Results

Blog

Vox EU:

Living wages and government contracts

Living wages are an increasingly common policy tool for reducing poverty and improving the living standards of low-income workers. But until recently, there has been little evidence on how living wage clauses effect the ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

in brief... Successful caps on fees disprove the idea that it’s unwise to meddle with free markets

Jan David Bakker and Nikhil Datta show how the success of a reform of letting agents’ fees was partly due to their hidden nature....Read more...

Blog

The Conversation:

Successful caps on English letting agents' fees disprove the idea that it's unwise to meddle with free markets

Five years ago, the UK government enacted the first legislation regulating prices in the English rental market since the 1960s. The Tenant Fees Act 2019 didn't interfere with what landlords can charge tenants in rent, bu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Why do flexible work arrangements exist?

This paper studies flexible work arrangements, with a focus on zero-hours contracts (ZHCs). Leveraging a unique dataset from a large UK firm in the low-pay sector, it provides novel descriptives on ZHC workers, as well a...Read more...

Blog

The Conversation:

Why building new towns isn't the answer to the UK's housing crisis

The UK's new government is intent on building 1.5 million homes over the next five years. It's all part of the plan to address the housing supply and affordability crisis. Many of these homes are to be built in the form...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Avenging the tenants: Regulating the middle man's rents

We explore the role of intermediaries in the rental market. Using novel UK data on fees letting agencies charged to both tenants and landlords, combined with a matched property-agency listings dataset, we study the effec...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Local monopsony power

This paper studies monopsony power in a low pay labour market and explores its determinants. I emphasise the role of the spatial distribution of activity and workers' distaste for commuting in generating imperfect substi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Government contracting and living wages > minimum wages

Government procurement accounts for a significant share of GDP, and environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) clauses in government contracts have become common across developed economies. This paper studies o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The measure of monopsony: the labour supply elasticity to the firm and its constituents

The estimation of labour supply elasticities is central to the measurement of monopsony power in the labor market. In this paper I provide new, firm-level estimates of the labour supply elasticity that distinguish betwee...Read more...

CEP Brexit analysis

Brexit and consumer food prices: May 2023 update

Brexit continues to affect the UK economy. The results in this report are updates to the original study of Bakker et al. (2022), showing that higher non-tariff barriers due to Brexit are affecting food price inflation an...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Non-tariff barriers and consumer prices: evidence from Brexit

Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs) are the main policy impediment to international trade, yet little is known about their pass-through to prices. This paper exploits the Brexit trade policy shock to quantify how NTBs affect cons...Read more...

External publication

The economics of Brexit: what have we learned?

This eBook, produced by VoxEU/CEPR and UK in a Changing Europe, brings together leading academic researchers on trade, immigration and political economy to assess what we have learned, 18 months on from its implementatio...Read more...

Chapter

Post-Brexit imports, supply chains, and the effect on consumer prices

in The Economics of Brexit: What Have We Learned?

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Blog

LSE Business Review:

Low pay and insecurity in the UK labour market

Minimum wage increases have driven down the incidence of low hourly pay, but there has been much less progress elsewhere for low earners. Low pay is widespread among the self-employed, who do not benefit from the minimum...Read more...

CentrePiece article

How Brexit has raised UK food prices

Some products imported to the UK from the European Union have been more affected by the post-Brexit trading rules than others. Jan David Bakker, Nikhil Datta, Josh De Lyon, Luisa Opitz and Dilan Yang find that leaving th...Read more...

External publication

Low pay Britain 2022

This edition of Low Pay Britain is the Resolution Foundation's twelfth annual report taking stock of the state of low pay. Recent editions have focused on the short-term impacts of the Covid-19 crisis on low paid workers...Read more...

External publication

Post-Brexit imports, supply chains, and the effect on consumer prices

This report documents the decrease in imports and shows how the patterns of imports vary across sectors following the UK's departure from the Single Market and Customs Union at the end of 2020. The authors, Jan David Bak...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Living wages and age discontinuities for low-wage workers

This paper considers an emerging, highly policy relevant feature of minimum wages, studying what happens when a wage floor significantly higher than a nationally legislated minimum is imposed. The consequences of age-wag...Read more...

External publication

Vulnerabilities of supply chains post-Brexit

Arla Foods UK has commissioned LSE Consulting's Trade Policy Hub to deliver a study on the vulnerabilities of supply chains in the United Kingdom and the European Union after Brexit. This study provides a follow up to th...Read more...

Blog

LSE Consulting:

Vulnerabilities of supply chains post-Brexit

Nikhil Datta, Jan Bakker, Elitsa Garnizova & Josh De-Lyon show how consumers in the UK are highly dependent on products originating in the EU, where 40 percent of all consumption of food products in the UK comes from EU ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The gig economy and workers' preferences for steady jobs

Is the rise of gig work, freelancing, zero hours contracts and self-employment a result of people wanting such work or because they have no other choice? Nikhil Datta finds that while workers in the gig economy may like ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Willing to pay for security: a discrete choice experiment to analyse labour supply preferences

This paper investigates the extent to which labour supply preferences are responsible for the marked rise in atypical work arrangements in the UK and US. By employing vignettes in a discrete job choice experiment in a re...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Policy:

Zero Hours Contracts and Labour Market Policy

The evolving nature of atypical work arrangements is studied. A particular focus is placed on one such form of work relation: zero hour contracts (ZHCs). The paper uses existing secondary data and new survey data collect...Read more...

CEP industrial strategy paper

Local Economic Effects of Brexit: Factsheet

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CEP industrial strategy paper

Investing in People: The Case for Human Capital Tax Credits

It is now widely recognised that human capital accumulation and research and development (R&D) are key drivers of economic growth, as is documented in most standard textbooks (e.g. Acemoglu, 2007; Romer, 1996). Estimates...Read more...

CVER Briefing Note

Investing in People: The Case for Human Capital Tax Credits

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