Results

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...

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...

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...

CEP discussion paper

The 2025 trade war: dynamic impacts across US States and the global economy

We use a dynamic trade and reallocation model with downward nominal wage rigidities to quantitatively assess the economic consequences of the recent increase in the U.S. tariffs on imports from Mexico, Canada, and China,...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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

Journal article

Econometrica:

A Comment on: "Walras-Bowley Lecture: Market power and wage inequality" by Shubhdeep Deb, Jan Eeckhout, Aseem Patel, and Lawrence Warren

A burgeoning literature in labor economics is focused on modeling employer labor market power, generally finding nontrivial estimates of monopsony power. A smaller literature also simultaneously incorporates product mark...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...

Journal article

Journal of International Business Studies:

Integrating host-country political heterogeneity into MNE-state bargaining: insights from international political economy

The international business (IB) literature has emphasised the heterogeneity of firm strategies in shaping MNE-state bargaining, but largely ignored the heterogeneity of states. In contrast, the international political ec...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...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Estimating students' valuation for college experiences

Quantifying the consumption value of college - the utility students derive from in-person instruction and on-campus social activities - has been challenging. We leverage the COVID-19 shock to elicit students' intended li...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Collective bargaining and spillovers in local labor markets

How does collective bargaining affect the broader wage structure? How are such spillovers transmitted? I present a model where firms with wage-setting power that are not covered by collective bargaining agreements, but a...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economics of the Household :

Marriage as insurance: job protection and job insecurity in France

Job insecurity is one of the risks that workers face on the labour market. As with any risk, individuals can choose to insure against it. We here consider marriage as a way of insuring against labour-market risk. The 199...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Who's got the power? Wage determination and its resilience in the Great Recession

Whereas wage inequality has risen markedly in most OECD countries in recent decades, it has fallen in several Southern European economies. To shed light on this phenomenon, we embed sectoral bargaining, which is common i...Read more...

Journal article

International Journal of Human Computer Studies:

Multitasking while driving: a time use study of commuting knowledge workers to assess current and future uses

Commuting has enormous impact on individuals, families, organizations, and society. Advances in vehicle automation may help workers employ the time spent commuting in productive work-tasks or wellbeing activities. To ach...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Multitasking while driving: a time use study of commuting knowledge workers to access current and future uses

Commuting has enormous impact on individuals, families, organizations, and society. Advances in vehicle automation may help workers employ the time spent commuting in productive work-tasks or wellbeing activities. To ach...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Population Economics:

In medio stat victus: labor demand effects of an increase in the retirement age

After falling for four decades, statutory retirement ages are increasing in most OECD countries. The labor market adjustment to these reforms has not yet been thoroughly investigated by the literature. We draw on a major...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics:

A natural experiment on job insecurity and fertility in France

Job insecurity can have wide-ranging consequences outside of the labour market. A 1999 rise in the French layoff tax paid by large private firms when they laid off older workers made younger workers less secure; this ins...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Service offshoring and export experience

Trade in services is important but difficult to measure. This column introduces a new dataset that helps understand the contribution of services to global value chains and their role in the process of exporting goods. Fi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Marriage as insurance: job protection and job insecurity in France

Job insecurity is one of the risks that workers face on the labour market. As with any risk, individuals can choose to insure against it. We here consider marriage as a way of insuring against labour-market risk. The 199...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Recovering from the first Covid-19 lockdown: Economic impacts of the UK's Eat Out to Help Out scheme

We evaluate some of the economic impacts of the UK's Eat Out to Help Out (EOTHO) scheme on the food service sector. EOTHO subsidised the cost of eating out, with a 50% discount Mondays to Wednesdays in August 2020. We ex...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Prices and inflation in a pandemic - a micro data approach

The Covid-19 lockdowns and recession are the most exceptional economic events in living memory and will impact the economy for years to come. One vital channel is via price changes. Price rises and cuts alter real wages,...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economic Studies:

Face-to-face communication in organisations

Communication is integral to organizations and yet field evidence on the relation between communication and worker productivity remains scarce. We argue that a core role of communication is to transmit information that h...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Better together? Heterogeneous effects of tracking on student achievement

I study the effects of early between-school ability tracking on student achievement, exploiting institutional differences between German federal states. In all states, about 40% of students transition to separate academi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Managing global production: theory and evidence from just-in-time supply chains

Global value chains are highly fragmented across countries and dominated by a few large multinational firms. But the challenges of an increasingly difficult international business environment are raising the question of ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A natural experiment on job insecurity and fertility in France

Job insecurity can have wide-ranging consequences outside of the labour market. We here argue that it reduces fertility amongst the employed. The 1999 rise in the French Delalande tax, paid by large private firms when th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Spillover effects from new housing supply

I estimate spillovers from new housing supply on house prices, crime rates, and household income. To estimate these effects, I use exogenous variation in supply induced by a housing subsidy implemented in middle-income n...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management:

Ease vs. noise: long-run changes in the value of transport (dis)amenities

For a complete cost-benefit analysis of durable infrastructures, it is important to understand how the value of non-market goods such as transit time and environmental quality changes as incomes rise in the long-run. We ...Read more...

Journal article

China and World Economy:

Fiscal subsidy policy on home appliances: its effects on domestic consumption and exports in China

This paper evaluates the effects of the Home Appliances Going to the Countryside (HAGC) policy, a fiscal subsidy program implemented in China to boost private consumption of home appliances in rural areas from 2007 to 20...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Ease versus noise: long-run changes in the value of transport (dis)amenities

For a complete cost-benefit analysis of durable infrastructures, it is important to understand how the value of non-market goods such as transit time and environmental quality changes as incomes rise in the long-run. We ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

The interconnections between services and goods trade at the firm-level

In this paper we study how international trade in goods and services interact at the firm level. Using a rich dataset on Belgian firms for the period 1995?2005, we show that: i) firms are much more likely to source servi...Read more...

Journal article

Economics Letters:

The regional effects of Germany's national minimum wage

We show that the minimum wage introduced in Germany in 2015 led to spatial wage convergence, in particular in the left tail of the distribution, without reducing relative employment in low-wage regions within the first t...Read more...

Journal article

CESifo Economic Studies:

Weights to address non-parallel trends in panel difference-in-differences models

Causal inference using the difference-in-differences (DD) method relies on the untestable assumption of parallel counterfactual trends across units that are assigned to different treatments. To facilitate the application...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The interconnections between services and goods trade at the firm-level

In this paper we study how international trade in goods and services interact at the firm level. Using a rich dataset on Belgian firms during the period 1995-2005, we show that: i) firms are much more likely to source se...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Tenure in office and public procurement

We study the impact of politicians' tenure in office on the outcomes of public procurement. To this purpose, we match a data set on the politics of Italian municipal governments to a data set on the procurement auctions ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Traffic Externalities and Housing Prices: Evidence from the London Congestion Charge

This study exploits the introduction of the London Congestion Charge (CC) that greatly improves traffic conditions in Central London to provide new evidence on the capitalization of traffic externalities onto housing val...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Bargain hunters: calculating the benefits of consumer search

To what extent can shoppers convert the time they spend looking for particular products into monetary savings? The authors use electronic tags to study the behaviour of 12,000 consumers in a large supermarket in Northern...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The future of the German industrial relations model

The paper examines recent evidence on the erosion of the German industrial relations model. Although its coverage has declined, much of this has occurred in smaller and newer establishments, and compared with Britain, it...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Walk This Way: Estimating Impacts of Walk in Centres at Hospital Emergency Departments in the English National Health Service

In publicly funded health care systems policy-makers face a dilemma: placing low acuity emergency care services outside hospitals may widen access to care and divert patients from making costly hospital visits, but may a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Consumer search: evidence from path-tracking data

We estimate the effect of consumer search on the price of the purchased product in a physical store environment. We implement the analysis using a unique data set obtained from radio frequency identification tags, which ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Because I'm worth it: a lab-field experiment on the spillover effects of incentives in health

We conduct a controlled lab-field experiment to directly test the short-run spillover effects of one-off financial incentives in health. We consider how incentives affect effort in a physical activity task ? and then how...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Game of Zones: The Economics of Conservation Areas

Provided there are positive external benefits attached to the historic character of buildings, owners of properties in designated conservation areas benefit from a reduction in uncertainty regarding the future of their a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Service Trade and Occupational Tasks: An Empirical Investigation

Using micro data for Belgium we investigate the relationship between occupational tasks changes and the rise of service trade. We focus the analysis on the extensive margin and look at the heterogeneous proliferation of ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Change and Persistence in the German Model of Collective Bargaining and Worker Representation

This paper depicts and examines the decline in collective bargaining coverage in Germany. Using repeat cross-section and longitudinal data from the IAB Establishment Panel, we show the overwhelming importance of behavior...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Individual Voice in Employment Relationships: A Comparison Under Different Forms of Workplace Representation

This article considers the role of individual employee voice in regulating the `zone of acceptance? within the employment relationship, and examines the extent to which different models of collective voice inhibit or fos...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Union Density and Varieties of Coverage: The Anatomy of Union Wage Effects in Germany

Collective bargaining in Germany takes place either at the industry level or at the firm level; collective bargaining coverage is much higher than union density; and not all employees in a covered firm are necessarily co...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Individualisation and Growing Diversity of Employment Relationships

At a time when the economic recession is more severe, and trade unions are weaker, than at any time since the War, it would be unproductive to speculate about the extent to which these changes have been imposed, acquiesc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Individual Voice in Employment Relationships: A Comparison Under Different Collective Voice Regimes

This article examines the relationship between individual and collective employee voice, and management-led voice (appraisal), under contrasted collective voice regimes. In the first, collective workplace voice depends o...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Minimum Wages and Schooling: Evidence from the UK's Introduction of a National Minimum Wage

This paper uses the introduction of the national minimum wage in the UK in April 1999 as a `natural experiment? to analyse the impact of minimum wages on enrolment in schooling. At the time of its introduction, only work...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Slip Sliding Away: Further Union Decline in Germany and Britain

This paper presents the first comparative analysis of the decline in collective bargaining in two European countries where that decline has been most pronounced. Using workplace-level data and a common model, we present ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Wage Bargaining and the Boundaries of the Multinational Firm

Do variations in labor market institutions across countries affect the cross-border organization of the firm? Using firm-level data on multinationals located in France, we show that firms are more likely to outsource the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Collective Agreements, Wages and Restructuring in Transition

Using a large matched employer-employee dataset, the authors investigate the relationship between collective agreements, wages and restructuring in transition in three former centrally planned economies (Czech Republic, ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Extent of Collective Bargaining and Workplace Representation: Transitions between States and their Determinants. A Comparative Analysis of Germany and Great Britain

Industrial relations are in flux in many nations, perhaps most notably in Germany and Britain. That said, comparatively little is known in any detail of the changing pattern of the institutions of collective bargaining a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Participation in Organisations: Economic Approaches

Under the auspices of the debate about high performance work systems, it has been suggested that the evidence of positive results is disappointing and that one reason is that there has been a lack of theory. This paper a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Real Origins of the Great Depression: Monopoly Power, Unions and the American Business Cycle in the 1920s

We attempt to explain the severe 1920-21 recession, the roaring 1920s boom, and the slide into the Great Depression after 1929 in a unified framework. The model combines monopolistic product market competition with searc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Product Market Deregulation and the U.S. Employment Miracle

We consider the dynamic relationship between product market entry regulation and equilibrium unemployment. The main theoretical contribution is combining a job matching model with monopolistic competition in the goods ma...Read more...

Manpower Human Resource Lab paper

Performance Pay and Within-Firm Wage Inequality

This paper examines the impact of performance-related pay on wage differentials within firms. Our theoretical framework predicts that, compared to a fixed pay system, pay schemes based on individual effort increase withi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Labor Market Reforms, Job Instability, and the Flexibility of the Employment Relationship

We endogenize separation in a search model of the labor market and allow for bargaining over the continuation of employment relationships following productivity shocks to take place under asymmetric information. In such ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Wage Distributions by Bargaining Regime: Linked Employer-Employee Data Evidence from Germany

Using linked employer-employee data from the German Structure of Earnings Survey 2001, this paper provides a comprehensive picture of the wage structure in three wage-setting regimes prevalent in the German system of ind...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Search and Matching Frictions and Optimal Monetary Policy

I analyze optimal monetary policy in an economy with search and matching frictions in the labor market and staggered nominal wage and price contracts. In this framework, as opposed to the standard New Keynesian model, pr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Chinese Unions: Nugatory or Transforming? An 'Alice' Analysis

China has, apparently, more trade union members than the rest of the world put together. But the unions do not function in the same way as western trade unions. In particular Chinese unions are subservient to the Partyst...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The De-Collectivisation of Pay Setting in Britain 1990-1998: Incidence, Determinants and Impact

Overall, collective bargaining coverage has dropped by around fourteen percentage points. This paper investigates the causes and consequences of the decline in collective bargaining in Britain between 1990 and 1998. One ...Read more...

Book

Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market

This book aims to provide a basis for better unemployment policy: showing how the lessons learned from experience and theory can be applied to greatly reduce the waste and misery of high unemployment. The book surveys th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Labor Market Institutions, Wages and Investment

Labor market institutions, via their effect on the wage structure, affect the investment decisions of firms in labor markets with frictions. This observation helps explain rising wage inequality in the US, but a relative...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Timeliness, Trade and Agglomeration

An important element of the cost of distance is time taken in delivering final and intermediate goods. We argue that time costs are qualitatively different from direct monetary costs such as freight charges. The differen...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Comparatively Open: Statutory Information Disclosure for Consultation and Bargaining in Germany, France and the UK

Information provision is an important part of all mechanisms which give employees voice at work. This paper considers the law on information disclosure for joint consultation and collective bargaining in three countries,...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Anatomy of Union Decline in Britain: 1990-1998

To what extent can the decline in British trade union density between 1990 and 1998 be attributed to declining opportunities to unionize compared to declining propensity to unionize among workers with the opportunity to ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unemployment in Britain: A European Success Story

Unemployment in Britain has fallen from high European-style levels to US levels. I argue that the key reasons are first the reform of monetary policy, in 1993 with the adoption of inflation targeting and in 1997 with the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Reviewing the Statutory Union Recognition (ERA 1999)

In 2000 the UK government introduced, under the Employment Relations Act of 1999, a new statutory union recognition procedure, while in 2003 it published a consultation document on its Review of the Act. The document con...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Right to Know: Disclosure of Information for Collective Bargaining and Joint Consultation

The legal obligation on employers to provide information to employees has grown since the early 1970s. At that time, the emphasis was on disclosure for collective bargaining. In the 1980s and 1990s, the emphasis shifted ...Read more...