the EU’s economic institutions and policies, the greater will be the...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

John Van Reenen: ‘A lot of promises are just smoke and mirrors’

As director of LSE's Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) up to 2016, British economist John Van Reenen led a team of academic researchers who produced detailed analysis of the consequences a divorce from the European U...Read more...

CEP election analysis

The UK economy: policies for investment and productivity growth

Since the global financial crisis, the UK has been grappling with persistent poor productivity performance. While a number of factors have been at play, reduced investment due to austerity harmed growth in the early year...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Brexit economics

Since the UK voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, Brexit has dominated UK politics and economic policy. Three and a half years after the referendum, the UK is yet to leave the EU, there is no certainty over if...Read more...

CVER Briefing Note

Inequality in education and labour market participation of young people across English localities:An exploration based on Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) data

Currently, 792,000 16-24-year olds in the UK – 11.5% of the age group – are Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET), but not much is known about how this differs by local area. In this Briefing Note, we provide c...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Economic insecurity breeds support for the right

Economic insecurity breeds support for the right Economic insecurity is attracting growing attention in social, academic, and policy circles. It has arguably risen for a number of reasons in recent years: the Great Rece...Read more...

CEP election analysis

People, places and politics

Economic performance varies widely between the towns, cities and regions of the UK. On some measures, this variation has widened since the financial crisis. These disparities have already proved to be a key theme in the ...Read more...

CEP election analysis

The labour market

The UK labour market, at first glance, seems to be playing at Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Employment (in terms of both levels and rates) is at record highs, yet wage growth has been extraordinarily weak. One view is that thes...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Social mobility

Debates over how to improve life prospects for people irrespective of their family background promise to be a key theme in the run-up to the 2019 General Election. This briefing summarises evidence on social mobility fro...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Eurosceptic votes are less likely when EU interventions visibly boost local job markets

Eurosceptic votes are less likely when EU interventions visibly boost local job markets Anti-systemic political movements have emerged in recent years in a large number of countries across the globe. These parties genera...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Technical change and superstar effects: evidence from the roll-out of television

Technical change that improves economies of scale can generate fast income growth among top earners at the expense of everyone else. I test this classic “superstar model” in the labor market for entertainers where the hi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The intellectual spoils of war? Defense R&D, productivity and international spillovers

Abstract We examine the impact of government funding for R&D - and defense-related R&D in particular - on privately conducted R&D, and its ultimate effect on productivity growth. We estimate longitudinal models that rel...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Measuring the gains from labor specialization

We estimate the productivity effects of labor specialization using a judicial environment that offers a quasi-experimental setting well suited to this purpose. Judges in this environment are randomly assigned many differ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Spillover effects from new housing supply

I estimate spillovers from new housing supply on house prices, crime rates, and household income. To estimate these effects, I use exogenous variation in supply induced by a housing subsidy implemented in middle-income n...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Journal:

Can Helping the Sick Hurt the Able? Incentives, Information and Disruption in a Welfare Reform

The UK Jobcentre Plus reform sharpened bureaucratic incentives to help disability benefit recipients (relative to unemployment insurance recipients) into jobs. In the long run, the policy raised exits off disability bene...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief...Big city, bright future: why birthplace matters so much

How much does where you were born influence your future earnings? Analysing data from the British Household Panel Survey, Clément Bosquet and Henry Overman reveal that, on average, someone born in London in the 1970s ear...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Generation gap: young Brits less likely to 'do better' than their parents

Doing better financially than your parents is an important marker of success, and for much of the last half century, real earnings growth in the UK was strong enough that most young people achieved this milestone. But re...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief...The long-term effects of financial distress in childhood

Is there a relationship between childhood circumstances and outcomes later in life? Andrew Clark and colleagues consider the cognitive and non-cognitive consequences for young adults whose families experienced major fina...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Business benefits of local universities: more skills and better management

Universities are widely seen as a source of strength for local economies. Research by Andy Feng and Anna Valero confirms their potential contribution to business: firms closer to universities tend to hire better managers...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Structured management: how firms can hire and keep the best people

Firms' decisions about whom to hire and fire have big effects, not only on their own bottom line but also on the functioning of the labour market and the performance of the whole economy. Analysis of Brazilian data by Da...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Between communism and capitalism: long-run inequality in Poland

How has inequality in Poland evolved between communism and capitalism to reach one of the highest levels in Europe today? Pawel Bukowski and Filip Novokmet chart a century of data on Polish inequality, 1892-2015, to exam...Read more...

CentrePiece article

When machines replace people: individual consequences of occupational decline

What happens to people's careers when demand for their occupations declines, often as a result of technological change? Guy Michaels and colleagues' analysis of detailed occupational data on Swedish workers over several ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The gig economy and workers' preferences for steady jobs

Is the rise of gig work, freelancing, zero hours contracts and self-employment a result of people wanting such work or because they have no other choice? Nikhil Datta finds that while workers in the gig economy may like ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Economic insecurity and the rise of the right

Economic insecurity has attracted growing attention in social, academic and policy circles. However, there is no consensus as to its precise definition. Intuitively, economic insecurity is multi-faceted, making any compr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A happy choice: wellbeing as the goal of government

In this article, we lay out the basic case for wellbeing as the goal of government. We briefly review the history of this idea, which goes back to the ancient Greeks and was the acknowledged ideal of the Enlightenment. W...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The heterogeneous impact of market size on innovation: evidence from French firm-level exports

We analyze how demand conditions faced by a firm impacts its innovation decisions. To disentangle the direction of causality between innovation and demand conditions, we construct a firm-level export demand shock which r...Read more...

CEP Brexit analysis

The economic impact of Boris Johnson’s Brexit proposals

The Prime Minister Boris Johnson has set out a means of escaping the Brexit stalemate, but his new Brexit proposals have, as yet, not managed to overcome the impasse. What has been striking, though, is the extent to whic...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Measuring and explaining management in schools: new approaches using public data

Why do some students learn more in some schools than others? One consideration receiving growing attention is school management. To study this, researchers need to be able to measure school management accurately and chea...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Give us the right to choose

On Saturday 19 October 2019, the UK Parliament faces a historic choice over whether or not to vote through the new deal agreed by Boris Johnson and the European Union. Members should demand that the Johnson deal be put t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does employee happiness have an impact on productivity?

This article provides quasi-experimental evidence on the relationship between employee happiness and productivity in the field. We study the universe of call center sales workers at British Telecom (BT), one of the Unite...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

When free trade lands on the banking desk

The effect of trade liberalisation on economic activity remains one of the most important questions in economics. While prominent theories of international trade show that free trade improves the allocation of resources ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Industry concentration in Europe and North America

This report presents new evidence on industry concentration trends in Europe and in North America. It uses two novel data sources: representative firm-level concentration measures from the OECD MultiProd project, and bus...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Should I stay or should I go? Neighbors' effects on university enrollment

This paper investigates whether the decision to attend university depends on university enrollment of close neighbors. I create a unique dataset combining detailed geographic information and educational records from diff...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Measuring the effect of innovation on productivity inside firms

The role of innovation in explaining economic performance has been a focus of economic research for decades, and many questions remain unanswered. One of the main challenges is how we measure innovation. Only by improvin...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Reopening Pandora's box in search of a WTO-compatible industrial policy? The Brazil-taxation dispute

The Brazil-Taxation dispute concerns the complaints taken to the World Trade Organisation by the European Union and Japan against seven different Brazilian industrial subsidy programmes. One concerned the automotive sect...Read more...

Blog

VOX:

New dawn fades: The post-referendum rise in import costs has hurt UK workers

Some commentators argue that globalisation is systematically connected to the real-wage and productivity stagnation seen across the developed world. This column analyses the relationship between international trade and w...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

When income effects are large: labor supply responses and the value of welfare transfers

I estimate the long-run income effect of welfare transfers on individual labor supply. Using Italian administrative data on the universe of survivor insurance recipients, I implement a regression discontinuity design aro...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Socio-economic inequality and academic match among post-compulsory education participants

The study investigates the impact of socioeconomic background on the academic match of students in post-compulsory upper-secondary education making use of detailed individual-level linked administrative data from schools...Read more...

Blog

LSE Review of Books:

Book Review: Social Mobility and its Enemies by Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin

In Social Mobility and its Enemies, Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin offer a thought-provoking assessment of the state of social mobility in Britain. In the context of much social and political change and rising level...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Understanding day care enrolment gaps

We document day care enrolment gaps by family background in a country with a universal day care system (Germany). Research demonstrates that children of less educated or foreign-born parents can benefit the most from day...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade shocks and credit reallocation

The effect of trade liberalization on welfare and economic activity remains one of the most important questions in economics. The literature identifies a number of key determinants that reduce the potential gains from tr...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Geography, competition, and optimal multilateral trade policy

How should multilateral trade policy be designed in a world in which countries differ in terms of market access and technology, and firms with market power differ in terms of productivity? We answer this question in a mo...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Transportation:

Quantifying Wider Economic Impacts of agglomeration for transport appraisal: Existing evidence and future directions

The Authors This paper is concerned with the Wider Economic Impacts (WEIs) of transport improvements that arise via scale economies of agglomeration. It reviews the background theory and empirical evidence on agglomerati...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does light touch cluster policy work? Evaluating the tech city programme

Despite academic scepticism, cluster policies remain popular with policymakers. This paper evaluates the causal impact of a flagship UK technology cluster programme. I build a simple framework and identify effects using ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Inequalities in student to course match: evidence from linked administrative data

This paper examines inequalities in the match between student quality and university quality using linked administrative data from schools, universities and tax authorities. We analyse two measures of match at the univer...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Why No-Deal Brexit is a battle for the soul of our nation

We are careening towards the most extreme form of Brexit imaginable – flouncing out of the European Union (EU) after 46 years, without any transition plan. Operation Yellowhammer, a leaked secret report from the governme...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Compact cities have many advantages – clean air isn’t one of them

Air pollution is bad for us. We all know that polluted air is detrimental to our health and recent research shows that it can also affect our performance in education, productivity at work and even our safety. This has i...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Is the big-box store killing Main Street?

The opening of big-box stores – i.e., large chain supermarket stores – has been a political concern in many countries over the last 20 years. Their critics claim they create enormous negative externalities in pre-existin...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Trade with China benefited US consumers

International trade is widely viewed as creating winners and losers in an economy. Influential work has documented that US labour markets were heavily disrupted by the surge of imports following China’s joining the World...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does e-commerce reduce traffic congestion? Evidence from Alibaba Single Day shopping event

Traditional retail involves traffic both from warehouses to stores and from consumers to stores. E-commerce cuts intermediate traffic by delivering goods directly from the warehouses to the consumers. Although plenty of ...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

The value of progression in further education

In this study, we investigate the value of progression associated with different vocational qualifications disaggregated by subject area of study. Previous analyses of labour market outcomes by subject of study demonstra...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Labour market outcomes disaggregated by subject area using the Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) data

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between labour market outcomes and vocational qualifications disaggregated by subject area of study. Using individuals holding vocational qualifications in any subject at th...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Residential mobility in the UK: how distance and local economic conditions drive residential choices

Monica Langella and Alan Manning find that high unemployment in an area induces people to move away, and has an even stronger effect on the attractiveness of that area to potential movers. They also find that younger and...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The best versus the rest: divergence across firms during the global productivity slowdown

We document that labor productivity of the globally most productive firms – the “frontier” – has diverged from all other firms – the “rest” – throughout the 2000s. This divergence remains after controlling for capital in...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Building a productive workforce: the role of structured management practices

Firms’ hiring and firing decisions affect the entire labor market. Managers often make these decisions, yet the effects of management on labor allocation remains largely unexplored. To study the relationship between a fi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Quantifying the intangible impact of the Olympics using subjective well-being data

Hosting the Olympic Games costs billions of taxpayer dollars. Following a quasi-experimental setting, this paper assesses the intangible impact of the London 2012 Olympics, using a novel panel of 26,000 residents in Lond...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Vertical integration and foreclosure: evidence from production network data

This paper studies the prevalence of vertical market foreclosure using a novel dataset on U.S. and international buyer-seller relationships, and across a large range of industries. We find that relationships are more lik...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Innovation union: costs and benefits of innovation policy coordination

In this paper, we document large heterogeneity in innovation policy and performance between old and new EU member states, and present firm-level evidence on the close link between foreign direct investment (FDI) spillove...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

The introduction of academy schools to England's education

This paper studies the origins of what has become one of the most radical and encompassing programmes of school reform seen in the recent past in advanced countries�the introduction of academy schools to English educat...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

A Toolkit of Policies to Promote Innovation

Economic theory suggests that market economies are likely to underprovide innovation because of the public good nature of knowledge. Empirical evidence from the United States and other advanced economies supports this id...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Education Review:

The end of free college in England: Implications for enrolments, equity, and quality

Despite increasing financial pressures on higher education systems throughout the world, many governments remain resolutely opposed to the introduction of tuition fees, and some countries and states where tuition fees ha...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Can economic incentives promote a more equal gender division of house chores?

Gender identity norms such as the male bread-winner model are possible drivers of persistent gender inequalities in the labour market. However, the extent to which they restrict the behaviour of couples is debated. While...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

How the Panama Canal reshaped the economic geography of the United States

In the early 20th century a ship travelling from San Francisco to New York or on to Europe first had to travel over 13,000 miles around the entirety of South America. That all changed in August of 1914 with the opening o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Residential mobility and unemployment in the UK

The UK has suffered from persistent spatial differences in unemployment rates for many decades. A low responsiveness of internal migration to unemployment is often argued to be an important cause of this problem. This pa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Competition and pass-through: evidence from isolated markets

We measure how pass-through varies with competition in isolated oligopolistic markets with captive consumers. Using daily pricing data from gas stations, we study how unanticipated and exogenous changes in excise duties ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

The 2018 trade war: consumers are paying a high price

Over the course of 2018, the Trump administration imposed import tariffs on approximately $283 billion of US imports, with rates ranging between 10 and 50 per cent. In response, US trading partners, especially China, ret...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

Retail shocks and city structure

This paper evaluates the consequences of opening out-of-town big-boxes on the commercial structure of cities. I use a discontinuity in a commercial regulation in Spain that restricts the entry of big-box stores in munici...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Dirty density: air quality and the density of American cities

We study whether urban density affects the exposure of city dwellers to ambient air pollution using satellite-derived measures of air quality for the contiguous United States. For identification, we rely on an instrument...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A toolkit of policies to promote innovation

Economic theory suggests that market economies are likely to under-provide innovation due to the public good nature of knowledge. Empirical evidence from the US and other advanced economies supports this idea. We summari...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Economic geography aspects of the Panama Canal

This paper studies how the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 changed market access and influenced the economic geography of the United States. We compute shipment distances with and without the canal from each US count...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

CEO Behavior and Firm Performance

We measure the behavior of over 1,100 CEOs in six countries (Brazil, France, Germany, India, UK and US) using a new methodology that combines (i) a survey measuring each activity undertaken in a random work-week by the e...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Willing to pay for security: a discrete choice experiment to analyse labour supply preferences

This paper investigates the extent to which labour supply preferences are responsible for the marked rise in atypical work arrangements in the UK and US. By employing vignettes in a discrete job choice experiment in a re...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Jihadi attacks, the media and anti-Muslim hate crime

Do international jihadi terror attacks lead to an increase in local anti-Muslim hate crimes? Analysing data from the Greater Manchester Police, Ria Ivandic, Tom Kirchmaier and Stephen Machin find that the Muslim populati...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Healthy Minds: the positive impact of a new school curriculum

As the UK government prepares to make personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education compulsory, a recent trial shows how these subjects can be taught successfully. Grace Lordan and Alistair McGuire evaluate the ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Workers' falling share of firms' profits

To what extent do UK companies share their profits with employees? Brian Bell, Pawel Bukowski and Stephen Machin find that rent-sharing is on a much smaller scale today than during the 1980s and 1990s – and that the decl...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Employee wellbeing: the impact on productivity and firm performance

Does having happier staff mean higher productivity and improvements in companies' bottom line? A study of over 1.8 million employees across 73 countries by Christian Krekel, George Ward and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve detects a...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Firm size, productivity and pay in today's service economy

The evidence that bigger firms pay higher wages and have higher productivity is based mainly on manufacturing, which is only a small share of today's economy. Giuseppe Berlingieri, Sara Calligaris and Chiara Criscuolo re...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief...Globalisation and its discontents

CEP's Trade Week brought together researchers and policy-makers to discuss the recent trend towards protectionism, its causes and directions for future policy. Josh De Lyon and Elsa Leromain report....Read more...

CentrePiece article

The impact of the 2018 trade war on US prices and welfare

What has been happening to the US economy as a result of the Trump administration's 2018 round of import tariffs? Research by Mary Amiti, Stephen Redding and David Weinstein estimates the effects of this change in US tra...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief...Brexit and outward investment by UK firms

Media reports have highlighted that some UK firms have started to move production abroad in anticipation of Brexit. CEP analysis confirms that there has indeed been a substantial increase in outward investments. The shif...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Trade and deskilling: how the post-referendum sterling depreciation hurt workers

The unexpected result of the Brexit referendum, working through the rapid depreciation of sterling, had a sizable negative impact on UK workers. New CEP work by Rui Costa, Swati Dhingra and Stephen Machin shows that the ...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Policy:

Zero Hours Contracts and Labour Market Policy

The evolving nature of atypical work arrangements is studied. A particular focus is placed on one such form of work relation: zero hour contracts (ZHCs). The paper uses existing secondary data and new survey data collect...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics:

Healthy Business? Managerial Education and Management in Healthcare

We investigate the link between hospital performance and managerial education by collecting a large database of management practices and skills in hospitals across nine countries. We find that hospitals closer to univers...Read more...

Blog

CVER Blog:

Changing Aspirations and Outcomes in Post-16 Education

In this latest blog post, Steven McIntosh of University of Sheffield discusses CVER contributions to the recent Augar Review of Post-18 Education, and the findings that came out of that research. CVER have been contribut...Read more...

CVER Briefing Note

Post-16 Aspirations and Outcomes: Comparison of the LSYPE Cohorts

CVER was commissioned by the Department for Education to undertake research in support of the current Review of Post-18 Education (The Augar Review). This research brief summarises some of the key findings that came out ...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...

CEP discussion paper

Widening the high school curriculum to include soft skill training: impacts on health, behaviour, emotional wellbeing and occupational aspirations

From 2020 the health and relationships aspects of Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education will be compulsory in UK schools for adolescents. However less is known about how it can be taught in an effective manner....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Individual consequences of occupational decline

What are the earnings and employment losses that workers suffer when demand for their occupations declines? To answer this question we combine forecasts on occupational employment changes, which allow us to identify unan...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Between communism and capitalism: long-term inequality in Poland, 1892-2015

How has Polish inequality evolved between communism and capitalism to reach one of the highest levels in Europe today? To address this question, we construct the first series on the long-term distribution of income in Po...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Technology gaps, trade and income

This paper studies the origins and consequences of international technology gaps. I develop an endogenous growth model where R&D efficiency varies across countries and productivity differences emerge from firm-level tech...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Economic incentives, home production and gender identity norms

We infer the role of gender identity norms from the reallocation of childcare across parents, following changes in their relative wages. By exploiting variation from a Swedish tax reform, we estimate the elasticity of su...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Regional Science:

Direct democracy and intergenerational conflicts in ageing societies

To evaluate the potential effects of population ageing on the outcomes of direct democracy, we analyze the effect of age on voting decisions in public referendums. In a case study of the Stuttgart 21 referendum on one of...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Why unions: understanding how unions overcome the free-rider problem

This paper provides evidence for why individuals join unions instead of free-riding. I model membership as legal insurance. To test the model, I use the incidence of news stories concerning allegations against teachers i...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Vehicle currency pricing and exchange rate pass-through

Using detailed firm-level transactions data for UK imports, we find that invoicing in a vehicle currency is pervasive, with more than half of transactions in our sample invoiced in neither sterling nor the exporter's cur...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Commuting, migration and local joblessness

Britain suffers from persistent spatial disparities in employment rates. This paper develops an integrated framework for analyzing two forces expected to equalize economic opportunity across areas: commuting and migratio...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Joseph Schumpeter Lecture, EEA Annual Congress 2017: Do Tax Cuts Produce more Einsteins? The Impacts of Financial Incentives VerSus Exposure to Innovation on the Supply of Inventors

Many countries provide financial incentives to spur innovation, ranging from tax incentives to research and development grants. In this paper, we study how such financial incentives affect individuals' decisions to pursu...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Teaching assistants, computers and classroom management

Many students still leave school without a good grasp of basic literacy, despite the negative implications for future educational and labour market outcomes. We evaluate how resources may be used within classrooms to rei...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

The effect of house prices on household borrowing: A new approach

We investigate the effect of house prices on household borrowing using administrative mortgage data from the United Kingdom and a new empirical approach. The data contain household-level information on house prices and b...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Income and Wealth:

Neighbors' Income, Public Goods, and Well-Being

Read more...

CEP Brexit analysis

Trade and worker deskilling: how the post-Brexit pound has hurt Britain’s workers

The unexpected result of the Brexit referendum, working through the rapid depreciation of the sterling, has hurt British workers. New CEP work shows that the big drop in the value of the pound caused a rise in import pri...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade and worker deskilling

This paper presents new evidence on international trade and worker outcomes. It examines a big world event that produced an unprecedentedly large shock to the UK exchange rate. In the 24 hours in June 2016 during which t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How to improve tax compliance? Evidence from population-wide experiments in Belgium

We study the impact of deterrence, tax morale, and simplifying information on tax compliance. We ran _ve experiments spanning the tax process which varied the communication of the tax administration with all income taxpa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade blocs and trade wars during the interwar period

What precisely were the causes and consequences of the trade wars in the 1930s? Were there perhaps deeper forces at work in reorienting global trade prior to the outbreak of World War II? And what lessons may this partic...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Tales of the city: what do agglomeration cases tell us about agglomeration in general?

This paper considers the heterogeneous microfoundations of agglomeration economies. It studies the co-location of industries to look for evidence of labor pooling, input sharing, and knowledge spillovers. The novel contr...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Amplifying Islamophobic hate crime: UK media in the wake of terror attacks

Ria Ivandic,Tom Kirchmaier, and Stephen Machin study the empirical connections between local anti-Muslim hate crimes and international jihadi terror attacks. They find that local Muslim populations face a media-magnified...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trainspotting: 'good jobs', training and skilled immigration

While skilled immigration ceteris paribus provides an immediate boost to GDP per capita by adding to the human capital stock of the receiving economy, might it also reduce the number of ’good jobs’, i.e. those with train...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economic Studies:

The changing returns to crime: do criminals respond to prices?

To what extent does crime follow the pattern of potential gains to illegal activity? This article presents evidence on how criminals respond to this key incentive by reporting crime-price elasticities estimated from a co...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

The economic effects of density: A synthesis

This paper synthesises the state of knowledge on the economic effects of density. We consider 347 estimates of density elasticities of a broad range of outcomes ranging from wages, innovation, rents, various amenities, t...Read more...

Journal article

Review of World Economics:

Are all trade agreements equal? The role of distance in shaping the effect of economic integration agreements on trade flows

How does geographic distance affect the impact of trade agreements on bilateral exports, and through what channels? This paper examines this questions in a gravity model context for different types of goods for 185 count...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Education and geographical mobility: the role of the job surplus

Better-educated workers form many more long-distance job matches, and they move more quickly following local employment shocks. I argue this is a consequence of larger dispersion in wage offers, independent of geography....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Jihadi attacks, media and local hate crime

Empirical connections between local anti-Muslim hate crimes and international jihadi terror attacks are studied. Based upon rich administrative data from Greater Manchester Police, event studies of ten terror attacks rev...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Childhood circumstances and young adult outcomes: the role of parental financial problems

Is there a relationship between childhood circumstances and outcomes later on in life? Andrew E. Clark, Conchita D’Ambrosio, and Marta Barazzetta consider the cognitive and non-cognitive consequences on young adults who ...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

The Changing Demand for Skills in the UK

We present estimates of changes in skills utilisation and in the returns to skills in the UK for 2002-2016 using new measures of skills derived from a systematic and detailed matching between the US O*NET system and UK S...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The comparative advantage of firms

Multiproduct firms dominate production, and their product turnover contributes substantially to aggregate growth. Theories propose that multiproduct firms grow by diversifying into products which need the same know-how o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A tale of comprehensive labor market reforms: evidence from the Italian jobs act

The Italian Jobs Act introduced a subsidy for new hirings as well as a new open ended labor contract based on graded security, with severance payments increasing with tenure, while phasing out the compulsory reinstatemen...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Business and Economic Statistics:

Poorly Measured Confounders are More Useful on the Left than on the Right

Researchers frequently test identifying assumptions in regression based research designs (which include e.g. instrumental variables or differences-in-differences models) by adding additional control variables on the righ...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

A comparison of earnings related to higher level vocational/technical and academic education

Using rich administrative data for a full cohort of English secondary school leavers (2002/03 academic year), we compare earnings of people with higher vocational/technical qualifications to the earnings of degree holder...Read more...

Blog

CVER Blog:

Higher vocational education: An alternative to degrees?

A detailed picture of earnings effects of university degrees is emerging, but not much is known about the benefits of higher vocational education. A recent report by the IFS provides evidence on the extensive earnings b...Read more...

Journal article

SSM - Population Health:

Crime victimisation over time and sleep quality

We here consider the relationship between the individual time profile of crime victimisation and sleep quality. Sleep quality worsens with contemporaneous crime victimisation, with physical violence having a larger effec...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Affordability, financial innovation and the start of the housing boom

At their peak in 2005, roughly 60 percent of all purchase mortgage loans originated in the United States contained at least one non-traditional feature. These features, which allowed borrowers easier access to credit thr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Geography, competition and optimal multilateral trade policy

How should multilateral trade policy be designed in a world in which countries differ in terms of market access and technology, and firms with market power differ in terms of productivity? We answer this question in a mo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Childhood circumstances and young adulthood outcomes: the role of mothers' financial problems

We here consider the cognitive and non-cognitive consequences on young adults of growing up with a mother who reported experiencing major financial problems. We use UK data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and...Read more...

CEP Brexit analysis

Economic performance since the EU referendum

The impact of the Brexit vote can now begin to be evaluated with greater accuracy than previous forecasts, thanks to the emergence of new data. In the run-up to the UK’s referendum on membership of the European Union (EU...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The urban wage premium in imperfect labour markets

Using administrative data for West Germany, this paper investigates whether part of the urban wage premium stems from fierce competition in thick labour markets. We first establish that employers possess less wage-settin...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Innovative events

We take a fresh look at firms’ innovation-productivity linkages, using novel data capturing new aspects of innovative activity. We combine UK administrative microdata, media and website content to develop experimental me...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Missing trade in tasks: employer outsourcing in the gig economy

Only a small share of employers in high-wage locations procure services from abroad. We document heterogeneous employer adoption of an online labor market that facilitates trade in tasks with global workers. Job vacancie...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Employee wellbeing, productivity and firm performance

Does higher employee wellbeing lead to higher productivity, and, ultimately, to tangible benefits to the bottom line of businesses? We survey the evidence and study this question in a meta-analysis of 339 independent res...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Valuing the environmental benefits of canals using house prices

The canal and waterway network in Britain provides a potentially valuable recreational and environmental amenity. In this paper, we estimate the value of this amenity based on how much households are willing to pay throu...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Devolving Skills: The case of the Apprenticeship Grant for Employers

One rationale for devolution is that local decision makers may be well placed to adapt national skills’ policies to the local context. We test whether such adaptation helps meet programme objectives in the case of the A...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The impact of the 2018 trade war on U.S. prices and welfare

This paper explores the impacts of the Trump administration’s trade policy on prices and welfare. Over the course of 2018, the U.S. experienced substantial increases in the prices of intermediates and final goods, dramat...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

Review of Economic Studies:

Carry-along trade

Large multi-product firms dominate international trade flows. This paper documents new facts about multi-product manufacturing exporters that are not easily reconciled with existing multi-product models. Using novel link...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Spatial Imaginaries and Tech Cities: Place-branding East London's digital economy

We explore place branding as an economic development strategy for technology clusters, using London’s ‘Tech City’ initiative as a case study. We site place branding in a larger family of policies that develop spatial ima...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

The preservation of historic districts - Is it worth it?

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CentrePiece article

Sustainable growth in the UK

Anna Valero and colleagues urge the UK government to put action on climate change and sustainability at the heart of its growth strategy....Read more...

CentrePiece article

Measuring the economic costs of discrimination: insights from Nazi Germany

Kilian Huber and colleagues analyse the effects of the Nazis' purge of Jewish managers from German firms....Read more...

CentrePiece article

The making of the modern metropolis: evidence from London

Stephen Redding and colleagues examine how the introduction of steam railways shaped the emerging metropolitan area of London....Read more...

CentrePiece article

Trade and growth in the Iron Age

Stephan Maurer and colleagues investigate the growth effects of one of the first trade expansions in history: the crossing of the Mediterranean by the Phoenicians ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief...What the Berlin Wall can teach us about urban development

Award-winning CEP research considers what can be learned from the division and reunification of Berlin....Read more...

CentrePiece article

When innovation policy trumped protectionism: the Reagan years

Giammario Impullitti and colleagues show that it was the Reagan administration's innovation policy - not a retreat from globalisation - that promoted US growth....Read more...

CentrePiece article

Europe's transformation after Gutenberg: the impact of new media and competition

Jeremiah Dittmar explores the effects of the printing press and the new forms of competition that accompanied its introduction....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Making smart meters smarter the smart way

We report first results from a large scale randomized control trial of different forms of energy consumption feedback facilitated by smart meters and smart phone feedback apps. Nearly 40,000 customers of a large energy r...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Searching for carbon leaks in multinational companies

Does unilateral climate change policy cause companies to shift the location of production, thereby creating carbon leakage? In this paper, we analyse the effect of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) on ...Read more...

Journal article

Quantitative Economics:

Incidence, salience, and spillovers: the direct and indirect effects of tax credits on wages

Tax credits are a popular way to alleviate in-work poverty. A common empirical assumption is that the benefit of the tax credit is borne solely by the claimant workers. However, economic theory suggests no particular rea...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Education Review:

The Economic Impact of Universities: Evidence from Across the Globe

We develop a new dataset using UNESCO source materials on the location of nearly 15,000 universities in about 1,500 regions across 78 countries, some dating back to the 11th Century. We estimate fixed effects models at t...Read more...

Journal article

Health Affairs:

Hospital prices grew substantially faster than physician prices for hospital-based care in 2007-14

Evidence suggests that growth in providers' prices drives growth in health care spending on the privately insured. However, existing work has not systematically differentiated between the growth rate of hospital prices a...Read more...

Journal article

Health Affairs:

Variation in health spending growth for the privately insured from 2007 to 2014

We examined the growth in health spending on people with employer-sponsored private insurance in the period 2007-14. Our analysis relied on information from the Health Care Cost Institute data set, which includes insuran...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

New media and competition: printing and Europe's transformation after Gutenberg

We study the role of book content in economic, religious, and institutional development after the introduction of printing, and the role of competition in determining the amount and content of local printing. We focus on...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Discrimination, managers, and firm performance: evidence from “Aryanizations” in Nazi Germany

Large-scale increases in discrimination can lead to dismissals of highly qualified managers. We investigate how expulsions of senior Jewish managers, due to rising discrimination in Nazi Germany, affected large corporati...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

International buyers' sourcing and suppliers' markups in Bangladeshi garments

Large international buyers play a key role in global value chains. We exploit detailed transaction-level data on the usage of material inputs to study how Bangladeshi garment suppliers' markups vary across international ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do tax cuts produce more Einsteins? The impacts of financial incentives vs. exposure to innovation on the supply of inventors

Many countries provide financial incentives to spur innovation, ranging from tax incentives to research and development grants. In this paper, we study how such financial incentives affect individuals' decisions to pursu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The public sector and the misallocation of labor: evidence from a policy experiment in India

State-owned enterprises are often thought to represent a distortion in the labor market, but the implied efficiency losses have not been carefully estimated. This paper presents the first rigorous quantification of the a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Aggregation and the gravity equation

One of the most successful empirical relationships in international trade is the gravity equation, which relates bilateral trade flows between an origin and destination to bilateral trade frictions, origin characteristic...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Skill biased management: evidence from manufacturing firms

This paper investigates the link between management practices and workforce skills in manufacturing firms, exploiting geographical variation in the supply of human capital. Skills measures are constructed using newly com...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Globalization and state capitalism: assessing Vietnam's accession to the WTO

What do state-owned enterprises (SOEs) do? How do they respond to market incentives? Can we expect substantial efficiency gains from trade liberalization in economies with a strong presence of SOEs? Using a new dataset o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The origins of firm heterogeneity: a production network approach

This paper quantifies the origins of firm size heterogeneity when firms are interconnected in a production network. Using the universe of buyer-supplier relationships in Belgium, the paper develops a set of stylized fact...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Some causal effects of an industrial policy

We exploit changes in the area-specific eligibility criteria for a program to support jobs through investment subsidies. European rules determine whether an area is eligible for subsidies, and we construct instrumental v...Read more...

Journal article

Travail et Emploi:

Polarization(s) in Labour Markets: Synthesis and Perspectives

Polarization is now well established and documented. The increase in the share of high-wage and low-wage jobs at the expense of "intermediate" jobs has led to a polarization of jobs in the US (Autor, 2010; Autor, Dorn, 2...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Where is the Land of Hope and Glory? The geography of intergenerational mobility in England and Wales

Does the importance of your family background on how far you get in adulthood also depend on where you grow up? For England and Wales, a paucity of data has made this a difficult question to reliably answer. This paper p...Read more...

Journal article

Regional Science and Urban Economics:

The bedroom tax

Housing subsidies for low income households are a central pillar of many welfare systems, but an expensive one. This paper investigates the consequences of an unusual policy aimed at reducing the cost of these subsidies ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Monetary policy, product market competition and growth

In this paper we argue that monetary easing fosters growth more in more credit-constrained environments, and the more so the higher the degree of product market competition. Indeed when competition is low, large rents al...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Innovation and trade policy in a globalized world

How do import tariffs and R&D subsidies help domestic firms compete globally? How do these policies affect aggregate growth and economic welfare? To answer these questions we build a dynamic general equilibrium growth mo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The inverted-U relationship between credit access and productivity growth

In this paper we identify two counteracting effects of credit access on productivity growth: on the one hand, better access to credit makes it easier for entrepreneurs to innovate; on the other hand, better credit access...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Technology, market structure and the gains from trade

We study the gains from trade in a new model with oligopolistic competition, firm heterogeneity, and innovation. Lowering trade costs reduces markups on domestic sales but increases markups on export sales, as firms do n...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The effect of the Brexit referendum result on subjective well-being

We study the effect of the Brexit referendum result on subjective well-being in the United Kingdom. Using a quasi-experimental design, we find that this outcome led to an overall decrease in subjective well-being in the ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Subsidizing labor hoarding in recessions: the employment and welfare effects of short time work

The Great Recession has seen a revival of interest in policies encouraging labor hoarding by firms. Short time work (STW) policies, which consist in offering subsidies for hours reductions to workers in firms experiencin...Read more...

CEP industrial strategy paper

Sustainable growth in the UK: seizing opportunities from technological change and the transition to a low-carbon economy

An overarching strategy for sustainable growth is required to address the dual challenges of restoring productivity growth and managing a transition to a low-carbon economy – priorities in both the UK and other G20 count...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economics and Statistics:

Robots at work

We analyze for the first time the economic contributions of modern industrial robots, which are flexible, versatile, and autonomous machines. We use novel panel data on robot adoption within industries in seventeen count...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economics and Statistics:

Tall buildings and land values: Height and construction cost elasticities in Chicago, 1870-2010

Despite unprecedented vertical growth in large cities, the economics of skyscrapers remain understudied. We combine data on tall buildings with a panel of land prices covering 140 years to analyze the determinants of urb...Read more...

Journal article

Fiscal Studies:

The Economic Effects of Brexit: Evidence from the Stock Market

We study stock market reactions to the Brexit referendum on 23 June 2016 in order to assess investors� expectations about the effects of leaving theEuropean Union on the UK economy. Our results suggest that initial sto...Read more...

Journal article

Fiscal Studies:

Off EU Go? Brexit, the UK Labour Market and Immigration

Immigration remains a highly antagonistic issue and its purported effects in the labour market are still contestable. Against this background, the UK looks set to undertake a large overhaul of its immigration policy foll...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Education Review:

The threat of competition and public school performance: Evidence from Poland

Theoretical literature on whether school competition raises public school productivity is ambiguous (e.g. MacLeod & Urquiola, 2015) and empirical evidence is mixed (e.g. Hsieh and Urquiola, 2006). Moreover, competition m...Read more...

CEP Brexit analysis

The economic consequences of the Brexit deal

Amidst the political fighting and fevered speculation about leadership challenges and parliamentary defeats for the government, one crucial issue seems to have been lost from sight. The deal negotiated with the European ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Rent sharing and inclusive growth

The long-run evolution of rent sharing is empirically studied. Based upon a comprehensive and harmonized panel of the top 300 publicly quoted British companies over thirty five years, the paper reports evidence of a sign...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Organizing global supply chains: input-output linkages and vertical integration

We study whether and how the technological importance of an input – measured by its cost share – is related to the decision of whether to “make” or “buy” that input. Using detailed French international trade data and an ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The contribution of foreign migration to local labor market adjustment

The US suffers from large regional disparities in employment rates which have persisted for many decades. It has been argued that foreign migration offers a remedy: it “greases the wheels” of the labor market by accelera...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Aid: it’s not just about the money

For more than a decade, CEP research associate Peter Boone and his colleagues at Effective Intervention have been running health and education programmes in some of the poorest parts of the world. As he recounts here, th...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Social mobility and its enemies

Increasingly it seems that the rich and poor of Britain are destined to stay on the same rungs of the economic or social ladder for successive generations. A new book by Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin calls for an a...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Developing an effective local industrial strategy

Local governments in the UK have been writing economic development plans for decades, mostly with limited success. So can the latest drive to boost national productivity through local efforts show that this time is diffe...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Universities and industrial strategy in the UK

The UK’s higher education sector is a source of national strength with the potential to contribute to all areas of the government’s industrial strategy. Anna Valero and colleagues review the evidence on how the positive ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Improving literacy through teaching assistants

Teaching assistants are employed in most primary schools in England, but until now, little has been known about what contribution they make to educational outcomes. Sandra McNally and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela assess the i...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Apprenticeships in England: what do we know?

Increasing the quantity and quality of apprenticeships is high on the policy agenda in England. Research on this issue is a central focus of the Centre for Vocational Education Research (CVER). Sandra McNally summarises ...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy:

From selling goods to selling services: Firm responses to trade liberalization

In this paper, we focus on a new channel of adaptation to trade liberalization , namely the shift toward increased provision of services in lieu of goods production. We exploit variation in European Union trade policy to...Read more...

Journal article

Economics Letters:

The regional effects of Germany's national minimum wage

We show that the minimum wage introduced in Germany in 2015 led to spatial wage convergence, in particular in the left tail of the distribution, without reducing relative employment in low-wage regions within the first t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Preferential trade agreements and global sourcing

We study how a preferential trade agreement (PTA) affects international sourcing decisions, aggregate productivity and welfare under incomplete contracting and endogenous matching. Contract incompleteness implies underin...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Labor specialization as a source of market frictions

This paper investigates why labor specialization brings additional frictions to the labor market. The intuition is that labor specialized firms rely on complementarity and firm-specific human capital, assigning high valu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

In-house and arms length: productivity heterogeneity and variation in organizational form

This paper analyzes how firms are organized in the U.S. hotel management industry. For most hotel brands, properties with intermediate room occupancy rates are relatively more likely to be managed by company employees ra...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

The causal effect of secondary school peers on educational aspirations

This paper uses data from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE) to investigate how the educational aspirations of secondary school pupils in Year 9 (at age 14) and in Year 11 (at age 16) are influence...Read more...

CEP industrial strategy paper

Universities and industrial strategy in the UK: review of evidence and implications for policy

As producers of human capital, innovation and as large institutions in their own right, UK universities can make important contributions across the five foundations that underpin the government’s Industrial Strategy: peo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The not-so-generalized effects of the generalized system of preferences

We use an empirical gravity equation approach to study how nonreciprocal trade preferences (NRTPs), enacted mainly through the Generalized System of Preferences, affect the exports of the beneficiary nations. In line wit...Read more...

CEP industrial strategy paper

Unlocking SME productivity: review of recent evidence and implications for the UK’s industrial strategy

Improving productivity is one of the main goals of the government’s Industrial Strategy. Since the UK is a nation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the question arises whether SMEs have a role to play in indu...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Does additional spending help urban schools? An evaluation using boundary discontinuities

This study exploits spatial anomalies in school funding policy in England to provide new evidence on the impact of resources on student achievement in urban areas. Anomalies arise because the funding allocated to Local E...Read more...

Journal article

Economica:

Leveraging Monopoly Power by Degrading Interoperability: Theory and Evidence from Computer Markets

When will a monopolist have incentives to leverage her/his market power in a primary market to foreclose competition in a complementary market by degrading compatibility/interoperability of her/his products with those of...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Does competition from private surgical centres improve public hospitals’ performance? Evidence from the English National Health Service

This paper examines the impact of a government programme which facilitated the entry of for-profit surgical centres to compete against incumbent National Health Service hospitals in England. We examine the impact of comp...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Firm dynamics and residual inequality in open economies

Wage inequality between similar workers has been on the rise in many rich countries. Recent empirical research suggests that heterogeneity in firm characteristics is crucial to understand wage dispersion. Lower trade cos...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Policy:

The productivity puzzle and misallocation: an Italian perspective

Productivity has recently slowed down in many economies around the world. A crucial challenge in understanding what lies behind this 'productivity puzzle' is the still short time span for which data can be analysed. An e...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Does additional spending help urban schools? An evaluation using boundary discontinuities

This study exploits spatial anomalies in school funding policy in England to provide new evidence on the impact of resources on student achievement in urban areas. Anomalies arise because the funding allocated to Local E...Read more...

CEP industrial strategy paper

Local Economic Effects of Brexit: Factsheet

Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Fiscal and education spillovers from charter school expansion

The fiscal and educational consequences of charter expansion for non-charter students are central issues in the debate over charter schools. Do charter schools drain resources and high-achieving peers from non-charter sc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Increasing differences between firms: market power and the macro-economy

A rich understanding of macro-economic outcomes requires taking into account the large (and increasing) differences between firms. These differences stem in large part from heterogeneous productivity rooted in managerial...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Incubators, accelerators and regional economic development

A growing wave of co-location programmes promises to boost growth for young firms. Despite great public and policy interest we have little idea whether such programmes are effective. This paper categorises accelerators a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Teacher effectiveness and classroom composition

This paper studies how the effectiveness of teachers varies by classroom composition, combining random assignment of teachers with rich measures of teaching practices based on a popular teacher-evaluation protocol. We fi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The making of the modern metropolis: evidence from London

Modern metropolitan areas involve large concentrations of economic activity and the transport of millions of people each day between their residence and workplace. We use the revolution in transport technology from the i...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Misallocation in the market for inputs: enforcement and the organization of production

The strength of contract enforcement determines how firms source inputs and organize production. Using microdata on Indian manufacturing plants, we show that production and sourcing decisions appear systematically distor...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How do households value the future? Evidence from property taxes

Despite the near ubiquity of inter-temporal choice, there is little consensus on the rate at which individuals trade present and future costs and benefits. We contribute to this debate by estimating discount rates from e...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The economic effects of Brexit - evidence from the stock market

We study stock market reactions to the Brexit referendum on 23 June 2016 in order to assess investors’ expectations about the effects of leaving the European Union on the UK economy. Our results suggest that initial stoc...Read more...

CEP industrial strategy paper

Do Apprenticeships Pay? Evidence for England

The importance of apprenticeships for early labour market transitions varies across countries and over time. In recent times, there has been a policy drive to increase the number of people undertaking apprenticeships in ...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Labour Market Outcomes of Older Versus Younger Apprentices: A Comparison of Earnings Differentials

Over the last decade, there has been a large increase in the number of individuals completing an apprenticeship, with the growth in numbers particularly strong amongst those age 25+ when starting their apprenticeship. Th...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Do apprenticeships pay? Evidence for England

The importance of apprenticeships for early labour market transitions varies across countries and over time. In recent times, there has been a policy drive to increase the number of people undertaking apprenticeships in ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Measuring urban economic density

At the heart of urban economics are agglomeration economies, which drive the existence and extent of cities and are also central to structural transformation and the urbanization process. This paper evaluates the use of ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Market Potential and Global Growth over the Long Twentieth Century

We examine the evolution of market potential and its role in driving economic growth over the long twentieth century. Theoretically, we exploit a structural gravity model to derive a closed-form solution for a widely-use...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

History dependence in the housing market

Using data on the universe of housing transactions in England and Wales over a twenty-year period, we document a robust pattern of history dependence in housing markets. Sale prices and selling propensities are affected ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Foreign expansion, competition and bank risk

Using a novel dataset on the 15 European banks classified as G-SIBs from 2005 to 2014, we find that the impact of foreign expansion on risk is always negative and significant for most individual and systemic risk metrics...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Why does education reduce crime?

Prior research shows reduced criminality to be a beneficial consequence of education policies that raise the school leaving age. This paper studies how crime reductions occurred in a sequence of state-level dropout age r...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Who teaches the teachers? A RCT of peer-to-peer observation and feedback in 181 schools

It is well established that teachers are the most important in-school factor in determining student outcomes. However, to date there is scant robust quantitative research demonstrating that teacher training programs can ...Read more...

CEP report

Urban Capacity and Economic Output

This report was commissioned by the National Infrastructure Commission as part of the evidence base for the National Infrastructure Assessment. The views expressed and recommendations set out in this report are the autho...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The political economy of trade and migration: evidence from the US Congress

We systematically examine the drivers of U.S. congressmen's votes on trade and migration reforms since the 1970's. Standard trade theory suggests that reforms that lower barriers to goods and migrants should have similar...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The spatial impacts of a massive rail disinvestment program: the Beeching axe

Transport investment is a popular policy instrument and many recent studies have investigated whether new infrastructure generates economic benefits and has spatial economic impacts. Our work approaches the question diff...Read more...

Journal article

Industrial and Corporate Change:

A cross-country analysis of start-up employment dynamics

This article carries out a detailed descriptive analysis of employment dynamics of new firms, using comparable and highly representative data for 19 countries. It does so by using a novel analytical decomposition of the ...Read more...

Journal article

National Institute Economic Review:

Broken Market or Broken Policy? The Unintended Consequences of Restrictive Planning

This paper summarises the evidence from recent research relating to the British Planning system's impact on the supply of development. Planning serves important economic and social purposes but it is essential to disting...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

From final goods to inputs: The protectionist effect of rules of origin

Recent decades have witnessed a surge of trade in intermediate goods and a proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs). FTAs use rules of origin (RoO) to distinguish goods originating from member countries from those o...Read more...

Journal article

Social Science and Medicine:

Life satisfaction, QALYs, and the monetary value of health

The monetary value of a quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) is frequently used to assess the benefits of health interventions and inform funding decisions. However, there is little consensus on methods for the estimation o...Read more...

Journal article

International Economics:

Relaxing credit constraints in emerging economies: The impact of public loans on the productivity of Brazilian manufacturers

In emerging economies credit constraints are often perceived as one of the most important market frictions hampering firm productivity growth in manufacturing. Huge amount of public money is devoted to the removal of suc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Teaching assistants, computers and classroom management: evidence from a randomised control trial

Many students still leave school without a good grasp of basic literacy, despite the negative implications for future educational and labour market outcomes. We evaluate a programme that involves changing how resources a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Quantifying wider economic impacts of agglomeration for transport appraisal: existing evidence and future directions

This paper is concerned with the Wider Economic Impacts (WEIs) of transport improvements that arise via scale economies of agglomeration. It reviews the background theory and empirical evidence on agglomeration, explains...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Market potential and global growth over the long twentieth century

We examine the evolution of market potential and its role in driving economic growth over the long twentieth century. Theoretically, we exploit a structural gravity model to derive a closed-form solution for a widely-use...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Diffusion of social values through the lens of US newspapers

Changing attitudes are the result of a battle for hearts and minds in which agents for and against change try to persuade others. We know very little about this process. This paper develops a methodology for measuring se...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Of mice and merchants: trade and growth in the Iron Age

We study the causal connection between trade and development using one of the earliest massive trade expansions: the first systematic crossing of open seas in the Mediterranean during the time of the Phoenicians. We cons...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The productivity-wage premium: does size still matter in a service economy?

Ever since Moore (1911) a large empirical and theoretical literature has established the existence of a firm size-wage premium. At the same time, a second regularity in empirical work, linking size and productivity, has ...Read more...

CEP industrial strategy paper

Apprenticeships in England: what does research tell us?

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CVER Briefing Note

Apprenticeships in England: what does research tell us?

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CEP discussion paper

The economic impacts of constraining home investments

We investigate how political backlash against wealthy investors in high-amenity places affects local residents. We exploit a quasi-natural experiment: the ‘Swiss Second Home Initiative’, which banned the construction of ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Financial markets and the allocation of capital: the role of productivity

The efficient allocation of credit is a key element for the success of an economy. Traditional measures of allocative efficiency focus on the Q-theory of investment and, in particular, on the elasticity of finance to inv...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

The persistence of local joblessness

Differences in employment-population ratios across US commuting zones have persisted for many decades. We claim these disparities represent real gaps in economic opportunity for individuals of fixed characteristics. Thes...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Intended versus unintended consequences of migration restriction policies: Evidence from a natural experiment in Indonesia

This article studies the consequences of restrictions to migration at the origin on labor market outcomes and school enrolment in origin communities. Our difference-indifferences specification exploits the differential i...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economics and Statistics:

Crime scars: recessions and the making of career criminals

Recessions lead to short-term job loss, lower levels of happiness and decreasing income levels. There is growing evidence that workers who first join the labour market during economic downturns suffer from poor job match...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Higher education funding reforms in England

Reforms in higher education funding, which have taken England from offering free-of-charge, full-time undergraduate studies to being one of the most expensive systems in the OECD, have led to a reduction in the participa...Read more...

CentrePiece article

in brief...Multinationals and the customs union

Leaving the customs union may lead multinationals to move out of the UK, resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs. That is the conclusion of research by Paola Conconi. She explains that in a customs union, goods cross ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Costs of just failing high-stakes exams

School students who narrowly fail to achieve a grade C in their GCSE English exam at age 16 pay a high price, according to research by Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela and colleagues. Their study concludes that young people are n...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Economic consequences of family policies

There is no compelling evidence that extended parental leave rights have a positive impact on female employment, according to research by Claudia Olivetti and Barbara Petrongolo, which analyses the labour market effects ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Metal crime: the impact of prices, policing and policy

Metal prices are strong drivers of metal crime, according to research by Tom Kirchmaier and colleagues. Their study traces how, over the past ten years, big rises in commodity prices led to a boom in metal crime in the U...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief...The bedroom tax

The ‘bedroom tax’ – a UK government policy introduced in 2013 that cut housing benefits for social tenants deemed to have a ‘spare’ bedroom – saved some public money, according to research by Steve Gibbons and colleagues...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Threats to scientific progress, past and present

A US boycott of Chinese researchers, as threatened by the Trump administration, could stifle scientific progress and technological innovation. That is the concern of Alessandro Iaria, Carlo Schwarz and Fabian Waldinger, ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Care homes: effects of the National Living Wage

The National Living Wage, which was introduced in 2016, has substantially raised wages at the bottom of the hourly wage distribution in care homes in England, a sector that employs a large number of low-paid workers. Acc...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The price of Brexit

Writing in the summer 2018 issue of CentrePiece magazine, Thomas Sampson notes that the full economic consequences of the UK’s leave vote will not be realised for many years. But two years after the referendum, we can al...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Geography, ties and knowledge flows: evidence from citations in mathematics

Using data on academic citations, career and educational histories of mathematicians, and disaggregated distance data for the world's top 1000 math departments, we study how geography and ties affect knowledge flows amon...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Managing trade: evidence from China and the US

We present a heterogeneous-firm model in which management ability increases both production efficiency and product quality. Combining six micro-datasets on management practices, production and trade in Chinese and Americ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The generation gap in direct democracy

We provide the first systematic documentation and analysis of a generation gap in direct democracy outcomes across a wide range of topics using postelection survey data covering more than 300 Swiss referenda and four dec...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Brands in motion: how frictions shape multinational production

Following the 2016 Leave vote in the referendum on UK membership in the EU and the election of Donald Trump, trade agreements have entered a period of great instability. To predict the impact of possible disruptions to e...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Currency unions, trade and heterogeneity

How do trade costs affect international trade? This paper offers a new approach. We rely on a flexible gravity equation that predicts variable trade cost elasticities, both across and within country pairs. We apply this ...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Larrikin youth: Crime and Queensland's Earning or Learning reform

This paper analyses the impact of the introduction of an Earning or Learning reform on youth crime in Queensland, Australia. The 2006 reform increased learning and reduced earning as school participation rose post-reform...Read more...

Journal article

CESifo Economic Studies:

Take me to the Centre of your Town! Using micro-geographical data to identify Town Centres

© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Ifo Institute, Munich. All rights reserved. We often talk about 'Town Centres' (TCs), but defining their location and extent is surprisingly difficu...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...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

The limits of political compromise: Debt ceilings and political turnover

We study the desirability of limits on the public debt and of political turnover in an economy where incumbents have an incentive to set public expenditures above the socially optimal level due to rent-seeking motives. P...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The role of demand in land re-development

Several governments throughout the world apply policies aimed to re-mediate and recover vacant or idle land for other uses. This paper provides estimates of the price sensitivity of redevelopment, a crucial parameter for...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Have R&D spillovers changed?

This paper revisits the results of Bloom, Schankerman, and Van Reenen (2013) examining the impact of R&D on the performance of US firms, especially through spillovers. We extend their analysis to include an additional 15...Read more...

Blog

ESRC blog:

Becoming a Research Institute: the Centre for Economic Performance

by Stephen Machin As Director of the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at LSE, I am delighted that the Centre has been named as one of the two inaugural ESRC Research Institutes. This is testament to the achievements...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Come together: firm boundaries and delegation

Little is known about the relationship between firm boundaries and the allocation of decision rights within firms. We develop a model in which final good producers choose which suppliers to integrate and whether to deleg...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Medical marijuana laws and mental health in the United States

The consequences of legal access to medical marijuana for individual welfare are a matter of controversy. We contribute to the ongoing discussion by evaluating the impact of the staggered introduction and extension of me...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy:

Changing how literacy is taught: evidence on synthetic phonics

A significant number of people have very low levels of literacy in many OECD countries. This paper studies a national change in policy and practice in England that refocused the teaching of reading around "synthetic phon...Read more...

Journal article

AEA Papers and Proceedings:

Gender Norms and Relative Working Hours: Why Do Women Suffer More Than Men from Working Longer Hours Than Their Partners?

Constraints that prevent women from working longer hours are argued to be important drivers of the gender wage gap in the United States. We provide evidence that in couples where the wife's working hours exceed the husba...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

The buyer margins of firms’ exports

We use detailed data on exporters from Costa Rica, Ecuador and Uruguay as well as on their buyers to show that: aggregate exports are disproportionally driven by few multi-buyers exporters; and each multi-buyer exporter'...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Specialization matters in the firm size-wage gap

This study applies the O-ring theory to explain the firm-size wage premium. It focuses on the joint role of the division of labor and employee characteristics. Including the firm heterogeneity of occupations in a standar...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Firm-to-firm connections in Colombian imports

The vast majority of world trade flows is between firms. Only recently has research in international trade started to emphasize the importance of the connections between exporters and importers both in aggregate trade fl...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The billion pound drop: the blitz and agglomeration economies in London

This paper exploits locally exogenous variation in the location of bombs dropped during the Blitz to quantify the effect of density restrictions on agglomeration economies in London: an elite global city. Employing micro...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Networks and trade

Trade occurs between firms both across borders and within countries, and the vast majority of trade transactions includes at least one large firm with many trading partners. This paper reviews the literature on firm-to-f...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does gentrification displace poor households? An 'identification-via-interaction' approach

My theoretical model motivates an ‘identification-via-interaction’ (IvI) approach that separates the causal impact of gentrification on poor exits from endogenous channels. In the empirical analysis, I create a measure o...Read more...

Blog

CVER Blog:

Missing the mark at GCSE English: the costly consequences of just failing to get a grade C

School students who narrowly fail to achieve a grade C in their GCSE English exam pay a high price, according to new research by Stephen Machin, Sandra McNally and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela. Getting above or failing to re...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Entry through the narrow door: the costs of just failing high stakes exams

In many countries, important thresholds in examinations act as a gateway to higher levels of education and/or good employment prospects. This paper examines the consequences of just failing a key high stakes national exa...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Settling the counterfactual debate: Is there a preferable counterfactual when estimating the returns to vocational qualifications?

Using information from the Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) data set, it is now possible to compare the characteristics and estimates for learners with different qualifications encompassing both types of counterfact...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Poorly measured confounders are more useful on the left than on the right

Researchers frequently test identifying assumptions in regression based research designs (which include instrumental variables or difference-in-differences models) by adding additional control variables on the right hand...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Fast track to growth? Railway access, population growth and local displacement in 19th century Switzerland

We study the effect of railway access on population growth in 19th century Switzerland. Our analysis is based on geo-referenced railway network information and an inconsequential units IV approach. Gaining direct railway...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The bedroom tax

Housing subsidies for low income households are a central pillar of many welfare systems, but an expensive one. This paper investigates the consequences of an unusual policy aimed at reducing the burden of these subsidie...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Income and Wealth:

Four decades of the economics of happiness: Where next?

There has been explosive growth in the analysis of subjective well-being in Economics over the past 40 years. This article reviews some of this growth, and suggests a number of domains in which future research may procee...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control:

Growth volatility and size: A firm-level study

This paper provides a systematic cross-country investigation of the relation between a firm's growth volatility and its size. For the first time the analysis is carried out using comparable and representative sets of dat...Read more...

Journal article

Social science & medicine:

Ownership and hospital behaviour: Employment and local unemployment

In this paper, we address two issues: i) how hospital employment changes with local unemployment, according to the type of hospital ownership, and ii) whether this relationship changed after the implementation of a pro-c...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Consumer Psychology:

The Power of Voice in Stimulating Morality: Eliciting Taxpayer Preferences Increases Tax Compliance

Decisions about paying taxes represent one of the most common moral quandaries faced by citizens. In the present research, we argue that taxpayer compliance can be raised by increasing "voice": allowing taxpayers to expr...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Unfairness at work: Well-being and quits

We here consider the effect of the level of income that individuals consider to be fair for the job they do, which we take as measure of comparison income, on both subjective well-being and objective future job quitting....Read more...

CEP industrial strategy paper

Investing in People: The Case for Human Capital Tax Credits

It is now widely recognised that human capital accumulation and research and development (R&D) are key drivers of economic growth, as is documented in most standard textbooks (e.g. Acemoglu, 2007; Romer, 1996). Estimates...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Pension shocks and wages

How do wages respond to firm-level idiosyncratic cost shocks? We create a unique dataset that links longitudinal data on workers’ compensation to the unexpected costs that UK firms have been forced to pay to plug large d...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Prices, policing and policy: the dynamics of crime booms and busts

In many historical episodes, the extent of criminal activity has displayed booms and busts. One very clear example is the case of metal crime, where in the face of big increases in value driven by world commodity prices,...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Guns, environment and abortion: how single-minded voters shape politicians decisions

We study how electoral incentives affect policy choices on secondary issues, which only minorities of voters care intensely about. We develop a model in which office and policy motivated politicians choose to support or ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Changing the structure of minimum wages: firm adjustment and wage spillovers

This paper analyses the economic impact of a significant change to the structure of a minimum wage setting policy. The context is the United Kingdom where government mandated an unexpected change in the structure of mini...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Beyond tariff reductions: what extra boost from trade agreement provisions?

There is a growing recognition that for developed economies, like the UK, tariff-free market access is just one of a number of measures that ease cross-border trade flows. Modern trade agreements go beyond tariff reducti...Read more...

CVER Briefing Note

Investing in People: The Case for Human Capital Tax Credits

Read more...

Journal article

Scandinavian Journal of Economics:

Gender and Promotions: Evidence from Academic Economists in France

Differences in promotion across genders are still prevalent in many occupations. Recent work based on experimental evidence indicates that women participate less in or exert lower effort during contests. We exploit the u...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Immigration, trade and productivity in services: Evidence from U.K. firms

This paper explores the impact of immigrants on the imports, exports and productivity of service-producing firms in the U.K. Immigrants may substitute for imported intermediate inputs (offshore production) and they may i...Read more...

Journal article

Papers in Regional Science:

UK trade and FDI: A post-Brexit perspective

Leaving the EU will reshape the UK's economic relations with the rest of the world. This paper summarizes the findings of recent research studying the UK's role in the global economy, and the consequences of Brexit for U...Read more...

Journal article

Fiscal Studies:

Academies 2 - the new batch: the changing nature of academy schools in England

The English education system has undergone large-scale restructuring through the introduction of academy schools. The most salient feature of these schools is that, despite remaining part of the state sector, they operat...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of World Business:

Emerging Economy MNEs: How does home country munificence matter?

Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) from emerging economies (EEs) are establishing operations in advanced economies (AEs), apparently departing from traditional models of internationalization. We explore an under-explored d...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

From periphery to core: Measuring agglomeration effects using high-speed rail

We analyze the economic impact of the German high-speed rail (HSR) connecting Cologne and Frankfurt, which provides plausibly exogenous variation in access to surrounding economic mass. We find a causal effect of about 8...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization:

Identity, non-take-up and welfare conditionality

We study a model in which poor individuals of different types request a service and may suffer from the discrepancy between the service provider's beliefs and their true type. The utility loss resulting from such a discr...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Working across time zones: Exporters and the gender wage gap

This study argues that there is a systematic difference in the gender wage gap (GWG) between exporting firms and non-exporters. Exporters may require greater commitment from their employees, such as working particular ho...Read more...

Journal article

Regional Science and Urban Economics:

You've come a long way, baby. Husbands’ commuting time and family labour supply

This paper explores the effects of husbands’ commuting time on wives’ employment and family time allocation. We develop a unitary family model, and we show that when market services are imperfect substitutes of home prod...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Family firms: the problem of second-generation bosses

Although family firms are widely praised as the ‘backbone of the economy’, their productivity is often hampered by weak management. Research by Daniela Scur and Renata Lemos provides new evidence on the performance of ‘d...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Brexit: the economics of international disintegration

Pro-Brexit rhetoric mixes up two distinct interpretations of what made people vote to Leave the European Union – and they have very different policy implications. As Thomas Sampson explains, those voters wanting to recla...Read more...

CentrePiece article

in brief...Empty homes, longer commutes

In areas of Britain where there are empty houses, planners typically allocate less land for development and make it more difficult to build or adapt houses. Research by Paul Cheshire, Christian Hilber and Hans Koster exp...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Nursery attendance and children's outcomes

The UK government has expanded the popular ‘free entitlement’ to part-time early education and care from a universal 15 hours per week to 30 hours per week for working parents. But research by Jo Blanden and co-authors r...Read more...

CentrePiece article

How 'local' are local labour markets?

If we want to create jobs in disadvantaged local areas, the idea of ‘local’ needs to be revisited. Alan Manning and Barbara Petrongolo explain the problem of thinking of geographical space as non-overlapping single labou...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Lost Einsteins: who becomes an inventor in America?

Who are America’s most successful inventors – and what can we learn from their experiences in designing policies to stimulate innovation? To answer these questions, former CEP director John Van Reenen and his colleagues ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Poor productivity: an Italian perspective

Productivity growth has been slow in Western countries since the global financial crisis, but in Italy it has been stagnating for 25 years. Fadi Hassan and Gianmarco Ottaviano investigate inefficiency and misallocation i...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Is there a payoff to apprenticeships for young people?

As part of an effort to transform the UK’s post-16 educational landscape, the government is aiming for a massive increase in the number of apprenticeships. Research by Chiara Cavaglia, Sandra McNally and Guglielmo Ventur...Read more...

CVER Briefing Note

Further analysis of the earnings differentials associated with BTECs

We analyse whether there is an earnings differential associated with having a BTEC qualification as a young person’s highest qualification. Previous analyses of wage differentials using survey data on a sample of all wor...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Cohesion Policy Incentives for Collaborative Industrial Research. The Evaluation of a Smart Specialisation Forerunner Programme

This paper evaluates a program of subsidies for Collaborative Industrial Research (co-) funded by the EU Cohesion Policy in Italy mobilizing over 1 billion euros. This program anticipated in the 2007-2013 funding cycle s...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

One or Many Cohesion Policies of the European Union? On the Diverging Impacts of Cohesion Policy across Member States

Do regions in all Member States (MSs) of the European Union (EU) benefit from Cohesion Policy? Are regional impacts persistently diversified across countries? In order to answer these questions this paper explores how th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The effect of minimum wages on low-wage jobs: evidence from the United States using a bunching estimator

We propose a novel method that infers the employment effect of a minimum wage increase by comparing the number of excess jobs paying at or slightly above the new minimum wage to the missing jobs paying below it. Using st...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Interaction of Public and Private Employment: Evidence from a German Government Move

We use the German government move from Bonn to Berlin in 1999 to test competing views about the impact of public employment on private sector activity in a local labor market. A relocated public sector job might create n...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Teacher turnover: does it matter for pupil achievement?

We add to a small literature examining whether teacher turnover affects academic achievement, focussing on age-16, state secondary school students, using a unique dataset of linked students and teachers in England. We ad...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Higher education funding reforms: a comprehensive analysis of educational and labour market outcomes in England

This paper investigates the impact of changes in the funding of higher education in England on students’ choices and outcomes. Over the last two decades – through three major reforms in 1998, 2006 and 2012 – undergraduat...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Skills, Signals, and Employability: An Experimental Investigation

As skills of labor-market entrants are usually not directly observed by employers, individuals acquire skill signals. To study which signals are valued by employers, we simultaneously and independently randomize a broad ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Empty homes, longer commutes: The unintended consequences of more restrictive local planning

We investigate the impact of land use regulation on housing vacancy rates. Using a 30-year panel dataset on land use regulation for 350 English Local Authorities (LAs) and addressing potential reverse causation and other...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A: Statistics in Society:

‘Making it count’: incentives, student effort and performance

The paper examines how incentives to participate in on-line assessments (quizzes) affect students' effort and performance. Our identification strategy exploits within-student weekly variation in incentives to attempt on-...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Education Review:

Smart but unhappy: Independent-school competition and the wellbeing-efficiency trade-off in education

We study whether independent-school competition involves a trade-off between pupil wellbeing and academic performance. To test this hypothesis, we analyse data covering pupils across the OECD, exploiting historical Catho...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Journal:

Trade, Firm Selection and Innovation: The Competition Channel

We study the welfare gains from trade in an economy with heterogeneous firms, variable markups and endogenous growth. Variable markups arise from oligopolistic competition, and cost-reducing innovation is the engine of l...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

All in the family? CEO choice and firm organization

Family firms are the most prevalent firm type in the world, particularly in emerging economies. Dynastic family firms tend to have lower productivity, though what explains their underperformance is still an open question...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Autonomous schools and strategic pupil exclusion

This paper studies whether pupil performance gains achieved by autonomous schools – specifically academy schools in England – can be attributed to the strategic exclusion of poorly performing pupils. In England there hav...Read more...

Journal article

American Journal of Health Economics:

Do you have to win it to fix it?: A longitudinal study of lottery winners and their health-care demand

We exploit lottery wins to investigate the effects of exogenous changes to individuals' income on the utilization of health-care services, and the choice between private and public health care in the United Kingdom. Our ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Impact of Public Employment: Evidence from Bonn

This paper evaluates the impact of public employment on private sector activity using the relocation of the German federal government from Berlin to Bonn in the wake of the Second World War as a source of exogenous varia...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Oil discoveries and education spending in the Postbellum South

This paper studies the effect of oil wealth on the provision of education in the early 20th century United States. Using information on the location and discovery of major oil fields, I find that oil wealth increased loc...Read more...

Journal article

European Journal of Political Economy:

Electoral incentives, term limits, and the sustainability of peace

One of the few stylized facts in international relations is that democracies, unlike autocracies, almost never fight each other. Recent empirical findings show that binding term limits invalidate this result: democratic ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Labor Economics:

Minimum wages and firm value

How does the value of a firm change in response to a minimum wage hike? The evidence we have to date is not well-suited to answer this question, principally because events that have been studied are not completely unknow...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

From final goods to inputs: the protectionist effect of rules of origin

Recent decades have witnessed a surge of trade in intermediate goods and a proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs). FTAs use rules of origin (RoO) to distinguish goods originating from member countries from those o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Surprise! Out-of-network billing for emergency care in the United States

Using insurance claims data capturing 8.9 million emergency episodes, we show that in 22% of cases, patients attended in-network hospitals, but were treated by out-of-network physicians. We find that out-of-network billi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Politics, hospital behaviour and health care spending

This paper examines the link between legislative politics, hospital behaviour, and health care spending. When trying to pass sweeping legislation, congressional leaders can attract votes by adding targeted provisions tha...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The social origins of inventors

In this paper, we merge three datasets - individual income data, patenting data, and IQ data - to analyze the deterninants of an individual’s probability of inventing. We find that: (i) parental income matters even after...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

It's time to learn: understanding the differences in returns to instruction time

As hours per day are inherently a limited resource, increasing daily instruction time reduces the amount of time pupils can dedicate to other activities outside school. We study how the effect of longer school days on ac...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The productivity puzzle and misallocation: an Italian perspective

Productivity has recently slowed down in many economies around the world. A crucial challenge in understanding what lies behind this \productivity puzzle" is the still short time span for which data can be analysed. An e...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Who becomes an inventor in America? The importance of exposure to innovation

We characterize the factors that determine who becomes an inventor in America by using de-identified data on 1.2 million inventors from patent records linked to tax records. We establish three sets of results. First, chi...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Building apprentices’ skills in the workplace: Car Service in Germany, the UK and Spain

This paper analyses how employers in three countries, Germany, the UK and Spain experience and view apprenticeship. The focus is a single occupation – Vehicle Maintenance and Repair (Car Service) based on case studies an...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Education Review:

A question of degree: The effects of degree class on labor market outcomes

How does performance at university affect labor market outcomes? Employing a regression discontinuity design, we show that university degree class causally affects graduates’ industry, wages, and earnings. Our sample c...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

The economic consequences of family policies: lessons from a century of legislation in high-income countries

By the early 21st century, most high-income countries have put into effect a host of generous and virtually gender-neutral parental leave policies and family benefits, with the multiple goals of gender equity, higher fer...Read more...

Blog

CVER Blog:

Do apprenticeships pay?

The government aims to massively increase the number of apprenticeships and to make this a more important part of the post-16 educational landscape. In our research - published today by the Sutton Trust - we investigate ...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Apprenticeships for Young People in England: Is there a Payoff?

In recent times, there has been a policy drive to increase the number of people undertaking apprenticeships in England. In this paper we examine the characteristics of young people who start an apprenticeship and we look...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Economic integration, foreign investment and international trade: the effects of membership of the European Union

This paper investigates the importance of economic integration in simultaneously fostering foreign direct investment (FDI) and international trade. These have rarely been analyzed jointly using contemporary econometric m...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Special economic zones and WTO compliance: evidence from the Dominican Republic

Special economic zones (SEZ), one of the most important instruments of industrial policy used in developing countries, often impose export share requirements (ESR). That is, firms located in SEZ are required to export mo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Tax simplicity and heterogeneous learning

We study the effects of fiscal incentives for self-employment using new French tax data from 1994 to 2012. France serves as a good quasi-laboratory: It has three fiscal regimes - or modes of taxation - for the self-emplo...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

The Payoff to Vocational Qualifications: Reconciling Estimates from Survey and Administrative Data

This paper takes as a starting point the wage/earnings differentials associated with vocational qualifications that have been estimated in the literature. Two distinct parts of that literature are identified, using surve...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Highways, Market Access and Spatial Sorting

We design a spatial model featuring workers embodied with heterogeneous skills. In equilibrium, locations with improved market access become relatively more attractive to the high-skilled, high-income earners. We then em...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Supplier search and re-matching in global sourcing: Theory and evidence from China

In this paper, we consider a dynamic search-and-matching problem of a firm with its intermediate input supplier. In our model, a headquarter currently matched with a supplier, has an interest to find and collaborate with...Read more...

CEP Brexit analysis

The Brexit vote, inflation and UK living standards

The vote to leave the European Union (EU) was an unanticipated shock to the UK economy that increased uncertainty and reduced the country’s expected future openness to trade, investment and immigration with the EU. Our r...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Aggregating from micro to macro patterns of trade

We develop a new framework for aggregating from micro to macro patterns of trade. We derive price indexes that determine comparative advantage across countries and sectors and the aggregate cost of living. If firms and p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Early-life correlates of later-life well-being: evidence from the Wisconsin longitudinal study

We here use data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) to provide one of the first analyses of the distal (early-life) and proximal (later-life) correlates of older-life subjective well-being. Unusually, we have tw...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender and promotions: evidence from academic economists in France

The promotion system for French academic economists provides an interesting environment to examine the promotion gap between men and women. Promotions occur through national competitions for which we have information bot...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The interconnections between services and goods trade at the firm-level

In this paper we study how international trade in goods and services interact at the firm level. Using a rich dataset on Belgian firms during the period 1995-2005, we show that: i) firms are much more likely to source se...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Product diversification in Indian manufacturing

The presence of global value chains challenges the neoclassical idea of the firm since it implies firms are not monolithic but are rather interdependent on the larger economic environment. Examining establishments, the s...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Colonial Legacies: Shaping African Cities

Differential institutions imposed during colonial rule continue to affect the spatial structure and urban interactions in African cities. Based on a sample of 318 cities across 28 countries using satellite data on built ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Structural adjustments and international trade: theory and evidence from China

This paper studies how changes in factor endowment, technology, and trade costs jointly determine the structural adjustments, which are defined as changes in distributions of production and exports. We document the struc...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Peer Effects and Social Influence in Post-16 Educational Choice

This paper investigates whether the educational choices that young people make after the completion of their GCSEs (at age 16) are influenced by their peers. More specifically, it takes advantage of the variation in peer...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Unexpected school reform: academisation of primary schools in England

The UK change of government in 2010 provoked a large structural change in the English education landscape. Unexpectedly, the new government offered primary schools the chance to have "the freedom and the power to take co...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The labour market impact of refugee waves

Recent research has challenged the consensus that sudden inflows of refugees have little or no impact on natives’ wages and employment, claiming instead that there are uniformly large detrimental effects on natives witho...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief ... Brexit: the impact on prices

Following last year’s referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union, there has been a significant rise in consumer prices, particularly food prices. Rising prices coupled with limited increases in nominal wages...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Happiness at work

Work-life balance is a particularly strong predictor of people’s happiness. High degrees of job satisfaction can hide low levels of engagement at work. Happiness helps to shape job market outcomes, productivity and firm ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Stamp duty, mobility and the UK housing crisis

The UK’s stamp duty land tax raises substantial revenues for the government, but it also contributes to the UK’s housing crisis by preventing households from moving to more suitable homes. That is the central conclusion ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief ... Where top science gets done

Large-scale facilities like the Diamond Light Source synchrotron in Oxfordshire have the power to create concentrated geographical clusters of scientific research. According to new research scientists’ proximity to Diamo...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Dark web: the economics of online drugs markets

The online market for buying and selling drugs is resilient and seems to bounce back rapidly after the exit of a large platform like Silk Road. That is one of the findings of research by Stephen Machin and colleagues, wh...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Industry in Britain: an atlas

The UK’s financial services industry is not nearly as London-centric as the creative industries. Rather than the South East of England being the country’s productivity engine, it is a band stretching west from the capita...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief ... How the rise of the service economy narrowed the gender gap

The historical growth in the service sector since the Second World War has created jobs for which women have a comparative advantage, according to analysis by Rachel Ngai and Barbara Petrongolo. Their research shows how ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The growing inequality between firms

Some firms pay well while others don’t; and some are highly productive while many aren’t. New research describes an emerging pattern of increasing inequality of wages and productivity between firms in the manufacturing a...Read more...

Journal article

National Institute Economic Review:

Local economic effects of Brexit

This paper studies local economic impacts of the increases in trade barriers associated with Brexit. Predictions of the local impact of Brexit are presented under two different scenarios, soft and hard Brexit, which are ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Internalizing global value chains: a firm-level analysis

In recent decades, advances in information and communication technology and falling trade barriers have led firms to retain within their boundaries and in their domestic economies only a subset of their production stages...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Frontier knowledge and scientific production: evidence from the collapse of international science

We show that WWI and the subsequent boycott against Central scientists severely interrupted international scientific cooperation. After 1914, citations to recent research from abroad decreased and paper titles became les...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Twin peaks

Received wisdom suggests that most exporters sell the majority of their output domestically. In this paper, however, we show that the distribution of export intensity not only varies substantially across countries, but i...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Matching Firms and Workers in a Field Experiment in Ethiopia

Do matching frictions affect youth employment in developing countries? We organise job fairs in Addis Ababa, to match firms with a representative sample of young, educated job-seekers. We create very few jobs: one for ap...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The productivity slowdown and the declining labor share: a neoclassical exploration

We explore the possibility that a global productivity slowdown is responsible for the widespread decline in the labor share of national income. In a neoclassical growth model with endogenous human capital accumulation a ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Risk-based selection in unemployment insurance: evidence and implications

This paper studies whether adverse selection can rationalize a universal mandate for unemployment insurance (UI). Building on a unique feature of the unemployment policy in Sweden, where workers can opt for supplemental ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Efficiency in large markets with firm heterogeneity

Abstract Empirical work has drawn attention to the high degree of productivity differences within industries, and its role in resource allocation. In a benchmark monopolistically competitive economy, productivity differe...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

The earnings differentials associated with vocational education and training using the Longitudinal Education Outcomes data

For the first time, the matched Longitudinal Education Outcomes has been made available for analysis of qualification attainment and labour market outcomes in England. Using comprehensive information from different schoo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The end of free college in England: implications for quality, enrolments and equity

Despite increasing financial pressures on higher education systems throughout the world, many governments remain resolutely opposed to the introduction of tuition fees, and some countries and states where tuition fees ha...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Where industry is strong and where it’s weak – key facts of UK business geography

Financial services aren’t as London-centric as the creative industries, and the coast-inland divide is growing, write Sandra Bernick, Richard Davies, and Anna Valero. The UK’s financial services industry is not nearly as...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

Brexit: the economics of international disintegration

On June 23, 2016, the United Kingdom held a referendum on its membership in the European Union. Although most of Britain's establishment backed remaining in the European Union, 52 percent of voters disagreed and handed a...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Policy:

The costs and benefits of leaving the EU: trade effects

This paper estimates the welfare effects of Brexit in the medium to long run, focusing on trade and fiscal transfers.We use a standard quantitative general equilibrium trade model with many countries and sectors and trad...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

Gender gaps in performance: Evidence from young lawyers

This paper documents the gender gap in performance among highskilled professionals in the United States. On the basis of widely used performance measures in law firms, we find that male lawyers bill 10 percent more hours...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics:

Gender gaps and the rise of the service economy

This paper investigates the role of the rise in services in the narrowing of gender gaps in hours and wages in recent decades. We highlight the between-industry component of differential gender trends for the United Stat...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

How Local Are Labor Markets? Evidence from a Spatial Job Search Model

This paper models the optimal search strategies of the unemployed across space to characterize local labor markets. Our methodology allows for linkages between numerous areas, while preserving tractability. We estimate t...Read more...

Submissions to parliamentary inquiries and government consultations

CVER Submission to Economic Affairs Committee - Economics of higher, further and technical education inquiry

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SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Decomposing the Impact of Immigration on House Prices

An inflow of immigrants into a region impacts house prices in three ways. For a fixed level of local population, housing demand rises due to the increase in foreign-born population. In addition, immigrants can influence ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Healthy business? Managerial education and management in healthcare

We investigate the link between hospital performance and managerial education by collecting a large database of management practices and skills in hospitals across nine countries. We find that hospitals that are closer t...Read more...

CEP report

Brexit and the future of globalisation?

Alongside the victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 US elections, Britain’s vote to leave the European Union (“Brexit”) in June 2016 reflects a global upsurge in populism. I find that under all plausible scenarios Brexit ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Brexit: the economics of international disintegration

This paper reviews the literature on the likely economic consequences of Brexit and considers the lessons of the Brexit vote for the future of European and global integration. Brexit will make the United Kingdom poorer b...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Planning Ahead for Better Neighborhoods: Long Run Evidence from Tanzania

What are the long run consequences of planning and providing basic infrastructure in neighborhoods, where people build their own homes? We study "Sites and Services" projects implemented in seven Tanzanian cities during ...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

The longer the better? The impact of the 2012 apprenticeship reform in England on achievement and other outcomes

In this paper, we estimate the effect of a reform of apprenticeships in England in 2012, which changed the duration for Intermediate Apprenticeships in many industries, while other sectors already exceeded the incoming m...Read more...

CVER Briefing Note

An analysis of the duration and achievement of apprenticeships in England

For the cohort of all 516,880 intermediate and advanced apprenticeships starting in England in 2011/12, we find that one third were withdrawn and a further 10 per cent were not completed within 36 months. We find that c...Read more...

CEP report

Industry in Britain - an atlas

Living near a productive company can have considerable economic benefits. It means the chance of well-paid jobs, creates opportunities for suppliers of goods and services, and can be a boost to local retailers. This comm...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Equity crowdfunding and early stage entrepreneurial finance: damaging or disruptive?

Equity crowdfunding (ECF) offers founders of new ventures an online social media marketplace where they can access a large number of investors who, in exchange for an ownership stake, provide finance for business opportu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Robot arithmetic: can new technology harm all workers or the average worker?

It is well-established that new technology can cause large changes in relative wages and inequality. But there are also claims, based largely on verbal expositions, that new technology will harm workers on average or eve...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Do Speed Cameras Save Lives?

I evaluate whether speed enforcement cameras reduce the number and severity of traffic accidents by penalizing drivers for exceeding speed limits. Relying on micro data on accidents and speed cameras across Great Britain...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Are ideas getting harder to find?

In many growth models, economic growth arises from people creating ideas, and the long-run growth rate is the product of two terms: the effective number of researchers and their research productivity. We present a wide r...Read more...

Journal article

Harvard Business Review:

Why do we undervalue competent management?

Business schools teach MBA students that you can't compete on the basis of management processes because they're easily copied. Operational effectiveness is table stakes in the competitive universe, according to the strat...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Housing Allowance and Rents: Evidence from a Stepwise Subsidy Scheme

This paper studies the effect of housing demand subsidies on rents using discontinuities in the Finnish housing allowance system as a quasi-experimental setting. The stepwise dependence of housing allowance on the floor ...Read more...

Blog

CVER Blog:

Brexit and the skills challenge

Sandra McNally, CVER's Director, on skills in the UK in light of Brexit. The UK’s productivity suffered a shock in 2008 from which it has not recovered, and the ‘skills problem’ needs to be addressed. Within the c...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Can raising instructional time crowd out student pro-social behaviour? Unintended consequences of a German high school reform

We study whether raising instructional time can crowd out student pro-social behaviour. To this end, we exploit a large educational reform in Germany that has raised weekly instructional hours for high school students by...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Social Tenants' Health: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Landlord Interventions

Objectives: To test whether a social landlord can improve health outcomes for older tenants and reduce their NHS usage by simple interventions. Design: Randomised controlled trial. Setting: Social housing in five London ...Read more...