Results

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Same difference? Minority ethnic inventors, diversity and innovation in the UK

Minority ethnic inventors play important roles in US innovation, especially in high-tech regions such as Silicon Valley. Do 'ethnicity?innovation' channels exist elsewhere? Ethnicity could influence innovation via produc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

GRAPH-EE: building employer - employee panels from a knowledge graph and company microdata

Linked employer-employee datasets are a hugely powerful tool for researchers and policymakers across the social sciences. However, access to such data is typically highly restricted and the quality of data varies substan...Read more...

Journal article

Research Policy:

Mapping digital businesses with big data: some early findings from the UK

Governments around the world want to develop their ICT industries. Researchers and policymakers thus need a clear picture of digital businesses, but conventional datasets and typologies tend to lag real-world change. We ...Read more...

Chapter

Immigration, diversity and innovation in cities and regions

in A Research Agenda for Migration and Innovation

This chapter investigates the interplay between immigrant diversity and innovation, emphasizing the urban and regional dimensions where these effects are most pronounced. Cities and urban areas are pivotal to the generat...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Public sector relocation: lessons from the BBC?s move to Salford

Moving public agencies out of London was a major plank of the levelling-up agenda. Max Nathan, Henry Overman, Capucine Riom and Maria Sanchez-Vidal show how the BBC?s move to Salford had a positive effect on the local ec...Read more...

Blog

What works centre for local economic growth:

Do cities and regions gain from public sector relocation?

In this guest blog, Dr. Max Nathan, Henry Overman, Capucine Riom, and Maria Sanchez-Vidal set out evidence on the impact of BBC (partial) relocation to Salford on wider employment in the area. This blog was originally pu...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

Do cities and regions gain from public sector relocation?

Moving public agencies out of London was a major plank of the levelling-up agenda. The effects on local economies seem smaller than hoped - and it's important to compare them with those of other tools of regional policy:...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The new wave? The role of human capital and STEM skills in technology adoption in the UK

Which types of human capital influence the adoption of advanced technologies? We study the skill biased adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) across two waves in the UK. Specifically, we compare th...Read more...

Journal article

Research Policy:

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

Cluster policies are popular with policymakers, but we know surprisingly little about their effectiveness. This paper evaluates the causal impact of a flagship UK technology cluster programme that uses `light touch?, mar...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Geography:

Creative clusters and creative multipliers: evidence from UK cities

Economic geographers have paid much attention to the cultural and creative industries, both for their propensity to cluster in urban settings, and their potential to drive urban economic development. However, evidence on...Read more...

Journal article

Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science :

Modeling clusters from the ground up: a web data approach

This paper proposes a new methodological framework to identify economic clusters over space and time. We employ a unique open source dataset of geolocated and archived business webpages and interrogate them using Natural...Read more...

Journal article

Urban Studies:

Incubators, accelerators and urban economic development

We combine theory and evidence on incubator and accelerator programmes and their effects on urban economic development. These structured co-working programmes have grown rapidly. However, a rich descriptive literature re...Read more...

Journal article

Research Policy:

Innovative events: product launches, innovation and firm performance

In this paper, we shed new light on the links between firm-level innovation and growth. We introduce data that capture a difficult-to-observe aspect of firms' innovative activity ? new product/service launches ? at scale...Read more...

Journal article

Urban Studies:

Critical commentary: The city and the virus

Cities around the world are the epicentres of the coronavirus pandemic: both in the first wave, as the disease spread from East Asia, and now, as many countries enter a third wave of infections. These spatial patterns ar...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Will coronavirus cause a big city exodus?

Big cities thrive because of the economic and social benefits of proximity ? but proximity also helps to spread Covid-19. Does this mean an end to the urban revival of recent years ? or do vaccines herald a return to nor...Read more...

Journal article

Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science:

Will coronavirus cause a big city exodus?

What does the pandemic mean for the future of cities? We?ve seen predictions that COVID-19 is an `extinction-level event? for expensive, commuter-driven megacities. We?ve also seen confidence: if the `death of distance? ...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

Will coronavirus cause a big city exodus?

Big cities thrive because of the economic and social benefits of proximity - but proximity also helps to spread Covid-19. Does this mean an end to the big city revival of recent years? Much will depend on how quickly we ...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...

Journal article

Regional Studies:

Creative differences? Measuring creative economy employment in the United States and the UK

This paper compares the creative economies of the US and the UK regions and nations using high-quality administrative microdata spanning the period 2011?13. The creative industries are highly urbanized in both countries....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

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

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...

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...

Blog

CEP Urban and Spatial Programme Blog:

Incubators, accelerators and local economic development

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...

Journal article

Environment and Planning A:

Ethnic diversity and business performance: Which firms? Which cities?

A growing literature examines how ethnic diversity influences economic outcomes in cities and inside firms. However, firm?city interactions remain more or less unexplored. Ethnic diversity may help firm performance by in...Read more...

Journal article

Research Policy:

Do inventors talk to strangers? On proximity and collaborative knowledge creation

This paper examines the characteristics of the collaborations between inventors in the United Kingdom (UK) by looking at what types of proximities - geographic, organisational, cognitive, social, and cultural-ethnic - be...Read more...

Journal article

European Urban and Regional Studies:

After Florida: towards an economics of diversity

In recent years, most European countries have experienced substantial demographic changes and rising cultural diversity. Understanding the social and economic impacts of these shifts is a major challenge for policymakers...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...

Book

Urban Economics and Urban Policy
Challenging Conventional Policy Wisdom Hardcover

In this bold, exciting and readable volume, Paul Cheshire, Max Nathan and Henry Overman illustrate the insights that recent economic research brings to our understanding of cities, and the lessons for urban policy-making...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Policy Paper

Evaluating Spatial Policies

In most countries economic prosperity is very unevenly distributed across space: regions, cities and neighbourhoods seem to be very unequal, whether we look at average earnings, employment, education or almost any other ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Do Inventors Talk to Strangers? On Proximity and Collaborative Knowledge Creation

This paper investigates how physical, organisational, institutional, cognitive, social, and ethnic proximities between inventors shape their collaboration decisions. Using a new panel of UK inventors and a novel identifi...Read more...

Journal article

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space:

Here be startups: exploring London's 'tech city' digital cluster

The digital industries cluster known as Silicon Roundabout has been quietly growing in East London since the 1990s. Rebranded Tech City, it is the focus of huge public and government attention. National and local policy ...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...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Top Team Demographics, Innovation and Business Performance: Findings from English Firms and Cities 2008-9

High levels of net migration to the UK have contributed to growing cultural diversity, and researchers are turning their attention to the long-term effects of diversity on productivity. Yet little is known about these is...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Policy Paper

Assessing the Government's Proposals to Reform the UK Planning System

This note discusses the UK government?s proposed reforms to the land use planning system. It considers the case for reform and the extent to which the reforms are likely to meet their objectives. It then makes some sugge...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Policy Paper

What We Know (and Don't Know) About the Links between Planning and Economic Performance

This note considers the impact of land use planning on economic performance. Specifically, we discuss some of the economic and social costs of the current English system, some of which have been underplayed in public deb...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Ethnic Inventors, Diversity and Innovation in the UK: Evidence from Patents Microdata

Ethnic inventors play important roles in US innovation systems, especially in high-tech regions like Silicon Valley. Do `ethnicity-innovation? channels exist elsewhere? This paper investigates, using a new panel of UK pa...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Does Cultural Diversity Help Innovation in Cities: Evidence from London Firms

London is one of the world?s major cities, and one of its most diverse. London?s cultural diversity is widely seen as a social asset, but there is little hard evidence on its importance for the city?s businesses. Theory ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Economics of Super-Diversity: Findings from British Cities, 2001-2006

British cities have a surprisingly long history of cultural diversity. Recently they have become significantly more multicultural, with `super-diversity? emerging in many urban neighbourhoods. Public interest in these ch...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Long Term Impacts of Migration in British Cities: Diversity, Wages, Employment and Prices

British cities are becoming more culturally diverse, with migration a main driver. Is this growing diversity good for urban economies? This paper explores, using a new 16-year panel of UK cities. Over time, net migration...Read more...