Results

CentrePiece article

Allocating land for housing in Tanzania

The economics of greenfield urban planning...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Economics of greenfield urban planning

Urban planning has shaped cities for millennia, demarcating property rights and mitigating coordination failures, but its rigidities often conflict with market-driven development, which reflects preferences. Although pla...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The doctor will see you now: comparing online and in-person consultations

Online consultations with doctors are convenient for patients and produce similar health outcomes to in-person visits. But research by Amanda Dahlstrand, Nestor Le Nestour and Guy Michaels finds that deciding which patie...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Online versus in-person services: Effects on patients and providers

Switching the delivery of one-to-one services from in-person to online offers potential cost savings and increased convenience, but what are the impacts on providers and consumers? This column studies the effects of onli...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

Cities and the sea level

Construction on low elevation coastal zones is risky for both residents and taxpayers who bail them out. To investigate this construction, we analyze spatially disaggregated data covering the entire US Atlantic and Gulf ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

How do online doctor consultations compare to in-person ones?

In today's hybrid world, many decisions affect which one-to-one services, such as financial advice, tutoring or healthcare, are delivered online and which ones in person, and to whom. Although the shift to online provisi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Online versus in-person services: Effects on patients and providers

Online delivery of one-to-one services offers potential cost savings and increased convenience, yet relatively little is known about its impacts on providers and consumers. This paper studies the online delivery of healt...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Identifying agglomeration shadows: Long-run evidence from ancient ports

We examine "agglomeration shadows" that emerge around large cities, which discourage some economic activities in nearby areas. Identifying agglomeration shadows is complicated, however, by endogenous city formation and "...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

What happens to people when machines replace them in the workplace?

New technologies are replacing workers in a growing range of occupations, causing loss of earnings and employment. However, these losses are smaller than those suffered by workers who experience mass layoffs. Per-Anders ...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Individual consequences of occupational decline

We assess the career earnings losses that individual Swedish workers suffered when their occupations' employment declined. High-quality data allow us to overcome sorting into declining occupations on various attributes, ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Rising sea levels and the future of coastal cities

Despite the higher susceptibility to floods and a growing climate crisis, more than 10% of the world's population lives in low-elevation coastal zones - and that share is increasing. Guy Michaels and colleagues present a...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

Planning Ahead for Better Neighborhoods: Long-Run Evidence from Tanzania

Africa’s demand for urban housing is soaring, even as it faces a proliferation of slums. In this setting, can modest infrastructure investments in greenfield areas where people subsequently build their own houses facilit...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Why housing is built in flood-prone coastal areas

Despite the higher susceptibility to floods and a growing climate crisis, more than 10% of the world's population live in low-elevation coastal zones, and that percentage is growing. Yatang Lin, Thomas McDermott and Guy ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Cities and the sea level

Construction on low elevation coastal zones is risky for both residents and taxpayers who bail them out, especially when sea levels are rising. We study this construction using spatially disaggregated data on the US Atla...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics:

Flooded cities

Does economic activity move away from areas that are at high risk of recurring shocks? We examine this question in the context of floods, which displaced more than 650 million people worldwide in the last 35 years. We st...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...

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...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Task specialization in U.S. Cities from 1880 to 2000

We develop a new methodology for quantifying the tasks undertaken within occupations using over 3,000 verbs from more than 12,000 occupational descriptions in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOTs). Using micro dat...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...

Government consultation

Fourth Industrial Revolution inquiry

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Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Resetting the Urban Network: 117-2012

Do fixed geographic features such as coastlines and rivers determine town locations, or can historical events trap towns in unfavourable locations for centuries? We examine the effects on town locations of the collapse o...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...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Is modern technology responsible for jobless recoveries?

Since the early 1990s, recoveries from recessions in the US have been plagued by weak employment growth. We investigate whether a similar problem afflicts other developed economies, and whether technology is a culprit. W...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Is technology to blame for jobless recoveries?

Since the early 1990s, the United States has been plagued by weak employment growth when emerging from recessions – so-called ‘jobless recoveries’. Georg Graetz and Guy Michaels look at multiple recoveries elsewhere in t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Is modern technology responsible for jobless recoveries?

Since the early 1990s, recoveries from recessions in the US have been plagued by weak employment growth. One possible explanation for these “jobless” recoveries is rooted in technological change: middle-skill jobs, often...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Flooded cities

Economic activity tends to return to flood-prone areas after floods rather than relocating to higher ground. What’s more, cities built in flood-prone areas are locking in exposure to flood risk for the long term. These a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Flooded cities

Does economic activity relocate away from areas that are at high risk of recurring shocks? We examine this question in the context of floods, which are among the costliest and most common natural disasters. Over the past...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Robots at work: the impact on productivity and jobs

Robots may seem dangerous not only to cinema action heroes but also to the average manufacturing worker.To assess whether such concerns are well founded, Guy Michaels and Georg Graetz analyse the labour market effects of...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Robots at work

Despite ubiquitous discussions of robots’ potential impact, there is almost no systematic empirical evidence on their economic effects. In this paper we analyze for the first time the economic impact of industrial robots...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economics and Statistics:

Has ICT polarized skill demand? Evidence from eleven countries over twenty-five years

We test the hypothesis that information and communication technologies (ICT) polarize labor markets by increasing demand for the highly educated at the expense of the middle educated, with little effect on low-educated w...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Can cities be trapped in bad locations?

After the fall of the Roman Empire, urban life in France became a shadow of its former self, but in Britain it completely disappeared. Guy Michaels and Ferdinand Rauch use these contrasting experiences as a natural exper...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Resetting the urban network: 117-2012

Do locational fundamentals such as coastlines and rivers determine town locations, or can historical events trap towns in unfavourable locations for centuries? We examine the effects on town locations of the collapse of ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Task Specialization in U.S. Cities from 1880-2000

We develop a new methodology for quantifying the tasks undertaken within occupations using 3,000 verbs from around 12,000 occupational descriptions in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOTs). Using micro-data from t...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Giant oilfields and civil conflict

We use new data to examine the effects of giant oilfield discoveries around the world since 1946. On average, these discoveries increase per capita oil production and oil exports by up to 50 percent. But these giant oilf...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do Giant Oilfield Discoveries Fuel Internal Armed Conflicts?

We use new data to examine the effects of giant oilfield discoveries around the world since 1946. On average, these discoveries increase per capita oil production and oil exports by up to 50 percent. But these giant oilf...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The shrinking middle

Guy Michaels and colleagues show how new technologies are polarising the labour market, with the middle-skilled losing out most...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Has ICT Polarized Skill Demand? Evidence from Eleven Countries over 25 Years

OECD labor markets have become more “polarized” with employment in the middle of the skill distribution falling relative to the top and (in recent years) also the bottom of the skill distribution. We test the hypothesis ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

A Resource Curse? The impact of oil windfalls on living standards in Brazil

A Resource Curse? The impact of oil windfalls on living standards in Brazil...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do Oil Windfalls Improve Living Standards? Evidence from Brazil

We use variation in oil output among Brazilian municipalities to investigate the effects of resource windfalls. We find muted effects of oil through market channels: offshore oil has no effect on municipal non-oil GDP or...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Urbanisation and Structural Transformation

This paper presents new evidence on urbanization using sub-county data for the United States from 1880-2000 and municipality data for Brazil from 1970-2000. We show that the two central stylized features of population gr...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Freedom fries: When international relations damage international trade

International trade flows may be sensitive to large changes in international relations and public attitudes, according to research by Guy Michaels and Xiaojia Zhi. Their study finds that US imports from France declined s...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Freedom Fries

Do firms choose inputs that minimize their cost of production, ignoring the attitudes of their owners and employees? We examine this question using an episode of worsening relations between the US and France: from Februa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Division of Labor, Coordination, and the Demand for Information Processing

Since Adam Smith’s time, the division of labor in production has increased significantly, while information processing has become an important part of work. This paper examines whether the need to coordinate an increasin...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Sharing the fruits of trade

One of CEP's core research themes is the impact of trade openness on countries, firms, regions, communities and sectors.Two recent studies confirm the gains from opening up trade - but recognise that addressing the uneve...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Effect of Marital Breakup on the Income Distribution of Women with Children

Having a female firstborn child significantly increases the probability that a woman’s first marriage breaks up. Recent work has exploited this exogenous variation to measure the effect of marital breakup on economic out...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Effect of Trade on the Demand for Skill - Evidence from the Interstate Highway System

Since changes in trade openness are typically confounded with other factors, it has been difficult to identify the labor market consequences of increased international trade. The advent of the United States Interstate Hi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Long-Term Consequences of Regional Specialization

What are the consequences of resource-based regional specialization, when it persists over a long period of time? While much of the literature argues that specialization is beneficial, recent work suggests it may be cost...Read more...