Results

CEP discussion paper

Social push and the direction of innovation

Innovators are intrinsically-motivated individuals who use ideas to create new goods and services. This raises the possibility that their social backgrounds may affect the direction of their innovative activity. Consiste...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Nonparametric measurement of long-run growth in consumer welfare

How should we measure long-run changes in consumer welfare? This paper proposes a nonparametric approach that is valid under arbitrary preferences that depend on observable consumer characteristics, e.g. when expenditure...Read more...

Chapter

The effects of automation on labor demand: a Survey of the recent literature

in Robots and AI - a new economic era

Robots and artificial intelligence (AI) are powerful forces that will likely have large impacts on the size, direction, and composition of international trade flows. This book discusses how industrial robots, automation,...Read more...

Journal article

Annual Review of Economics:

Inflation Inequality: Measurement, Causes, and Policy Implications

Does inflation vary across the income distribution? This article reviews the growing literature on inflation inequality, describing recent advances and opportunities for further research in four areas. First, new price i...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economic Studies:

Quasi-Experimental Shift-Share Research Designs

Many studies use shift-share (or “Bartik”) instruments, which average a set of shocks with exposure share weights. We provide a new econometric framework for shift-share instrumental variable (SSIV) regressions in which ...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

What are the price effects of trade? Evidence from the US and implications for quantitative trade models

This paper finds that U.S. consumer prices fell substantially due to increased trade with China. With comprehensive price micro-data and two complementary identification strategies, we estimate that a 1pp increase in imp...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

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

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

We characterize the factors that determine who becomes an inventor in the United States, focusing on the role of inventive ability (“nature”) versus environment (“nurture”). Using deidentified data on 1.2 million invento...Read more...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

The unequal gains from product innovations: Evidence from the U.S. Retail sector

This article examines how product innovations led to inflation inequality in the United States from 2004 to 2015. Using scanner data from the retail sector, I find that annual inflation for retail products was 0.661 (std...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...

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...

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 the United States, focusing on the role of inventive ability ('nature') vs. environment ('nurture'). Using de-identified data on 1.2 million inventors...Read more...