Results

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 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...

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...

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

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...

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...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

New Road Infrastructure: The Effects on Firms

This paper estimates the impact of new road infrastructure on employment and labour productivity using plant level longitudinal data for Britain. Exposure to transport improvements is measured through changes in accessib...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

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...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Urban Development and Air Pollution: Evidence from a Global Panel of Cities

We exploit a unique panel of 75 metro areas (‘cities’) across the globe and employ a city-fixed effects model to identify the determinants of within-city changes in air pollution concentration between 2005 and 2011. Incr...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Chicken or Egg? The PVAR Econometrics of Transportation

To analyze the mutually dependent relationship between local economic performance and the demand for and supply of transport services, we employ the structural panel VAR method that is popular in the macroeconomic litera...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Impact of Better School Accessibility on Student outcomes

This paper identifies and quantifies the effects of better transport accessibility on student performance measured by mathematics test scores. A 27 km new subway line and the extension of an existing line in Santiago (Ch...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Does Better Rail Access Improve Homeowners’ Happiness?: Evidence Based on Micro Surveys in Beijing

Development of urban transport infrastructures is a key policy focus---particularly in countries like China which have experienced fast urbanisation over the past decade. While existing studies provide marginal values fo...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

New Road Infrastructure: the Effects on Firms

This paper estimates the impact of road improvements on firm employment and productivity using plant level longitudinal data for Britain. Exposure to transport improvements is measured by changes in employment accessibil...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Does Public Investment Spur the Land Market?: Evidence from Transport Improvement in Beijing

Over 140 billion CNY (1GBP=10CNY) has been spent between 2000 and 2012 in Beijing on the construction of new rail transit lines. This massive public investment allows me to examine the consequences of transport improveme...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief...Cotton and Cars: the Huge Gains from Process Innovation

New inventions are good for economic growth, but equally important are improvements in the way we make things - what's known as process innovation. Tim Leunig and Joachim Voth measure the impact of two such innovations -...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Spinning Welfare: the Gains from Process Innovation in Cotton and Car Production

Economists and economic historians want to know how much better life is today than in the past. Fifty years ago economic historians found surprisingly small gains from 19th century US railroads, while more recently econo...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

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

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

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion: Evidence from US Cities

We investigate the relationship between interstate highways and highway vehicle kilometres travelled (VKT) in US cities. We find that VKT increases proportionately to highways and identify three important sources for thi...Read more...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

Causes of sprawl: a portrait from space

We study the extent to which US urban development is sprawling and what determines differences in sprawl across space. Using remote-sensing data to track the evolution of land use on a grid of 8.7 billion 30 x 30 metre c...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Rising Trade Costs? Agglomeration and Trade with Endogenous Transaction Costs

While transport costs have fallen, the empirical evidence also points at rising total trade costs. In a model of industry location with endogenous transaction costs, we show how and under which conditions a decline in tr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Evaluating Urban Transport Improvements: Cost Benefit Analysis in the Presence of Agglomeration and Income Taxation

There is a substantial empirical literature quantifying the positive relationship between city size and productivity. The paper draws out the implications of this productivity relationship for evaluations of urban transp...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Valuing Rail Access Using Transport Innovations

In this paper we implement a powerful empirical approach than has not previously been applied to rail transport evaluation to ascertain how much consumers value rail access. We study the effects on house prices of a tran...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Falling Trade Costs, Heterogeneous Firms and Industry Dynamics

This paper examines the response of industries and firms to changes in trade costs. Several new firm-level models of international trade with heterogeneous firms predict that industry productivity will rise as trade cost...Read more...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

Globalization and the Inequality of Nations

A monopolistically competitive manufacturing sector produces goods used for final consumption and as intermediates. Intermediate usage creates cost and demand linkages between firms and a tendency for manufacturing agglo...Read more...