Results

CEP discussion paper

Firm dynamics and growth with soft budget constraints

We develop a model of endogenous growth and firm dynamics with soft budget constraints, where firms differ in their innovation speed and slower firms need additional financing in order to eventually innovate. As creditor...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Empirical welfare analysis with hedonic budget constraints

We analyze demand settings where heterogeneous consumers maximize utility for product attributes subject to a nonlinear budget constraint. We develop nonparametric methods for welfare-analysis of interventions that chang...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Autumn Statement: 'no one will be spared the pain'

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt faces a difficult balancing act to try and delay many measures while doing enough in the short run to appease the markets. John Van Reenen comments briefly on what can be expected in the Autumn Sta...Read more...

Blog

Harvard Business Review:

The UK economic crisis might not be a one-off

Markets have reacted poorly to the UK government's new "mini-budget" combining energy price caps with tax cuts for the well off. The government's search for a quick fix to economic growth is a mistake. In fact, restartin...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Why natural experiments won the Nobel

Josh Angrist, David Card, and Guido Imbens shared the Nobel in 2021 for their pioneering work on natural experiments that, in the words of the committee, "revolutionised empirical research". Steve Pischke tells Tim Phill...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Government policy fails to join the dots on the key challenges of innovation, net zero, and levelling up

Anna Valero writes that funding clean technologies, such as ocean and wind energy, can be a triple win, helping to address climate change, generating growth, and contributing to levelling up. Yet the 2021 Budget failed t...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Sink or swim time? Social mobility and the 2021 Budget

Lee Elliot Major assesses the prospects for social mobility and economic recovery in Rishi Sunak's 2021 Budget....Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

The local economic impacts of regeneration projects: evidence from UK's single regeneration budget

Many governments aim to improve the labour market outcomes of people living in deprived areas through "place-making" initiatives. Economists are often sceptical about the effectiveness of such policies, but empirical evi...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Budget 2020: will it move the economy onto a sustainable and inclusive growth path?

The UK's challenges around productivity, regional disparities and the transition to net zero emissions are complex and interconnected, made even more so by the coronavirus outbreak and Brexit. Anna Valero argues that whi...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Budget 2020: a bold response to coronavirus, but more must be done if it becomes widespread in the UK

While the 2020 Budget offers an overall adequate response to the challenges currently posed by coronavirus, there are three issues that need to be addressed further, especially as the outbreak becomes more widespread, wr...Read more...

Blog

UK in a Changing Europe:

New chancellor, new challenge: evaluating the coronavirus budget

Thomas Sampson examines the first UK budget to balance the shocks of Covid-19 and Brexit....Read more...

CEP election analysis

Policing and crime

A long period of austerity and budget cuts in policing that started when Theresa May became Home Secretary may be coming to an end. As austerity bit and budget cuts were implemented, this considerably reduced the size of...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Local Economic Impacts of Regeneration Projects: Evidence from UK's Single Regeneration Budget

We study the local economic impacts of a major regeneration programme aimed at enhancing the quality of life of local people in deprived neighbourhoods in the UK. The analysis is based on a panel of firm and area level d...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Summer budget 2015: Osborne is right to raise wages, but a clearer productivity plan is required

Yesterday, George Osborne delivered the new government?s first budget in which he surprised many by hiking the minimum wage significantly. John Van Reenen reviews the measures introduced, writing that the Chancellor is r...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Budget 2015: What the Chancellor said and didn?t say

Who would have thought an election was around the corner? John Van Reenen looks at what George Osborne had to say in the budget speech as well as what he didn?t say; the Chancellor neither mentioned the productivity prob...Read more...

Blog

LSE European Politics and Policy Blog:

UK Spending Review 2013: A triumph of politics over reason?

The UK?s Spending Review has been forced on the British Chancellor because weak economic growth has blown a hole in the deficit reduction programme. John Van Reenen welcomes the partial reversal of the hugely damaging cu...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

From `Plan B? to `Plan V?: what the UK economy needs to reboot and rebalance growth

With the threat of stagflation and interest rate rises, the current economic climate shows little sign of improvement in the near future. John Van Reenen finds that the government?s severe austerity programme, with its v...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Seigniorage

In this paper I analyse four different but related concepts, each of which highlights some aspect of the way in which the state acquires command over real resources through its ability to issue fiat money. They are (1) s...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Fallacy of the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level

It is not common for an entire scholarly literature to be based on a fallacy, that is, 'on faulty reasoning; misleading or unsound argument'. The 'fiscal theory of the price level', recently re-developed by Woodford,...Read more...