Results

CEP discussion paper

Intergenerational income persistence in the Millennial generation

This paper provides new evidence on intergenerational income persistence for a recent UK cohort. Using Next Steps, a longitudinal study of people born in England in 1989-90 linked to administrative education records, we ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Brief yet effective: group counseling and college access for disadvantaged students

Large socioeconomic gaps in higher-education access and completion persist even among similarly talented students with access to generous funding, pointing to an important role for information frictions and unequal suppo...Read more...

Blog

LSE British politics:

Burnham's Manchesterism can help universities drive local growth

Andy Burnham recently acknowledged that UK universities are capable of driving innovation and economic growth. But their ability to do so is being undermined by a higher education funding crisis. Manchesterism, with its ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

When Ofsted downgrades schools, headteachers pay the price

A high-risk, low-reward system affects the supply of teachers...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Elite universities and the intergenerational transmission of human and social capital

Do elite colleges help talented students join the social elite or help incumbent elites retain their positions? We combine intergenerationally linked data from Chile with a regression discontinuity design to show that, l...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Skills, not scale: GenAI and technology adoption

Do the determinants of technology adoption depend on technological architecture? Using administrative data on Turkish firms from 2021 to 2024, we compare the adoption of traditional and generative artificial intelligence...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Mind the break-up: when policy disrupts firms' supply chains

This paper examines how policy-induced supply-chain shocks affect firms? performances, using the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) as a source of exogenous variation. Using UK microdata on firm-level goods and ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

An Olympic opportunity

We use a unique natural experiment in which families were randomly selected to live in the Olympic Village, constructed for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, to assess the impact of improved neighbourhood conditions on acad...Read more...

CEP report

Hive of talent: what would it take to raise skills and productivity in Greater Manchester?

Finding enough highly-skilled workers to enable Greater Manchester to make a serious dent in its productivity gap with London will require action that goes beyond skills policy alone, a new report from the Centre for Eco...Read more...

Blog

CEPR:

An Olympic opportunity for social housing policy: Lessons from the Athens 2004 Olympic Village

Soaring rents, long waiting lists, and mounting political anger are forcing governments across Europe to address gaps in social housing provision. This column examines whether new homes can also transform childrena??s fu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

AI unbound: digital infrastructure, AI adoption, and firm performance

We study how digital infrastructure relaxes constraints on the diffusion and economic impact of artificial intelligence (AI). Using administrative data and a nationally representative enterprise survey from Turkey (2021?...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics:

When Ofsted downgrades schools, headteachers pay the price

Recent reforms to the Ofsted scoring system focussed on the effects of single-word evaluations of schools. Shqiponja Telhaj shifts the focus to school leadership and argues that the detrimental effects of Ofsted downgrad...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Policy Modeling:

Social policy gone bad educationally: unintended peer effects from transferred students

What is the impact of an increase of lower-ability students in a university class? We examine a natural experiment in which students from large, low-income families had the chance to transfer to academic programs at a lo...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Degrees of choice

Bolder applications mean that private school pupils end up at better universities than their exam results predict...Read more...

Blog

LSE Impact:

The brutal geography of global elite scientific research

In theory, science aspires to be cosmopolitan. Where you are from and where you undertake your research are secondary to the quality of your ideas. However, as Andres-Rodriguez-Pose, Leiboyu Xiang, and Neil Lee show, the...Read more...

Journal article

SERIEs:

Paternity leave in Spain

Between 2017 and 2021, Spain progressively extended paternity leave from 2 to 16 weeks, equalizing it with maternity leave and introducing mandatory weeks. A 2018 reform also allowed fathers to split their leave. Using a...Read more...

Blog

LSE Europp:

Ten countries, five continents, one pattern - women are less likely to pick STEM subjects

Women make up only 35 per cent of STEM graduates globally. Andres Barrios Fernandez and Aspasia Bizopoulou show that while there is huge variety between countries in the educational attainment of men and women, young wom...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

How the Great Recession affected millennial education and careers

In 2025 the proportion of young British people aged 16 to 24 who were not in education, employment or training was at its highest since 2014. How much impact do educational choices made at that age have on future careers...Read more...

Journal article

Italian Economic Journal:

Artificial intelligence in education: computer-assisted learning and AI-guided tutors

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Computer-Assisted Learning (CAL) offer powerful tools to improve foundational skills and close educational gaps, with evidence showing meaningful gains in student performance, especially ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Inequalities:

Bred to rule: What a A#180,000 private tutor job reveals about the education arms race

What does a A#180,000 job ad for a private tutor *for a baby* reveal about the global education arms race? It's tempting to put it down to the eccentric indulgence of a tiny global elite. But it in fact points to an expl...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Skills in the age of AI

A focus on wellbeing at work can help employees thrive....Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Structured wellbeing curriculum in schools

Some argue that school is a means to an end, and time spent in lessons may be unpleasant, but it helps these children in the future. The question is 'to what end'. Are school years something which have to be tolerated i...Read more...

Blog

World Bank Blogs:

Learning amid disruption: a feasible, effective, and scalable investment in education during wartime

Wars devastate infrastructure and institutions, but their most profound costs are often borne by human capital. Education systems are among the first casualties of conflict: schools are destroyed, and families are displa...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Elite school students end up in better universities than expected, based on their grades

Students of private and grammar schools are over-represented in elite universities. While some of that is explained by better grades, therse is also a degree of mismatch between how well students do in exams and the qual...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Education Review:

Home broadband and human capital formation

Using administrative data from England, we estimate the effect of home broadband speed on student-level value-added test scores. Our primary estimation leverages jumps in connection quality between close neighbors across...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

What can we learn about youth crime from weekday school closures?

Schools are lauded for their ability to keep young people away from crime and on the right path. But what happens behind the school gates? Janine Boshoff and Matteo Sandi reveal a more complex story - one where schoolyar...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Young people, human capital investment and the Great Recession

Policy makers recognise the importance of encouraging young people to stay in education for longer. We use the experience of the Great Recession in England to evaluate whether the incentive to invest in human capital bea...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Private highs: investigating university overmatch among students from elite schools

Inequality in elite college attendance is a key driver of intergenerational mobility. This paper shifts the focus upstream to examine how elite high school attendance - specifically, enrollment in UK private, fee-paying ...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Human after all: occupations at the core of AI adoption

This paper investigates how firms? occupational structure shapes the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) using matched administrative data on French firms and relying on an instrumental variable Probit model. We ide...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy:

The making of civic virtues: a school-based experiment in three countries

This paper shows that schools can foster the transmission of civic virtues by helping students to develop concrete, democratically chosen, collective projects. We draw on a RCT implemented in 200 middle schools in three ...Read more...

CEP report

Pupil absence and the Covid-19 pandemic

A high level of school absence has persisted across many countries since the Covid-19 pandemic. We use English data to investigate how local health and social regulations affected pupil absence rates during the pandemic ...Read more...

Blog

LSE British politics and policy:

Universities are engines of growth and must be backed by policy

The Industrial Strategy identifies growth-driving sectors that will require a highly-skilled workforce. Higher education will be a key to unlocking this ambition. But as universities aim to recruit the best talent from a...Read more...

Blog

LSE Impact:

Banning NDAs in universities is only the first step toward a better research culture

The UK government is moving to ban non-disclosure agreements being used to silence employees who have suffered harassment or discrimination. Such a ban has already come into place in higher education, economists Dina Rab...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

The full returns to higher education in the UK

University education is known to generate significant earnings returns, but its full value may be understated without considering its wider effects on individual wellbeing. This paper estimates the complete lifetime retu...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Human Resources:

Closing the gap between vocational and general education?

Vocational education delivery is widely debated, with ongoing efforts to improve its effectiveness. In 2010, England introduced University Technical Colleges (UTCs), hybrid institutions combining general and vocational e...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance:

Returns to adult learning

A common starting point in understanding investments in learning is that people participate in education when the life-cycle returns to education outweigh its costs. Since people will reap the higher wages associated wit...Read more...

External report

A joined-up approach to UK skills policy

It is generally accepted that skills are a key driver of economic productivity and economic dynamism. They are a means by which individuals and communities can become resilient to social and economic change and are a key...Read more...

Blog

LSE:

How crowd crush prevention technology could keep us safe at events (video)

In this film, we explore how cutting-edge artificial intelligence is being developed to assist event security and police forces in managing public safety at large-scale gatherings. We speak with Professor Tom Kirchmaier ...Read more...

Government consultation

Education committee - Further education and skills

The further education sector is currently navigating a series of reforms and challenges. In this inquiry the Education Committee will explore these issues and other pressures currently facing the further education sector...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Human Resources :

Where versus what: college value-added and returns to field of study in further education

We use administrative records on educational and labor market trajectories to estimate the value-added of English further education colleges in terms of educational and labor market outcomes and earnings returns to diffe...Read more...

Blog

The We Society:

Improving social mobility through education and language with Lee Elliot Major (podcast)

Professor Lee Elliot Major joins Will Hutton to discuss the decline of social mobility in the UK and advocates for a broader understanding of systemic barriers, including arguing for a new approach towards language to im...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

The confidence gap influencing who applies to top colleges and careers

Students' choice of which university and programme to apply to isn't a simple financial decision. There's more at stake in the decision than finance and information gaps. Behavioural constraints play an important role. C...Read more...

Blog

Nada es Gratis:

The Economics of Education text: Gender Gaps in Education

International data stubbornly show that boys underperform and that girls are still underrepresented in university and career careers related to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines....Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Education Review:

De-tracking at the margin: How alternative secondary education pathways affect student attainment

This paper estimates how marginal increases in the flexibility of between-school tracking affect student attainment by exploiting the addition of non-selective `comprehensive schools? and hybrid `vocational high schools?...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Redirecting AI: Privacy regulation and the future of artificial intelligence

Some artificial intelligence technologies are more data intensive than others. This column examines how data privacy regulation shaped the trajectory of AI innovation across countries, looking at patent applications from...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Education: An Introductory Textbook:

Gender gaps in education

International data stubbornly show that boys perform worse than girls in school and that women continue to be under-represented in university and professional careers related to STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Eng...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

College attrition and the dynamics of information revelation

We examine how informational frictions impact schooling and work outcomes by estimating a dynamic structural model where individuals face uncertainty about their academic ability and productivity, which determine their s...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Leveraging AI to navigate 'deglobalisation'

Trade wars, industrial policy, and myriad other supply chain disruptions have fast become the 'new normal'. Yet, given the highly opaque and complex nature of production processes, knowing how to navigate this rise of de...Read more...

Chapter

Crime and the labor market

in Handbook of Labor Economics

The economics of crime has emerged as a critical field over the past 30 years, with economists increasingly exploring the causes and consequences of criminal behavior. This chapter surveys key contributions and developme...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The role of human capital for AI adoption: evidence from French firms

We leverage a uniquely comprehensive combination of data sources to explore the enabling role of human capital in fostering the adoption of predictive AI systems in French firms. Using a causal estimation approach, we sh...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Assessing the costs of balancing college and work activities: the gig economy meets online education

Balancing the demands of work and schooling is a challenging task for an increasing number of students who have to pay their way through college and for workers who intend to upgrade their skills. However, flexible learn...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

The mismatch earnings penalty

We disentangle the relationship between student ability, course quality and the match between the two on earnings, estimating the first mismatch parameter in the literature. Using administrative data on all state-educate...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy:

Education and geographical mobility: the role of the job surplus

Better educated workers accept many more long-distance job offers, and relocate quicker following local shocks. I attribute this to a fundamental feature of their labor market experience, unrelated to geography: large re...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economic Studies:

Revisiting event study designs: robust and efficient estimation

We develop a framework for difference-in-differences designs with staggered treatment adoption and heterogeneous causal effects. We show that conventional regression-based estimators fail to provide unbiased estimates of...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Crime and education

Research studying connections between crime and education is a prominent aspect of the big increase of publication and research interest in the economics of crime field. This work demonstrates a crime reducing impact of ...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

UK higher education finance: what's the problem and what can be done?

The tripling of tuition fees in 2012 put universities in a strong financial position. But since then, fees - and the maintenance loans that support students - haven't kept up with inflation. Now, students face real hards...Read more...

Blog

LSE Impact of Social Sciences:

What makes the child penalty in academia different?

Women are underrepresented in senior academic positions in economics. Ria Ivandic and Anne Sophie Lassen assess the impact of having children on men and women's career trajectories and suggest how the sector can adapt....Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Distance from innovation is a barrier to the adoption of artificial intelligence

While distance may seem unimportant in the face of technological progress in transportation and communication, several studies have found that distance is a barrier to the diffusion of inventive activity and technology a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Crime and the labor market

The economics of crime has emerged as a critical field over the past 30 years, with economists increasingly exploring the causes and consequences of criminal behavior. This chapter surveys key contributions and developme...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Parenthood and academia

Women are underrepresented in senior academic positions in economics. Ria Ivandic and Anne Sophie Lassen assess the impact of having children on men and women's career trajectories....Read more...

CentrePiece article

How to build a citizen

Schools are where the next generation learns not only how to understand the world but also how to change it. Research by Simon Briole, Marc Gurgand, Eric Maurin, Sandra McNally, Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela and Daniel Santin ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Education makes women, not men, more likely to have children

Given the wide-ranging consequences of declining fertility rates, academics and policymakers around the world are increasingly interested in understanding what influences men's and women's decision to start a family. Han...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Valuing consumption services as technology transforms accessibility: Evidence from Beijing

Home delivery reduced the value of cities as locations to access variety in durable consumption goods. Food delivery services (FDS) are doing the same for restaurants. Home-streaming of sports or home-delivered restauran...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Mental health support teams in schools: Evidence and assumptions

In this paper we examine the cost-effectiveness of providing NICE recommended psychological therapy to young people. For each type of mental health problem we show: (i) the assumptions used to derive the impact of treati...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

The educational choices of British 16-year-olds matter for the economy

The choices that British 16-year-olds are making in the next few weeks about their future studies matter not just for them and their families but also for the nation's economy. Britain needs a workforce with graduate-le...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Paternity leave and child development

We study the effect of paternity leave on early child development. We collect survey data on 5,000 children under age six in Spain and exploit several extensions of paternity leave that took place between 2017 and 2021. ...Read more...

Blog

Project Syndicate:

China is exporting its AI surveillance state

Contrary to what many Western policymakers and commentators once hoped, recent analyses have added to the evidence that trade does not always foster democracy or liberalize regimes. Instead, China's greater integration w...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Open Economics:

Education inequalities

Education is one of the most important predictors of people's life chances, shaping outcomes like work and pay, health, and wealth. Explaining inequalities in educational outcomes, as well as how wider outcomes vary by e...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

The UK must invest in further and higher education

Education has not been a prominent part of the election debates, and further education even less so. But as Sandra McNally, Guglielmo Ventura and Gill Wyness argue, economic growth depends on paying much more attention t...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Further and higher education

There are not enough graduates for sectors in which the UK has a comparative advantage and there are too few people educated to sub-degree level compared to other countries....Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Personnel management and school productivity: evidence from India

This paper uses new data to study school management and productivity in India. We report five main results. First, management quality in public schools is low, and -2 standard deviations below high-income countries with ...Read more...

Journal article

Economica:

Do management practices matter in further education?

Further education and sixth form colleges are key institutions for facilitating skill acquisition among 16-19 year olds in the UK. They enrol half a school cohort after completion of their lower secondary education, and ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

A generation scarred by the Covid-19 pandemic

The impact of the pandemic on education means that pupils in England are on course for lower GCSE grades well into the 2030s. Lee Elliot Major, Andrew Eyles, Esme Lillywhite and Stephen Machin say that the school system ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Education, gender and family formation

We study the effect of educational attainment on family formation using regression discontinuity designs generated by centralized admissions processes to both secondary and tertiary education in Finland. Admission to fur...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unsettled: job insecurity reduces home-ownership

We evaluate the link between job insecurity and one of the most-important decisions that individuals take: homeownership. The 1999 rise in the French Delalande tax on firms that laid off older workers produced an unexpec...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

How could the UK's education system be reformed to equalise opportunities?

Nine out of ten respondents to a recent UK poll by More in Common for the Sutton Trust agreed that it is important for young people to have equal opportunities, regardless of their background. While recent YouGov pollin...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

How can the UK's apprenticeship system be improved?

Apprenticeships are intended to provide opportunities for young people as they move from education to working life. But the way things operate in the UK means that those who would most benefit are often missing out. Appr...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Education Review:

Teacher value-added and gender gaps in educational outcomes

This paper uses rich administrative data from Chile to estimate teacher value added (TVA) on test scores and on an educational attainment index. We allow each teacher to have a different TVA for male and female students ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Teacher value-added and gender gaps in educational outcomes

This paper uses rich administrative data from Chile to estimate teacher value added (TVA) on test scores and on an educational attainment index. We allow each teacher to have a different TVA for male and female students ...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance:

Labor market returns to higher education

The persistent high wage premium associated with college education, despite increasing participation rates, continues to generate a great deal of academic and policy interest. While it is widely agreed that the financia...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Beyond the enrolment gap: Financial barriers and high-achieving, low-income students' persistence in higher education

Little is known about what influences high-achieving, low-income students' persistence in higher education, despite extensive work on their enrolment decision. This paper investigates the role of credit constraints. Usin...Read more...

Blog

LSE Inequalities:

The spiralling costs of higher education are hitting stay at home students harder

Since the pandemic, a new divide has emerged in higher education between commuter students, on the one hand, and on-campus students, on the other. Reporting on the findings of a new student money and wellbeing survey, Le...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association :

Formation of college plans: expected returns, preferences and adjustment process

We exploit a large exogenous shock to study the formation, and updating, of educational plans, and to examine how these plans ultimately impact later educational attainment. Using novel, longitudinal, microdata on cohort...Read more...

Blog

LSE EUROPP:

Online tutoring can transform education for disadvantaged students

Online tutoring programmes have emerged as an effective strategy for narrowing the educational gaps that were exacerbated by the pandemic. Claudia Hupkau, Lucas Gortazar and Antonio Roldan-Mones outline how an eight-week...Read more...

Blog

Wonkhe:

The spiralling costs of higher education are hitting stay at home students harder

Commuter students face financial struggle and a growing sense of isolation from campus. Lee Elliot Major introduces the findings of a new student money and wellbeing survey....Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Do publicly funded autonomous schools improve education systems in the world?

In recent decades, many countries have established autonomous schools, which are publicly funded but can operate more independently than government-run schools. Natalie Irmert, Jan Bietenbeck, Linn Mattisson and Felix We...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Home broadband and human capital formation

Using administrative data, we estimate the effect of home broadband speed on student-level value-added test scores. Our headline estimate relies on jumps in connection quality between close neighbours that occur across t...Read more...

CEP Insights

Insights: condensed

The Insights series is an introduction to the work of the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP). Each Insight highlights the contribution of CEP researchers to both academic understanding and policymaking in one area of ...Read more...

Journal article

AEA Papers and Proceedings:

Parenthood and academic career trajectories

Women continue to be underrepresented in the field of economics, especially among permanent faculty. As parenthood is an important driver of gender inequality in the labor market, we study the impact of children on the a...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics :

Class rank and long-run outcomes

This paper considers an unavoidable feature of the school environment, class rank. What are the long-run effects of a student's ordinal rank in elementary school? Using administrative data on all public-school students i...Read more...

Blog

South-West Social Mobility Commission's Substack:

Fixing a broken tongue

Lee Elliot Major explains why the language we use in education is important to challenge the divides that scar the education system....Read more...

Book

Handbook of the Economics of Education
Volume 7

Handbook of the Economics of Education, Volume Seven describes the research frontier in key topical areas and sets the agenda for further work. Sections in this new release include Methods for Measuring School Effectiven...Read more...

External report

Applying the Robbins Principle to further education and apprenticeship

Britain does well at higher education, and badly for its non-graduates. The main problem is our failure to train more people when they are young. Shockingly, 30 per cent of 18 year olds are not in education or training -...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Tracking the skills behind the AI boom: Evidence from 14 OECD countries

As artificial intelligence rapidly reshapes economies and societies, companies are seeking professionals with AI-related skills. This column uses data from online job postings to explore changes in the demand for these p...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... What girls study influences their offspring's health at birth

Educational reform can have a powerful impact on people's health with benefits for the next generation. Pilar Cuevas-Ruiz, Cristina Borra and Almudena Sevilla show how....Read more...

Chapter

The Implications of Pupil Rank for Achievement

The significance of social interaction has become an increasingly important part of economic thought and models through the work on peer effects, social norms, and networks. Within this literature, a novel focus of ranki...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do wind turbines have adverse health impacts

While wind power is considered key in the transition towards net zero, there are concerns about adverse health impacts on nearby residents. Based on precise geographical coordinates, we link a representative longitudinal...Read more...

Book

Equity in education: Levelling the playing field of learning - a practical guide for teachers

Equity in Education sets out a new equity-based approach in education to help teachers improve the prospects of under-resourced and working-class pupils. The equity approach recognises that we must address our own cultu...Read more...

Journal article

European Economic Review:

Adolescent development and the math gender gap

This paper investigates the determinants of the gap between girls and boys in mathematics performance (the 'math gap'). We are particularly interested in the role played by pubertal development in explaining the widening...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Uncovering the association between school qualifications and youth custody

Youth custody has severe long-term consequences for detained young people. Stephen Machin, Sandra McNally and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela investigate the relationship between GCSE qualifications and youth custody, and find t...Read more...