Results

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...

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

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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

Journal article

Renewal:

‘The Everyday Economy’ and the next economic settlement

Review of Rachel Reeves, The Everyday Economy, 2018, https://www.scribd.com/document/374425087/Rachel-Reeves-TheEveryday-Economy...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...

CVER Briefing Note

Investing in People: The Case for Human Capital Tax Credits

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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

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...

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...

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...

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 Brexit analysis

The local economic effects of Brexit

This paper studies the local 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. Average effects...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Towards a new UK industrial strategy

The regulation of business has been a rollercoaster ride for the UK over the past 20 years. Drawing on their work with the LSE Growth Commission, Anna Valero and Richard Davies outline an opportunity to build a new syste...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Brexit and the UK Economy

This general election is pitched as the ‘Brexit Election’, one that will give the incoming government a mandate to negotiate the terms of the UK’s exit from the European Union (EU). The Conservatives and Labour have both...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Immigration and the UK Economy

Immigration to the UK has grown a lot over the last 20 years and a significant fraction of this growth has been from other EU countries, especially after 2004 and the accession of the eight East European countries (‘A8’)...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Real Wages and Living Standards in the UK

Since the global financial crisis of 2007/08, workers’ real wages and family living standards in the UK have suffered to an extent unprecedented in modern history. Real wages of the typical (median) worker have fallen by...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Who voted for Brexit? A comprehensive district-Level analysis

On 23 June 2016, the British electorate voted to leave the European Union. We analyse vote and turnout shares across 380 local authority areas in the United Kingdom. We find that exposure to the EU in terms of immigratio...Read more...

Blog

ESRC blog:

How English care homes have coped with the National Living Wage

Giulia Giupponi is an ESRC-funded PhD student at the London School of Economics and a research assistant at the Centre for Economic Performance. Stephen Machin is Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Distributive Politics Inside the City? The Political Economy of Spain's Plan E

We study the allocation of investment projects by municipal governments across groups of voters using data from a fiscal stimulus program carried out in Spain between 2009 and 2011. This program provided municipalities w...Read more...

CEP report

UK growth: a new chapter

The UK Economy is at a critical juncture. Leaving the EU creates economic challenges that necessitate widespread policy change. But this also generates an opportunity to tackle some of the long-standing challenges which ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Four principles for the UK's Brexit trade negotiations

The first priority in the UK government’s plans for Brexit trade negotiations should be to agree a transitional deal to cover its relations with the European Union (EU) until a long-term agreement is reached. What’s more...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Does immigration harm the job prospects of the UK-born? Brexit and the UK labour market

Following the referendum vote to leave the European Union, the UK faces a trade-off between retaining access to the Single Market and restricting free movement of labour. Barbara Petrongolo considers the likely impact of...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Who voted Leave?

If EU immigration had remained at its 1991 level, the Leave vote share may have been considerably lower. That is one of the conclusions of CEP research by Monica Langella and Professor Alan Manning, which explores the ef...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Brexit and the UK labour market

Following the referendum vote to leave the European Union, the UK faces a trade-off between retaining access to the Single Market and restricting free movement of labour. Barbara Petrongolo considers the likely impact of...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

The aftermath of the Brexit vote – the verdict from a derided expert

John Van Reenen was disappointed but not surprised by the UK’s vote to Leave the EU. Whilst his own research predicts serious economic and political damage in the case of Brexit, he thought a Leave vote was a real possib...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Who voted Leave: the characteristics of individuals mattered, but so did those of local areas

Individual demographics had a huge effect in determining the outcome of the referendum, but the characteristics of local areas mattered as well, explain Monica Langella and Alan Manning. Immigration, the decline in manuf...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Why leaving the EU would almost certainly damage our economic prospects

The economic consequences of leaving the EU have been a central focus of the referendum campaign. As June 23 draws near, Jagjit Chadha, Paul Johnson and John Van Reenen bring together the conclusions from their research ...Read more...

CEP Brexit analysis

BREXIT 2016: policy analysis from the Centre for Economic Performance

On June 23rd, the British people will vote in a referendum over whether or not to remain in the European Union. It is the most important vote that most of us will have in our lifetimes. And one that will have major reper...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Brexit: the final assessment

John Van Reenen summarises the economic impact of a vote to leave the EU....Read more...

CentrePiece article

Why immigration is no reason to leave the EU

A major argument of Brexit campaigners is that leaving the European Union would give the UK more control over the flow of immigrants, who they claim hurt the jobs and pay of native-born workers. CEP research shows that E...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Foreign investors love Britain - but Brexit would end the affair

Investment from overseas brings many benefits to the UK economy, including higher pay and productivity. According to CEP research, leaving the European Union could lead to a fall in inward foreign direct investment in th...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Brexit: the impact on UK trade and living standards

For over two years, a CEP research team has been studying the likely impact on the living standards of UK households of a referendum vote to leave the European Union. The first of three reports summarised here focuses on...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

The ‘Britain Alone’ scenario: how Economists for Brexit defy the laws of gravity

There is a degree of consensus among economists that a Brexit will make us worse off. The exception is recent work by Economists for Brexit. Their forecast of income gains from Brexit contrasts with all other economic an...Read more...

CEP Brexit analysis

Brexit and the impact of immigration on the UK

A reduction in immigration from the European Union (EU) following a vote for Brexit would not lead to any improvement in living standards for those born in the UK. Cuts in EU immigration would not offset the big fall in ...Read more...

CEP Brexit analysis

The UK Treasury analysis of 'The long-term economic impact of EU membership and the alternatives': CEP Commentary

Overly cautious assumptions in the Treasury’s recent report on the long-run consequences for the UK economy of leaving the European Union (EU) mean that it has probably underestimated the economic costs. That is one of t...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

The question is not whether Brexit will cost the UK in economic terms but how much

For over two years, a research team at the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) has been studying the likely impact of the UK leaving the European Union. Their latest report focuses on the impact of ‘Brexit’ through cha...Read more...

CEP report

Why Governments Won't Invest

The UK Government is currently exerting a sharp and tightening squeeze on public investment at a time when borrowing for public investment has never, historically, been cheaper with interest rates close to zero in real t...Read more...

Submissions to parliamentary inquiries and government consultations

Response to the Sub-Committee on Education, Skills and the Economy for the Apprenticeships Inquiry

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Submissions to parliamentary inquiries and government consultations

Response to the Sub-Committee on Education, Skills and the Economy for the Careers Advice Inquiry

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Blog

ESRC blog:

Making the world a happier place

Professor Lord Richard Layard directs the Wellbeing Programme at the ESRC Centre for Economic Performance, and has made major contributions on unemployment, inflation, inequality and post-Communist reform. Author of the ...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Corbyn and the political economy of nostalgia

Voting for Jeremy Corbyn as leader is a gut reaction to Labour’s electoral defeat. Corbyn does point to some real economic problems facing Britain but his policies are based largely on the kind of wishful thinking that i...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Productivity Plan: A sound framework, but gaps in policy persist. More is needed to get productivity growing again

Following the summer budget, the government released a productivity plan aimed at dealing with a chronic issue facing the UK’s economy. Anna Valero and John Van Reenen review the plan, writing that overall the plan is br...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Summer budget 2015: Osborne is right to raise wages, but a clearer productivity plan is required

Yesterday, George Osborne delivered the new government’s first budget in which he surprised many by hiking the minimum wage significantly. John Van Reenen reviews the measures introduced, writing that the Chancellor is r...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Policy Paper

Planes, Trains and Automobiles: The Economic Impact of Transport Infrastructure

In the run up to the 2015 general election, the main political parties have very mixed views as to what should be done about transport in the UK. Big transport investment proposals - expansion of London's airports and hi...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Exploring the Geography of China's Airport Networks: A Hybrid Complex-Network Approach

Air networks are normal examples of transportation systems among ubiquitous big data networks in the dynamic nature. This is particularly the case in developing countries with rapid airport network expansions. This paper...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Budget 2015: What the Chancellor said and didn’t say

Who would have thought an election was around the corner? John Van Reenen looks at what George Osborne had to say in the budget speech as well as what he didn’t say; the Chancellor neither mentioned the productivity prob...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Austerity in the UK: past, present and future

In this article, John Van Reenen looks at the UK’s economic performance since the global financial crisis and assesses the impact of austerity policies. He also examines the fiscal plans of the three major parties over t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Voting behaviour and public employment in Nazi Germany

This paper analyses whether the German National Socialists used economic policies to reward their voters after their rise to power in 1933. Using data on public employment in the armed forces, public administrations and ...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

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

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

CEP election analysis

The Scottish Referendum: Breaking Up is Hard – and expensive - to Do

The Scottish Referendum: CEP Director John Van Reenen on why with a 'YES' vote, the Scottish people will be poorer. A lot poorer...Read more...

Blog

LSE European Politics and Policy Blog:

Leaving the European Union would likely have a significant negative impact on the UK’s economy

How would leaving the EU affect the UK’s economy? Gianmarco Ottaviano, João Paulo Pessoa, Thomas Sampson and John Van Reenen outline findings from a new report on the economic consequences of a ‘Brexit’. They indicate th...Read more...

Blog

LSE American Politics and Policy Blog:

Firms with more structured management practices are more productive, innovative and have faster employment growth.

In 2010, the US Census Bureau conducted the first large-scale survey of management practices in America, gathering data on more than 30,000 manufacturing plants. Nicholas Bloom and colleagues find strong links between es...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Political Economy of Inclusive Rural Growth

Abstract Commentators on the `East Asian Miracle' of inclusive growth have often pointed toward shared rural growth policies. But why were these policies not chosen elsewhere? This paper models voters who invest in eithe...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief: Mrs Thatcher's industrial legacy

John Van Reenen examines the 'unbalancing' of Britain's economy away from manufacturing since 1979....Read more...

Blog

LSE European Politics and Policy Blog:

The state of the UK economy: Diagnosis, prognosis and recommended treatment

The UK economy has experienced a prolonged period of weakness over the last five years. John Van Reenen writes that the real problems for the UK are inadequate long-run investment in infrastructure, innovation and human ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Here Be Startups: Exploring a young digital cluster in Inner East London

The digital industries cluster known as 'Silicon Roundabout' has been quietly growing in East London since the 1990s. Now rebranded 'Tech City', it is now the focus of huge public and government attention. National and l...Read more...

Blog

LSE European Politics and Policy Blog:

UK Spending Review 2013: A triumph of politics over reason?

The UK’s Spending Review has been forced on the British Chancellor because weak economic growth has blown a hole in the deficit reduction programme. John Van Reenen welcomes the partial reversal of the hugely damaging cu...Read more...

Blog

LSE European Politics and Policy Blog:

No Triple Dip does not mean a good recovery for the UK

John Van Reenen reacts to the news this week that the UK has avoided economic contraction in the last quarter. Whilst Osborne may see this as cause to celebrate, there is nothing commendable about an economy that continu...Read more...

Blog

LSE European Politics and Policy Blog:

The economic legacy of Margaret Thatcher is a mixed bag

John Van Reenen analyses the economic legacy of Margaret Thatcher. In the late 1970s, when the UK was behind other developed nations in terms of material wellbeing, her supply side policies spurred economic revival. Ther...Read more...

CEP report

Investing for Prosperity: Skills, Infrastructure and Innovation

What institutions and policies are needed to sustain UK economic growth in the dynamic world economy of the twentyfirst century? After years of inadequate investment in skills, infrastructure and innovation, there are lo...Read more...

CEP report

Fiscal consolidation during a depression

In 2009-10, the UK's budget deficit was about 11 per cent of GDP. A credible plan for fiscal consolidation was introduced in the UK over the fiscal years 2011-12 to 2016-17. In this paper, we assess the impact of the sca...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Market Leadership Through Technology - Backward Compatibility in the U.S. Handheld Video Game Industry

The introduction of a new product generation forces incumbents in network industries to rebuild their installed base to maintain an advantage over potential entrants. We study if backward compatibility moderates this pro...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A Model of Equilibrium Institutions

Institutions that serve the interests of an elite are often cited as an important reason for poor economic performance. This paper builds a model of institutions that allocate resources and power to maximize the payoff o...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Where is the Economics in Spatial Econometrics?

Spatial econometrics has been criticized by some economists because some model specifications have been driven by data-analytic considerations rather than having a firm foundation in economic theory. In particular this a...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

From ‘Plan B’ to ‘Plan V’: what the UK economy needs to reboot and rebalance growth

With the threat of stagflation and interest rate rises, the current economic climate shows little sign of improvement in the near future. John Van Reenen finds that the government’s severe austerity programme, with its v...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Seesaw in the Air: Interconnection Regulation and the Structure of Mobile Tariffs

Interconnection rates are a key variable in telecommunications markets. Every call that is placed must be terminated by the network of the receiving party, thus the termination end has the characteristic of an economic b...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

To avoid creating a ‘lost generation’, with perhaps a fifth of all 18 year olds unemployed and outside training, a new push on apprenticeships would help

With record numbers of young people not gaining university places, the viability of apprenticeships could make a huge difference in preventing a ‘lost generation’ out of touch with the labour market. Dr Hilary Steedman o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The long-term effect of digital innovation on bank performance: an empirical study of SWIFT adoption in financial services

We examine the impact on bank performance of the adoption of SWIFT, a network-based technological infrastructure for worldwide interbank telecommunication. We construct a new longitudinal dataset of 6,848 banks in 29 cou...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Collective Agreements, Wages and Restructuring in Transition

Using a large matched employer-employee dataset, the authors investigate the relationship between collective agreements, wages and restructuring in transition in three former centrally planned economies (Czech Republic, ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Monetary Policy Under Alterative Asset Market Structures: the Case of a Small Open Economy

Can the structure of asset markets change the way monetary policy should be conducted? Following a linear-quadratic approach, the present paper addresses this question in a New Keynesian small open economy framework. Our...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Leader Behavior and the Natural Resource Curse

We discuss political economy mechanisms which can explain the resource curse, in which an increase in the size of resource rents causes a decrease in the economy’s total value added. We identify a number of channels thro...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

On the International Dimension of Fiscal Policy

This paper analyses the international dimension of fiscal policy using a small open economy framework in which the government finances its spending by levying distortionary taxation and issuing non-state-contingent debt....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A Swing-State Theory of Trade Protection in the Electoral College

This paper develops an infinite-horizon, political agency model with a continuum of political districts, in which incumbent politicians can improve their re-election probability by attracting swing voters in key states t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Monetary Policy Committees and Interest Rate Smoothing

We extend the New Keynesian Monetary Policy literature relaxing the assumption that the decisions are taken by a single policymaker, considering instead that monetary policy decisions are taken collectively in a committe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

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

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

CEP discussion paper

Shifts in Economic Geography and their Causes

This paper analyses some of the forces that are changing the spatial distribution of activity in the world economy. It draws on the 'new economic geography' literature to argue the importance of increasing returns to sca...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Presence of Informal Labour Markets

Recessions and policy interventions in labour markets in developing countries are characterized not only by changes in the unemployment rate, but also by changes in the proportion of formal or protected jobs. This reallo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Information and Communication Technologies in a Multi-Sector Endogenous Growth Model

This paper investigates the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on growth in an economy, consisting of three sectors, ICT-producing, ICT-using and non-ICT-using. The benefits from ICT come from the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Competing Technologies in the Database Management Systems Market

In this paper, we study the dynamics of the market for Database Management Systems (DBMS), which is commonly assumed to possess network effects and where there is still some viable competition in our study period, 2000 –...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

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

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

CEP discussion paper

Is There a Market for Work Group Servers? Evaluating Market Level Demand Elasticities Using Micro and Macro Models

This paper contains an empirical analysis demand for “work-group” (or low-end) servers. Servers are at the centre of many US and EU anti-trust debates, including the Hewlett-Packard/Compaq merger and investigations into ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Evaluating the employment impact of a mandatory job search program

This paper exploits area-based piloting and age-related eligibility rules to identify treatment effects of a labor market program-the New Deal for Young People in the U.K. A central focus is on substitution/displacement ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Monetary Policy and Welfare in a Small Open Economy

This paper characterizes welfare in a small open economy and derives the corresponding optimal monetary policy rule. It shows that the utility-based loss function for a small open economy is a quadratic expression in dom...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The 'Network Economy' and Models of the Employment Contract: Psychological, Economic and Legal

The emergence of the so-called ¿network economy¿ and the development of project-based work pose a fundamental challenge to established methods of regulating the employment relationship. There appears to be an unsatisfied...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Digital Goods and the New Economy

Digital goods are bitstrings, sequences of 0s and 1s, which have economic value. They are distinguished from other goods by five characteristics: digital goods are nonrival, infinitely expansible, discrete, aspatial, and...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Technology Dissemination and Economic Growth: Some Lessons for the New Economy

This paper attempts to draw lessons for the New Economy from what economists know about technology dissemination and economic growth. It argues that what is most notable about the New Economy is that it is knowledge-driv...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Product Standards, Trade Disputes and Protectionism

Trade disputes over national product standards are a growing source of tension in the international trading system. The usual pattern is that a country introduces a new product standard for all sales of a good in its loc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Internet Cluster Emergence

Internet development holds the promise of transmitting economic value across physical space at zero marginal cost. In such a 'weightless economy', what factors matter for the location of economic activity and thus for ...Read more...