Results

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Judge dread: Court severity, repossession risk and demand in mortgage and housing markets

We study the impact of borrower protection on mortgage and housing demand using variation in the likelihood that houses are repossessed coming from heterogeneity in preferences of local judges. We develop a framework tha...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics:

International friends and enemies

We examine whether, as countries become more economically dependent on a trade partner, they realign politically toward that trade partner. We use network measures of economic exposure to foreign productivity growth deri...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...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics:

Technology transfer in global value chains

Global value chains create opportunities for North-South technology diffusion. This paper studies technology transfer in value chains when contracts are incomplete and input production technologies are imperfectly exclud...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

Journal of Management Studies:

Business groups and export performance: the role of coordination failures and institutional configurations

We explore the nature of business groups (BGs) and their affiliates in emerging markets through the lens of the coordination failures associated with economic development. We propose that BGs develop distinct economic an...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Recidivism and neighbourhood institutions

Between 30% and 50% of individuals sentenced to prison are re-incarcerated in the two years after their release. Andres Barrios-Fernandez and Jorge Garcia-Hombrados examine links between church openings in Chile and re-i...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economics and Statistics:

The impact of contract enforcement costs on value chains and aggregate productivity

I study how supplier contracting frictions shape the patterns of intermediate input use and quantify the impact of these distortions on aggregate productivity. Using the frequency of litigation between US firms as a nove...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Bureaucracy and development

How does bureaucracy matter for development? Over the last years, an enormous interest in this question has created a large body of research, mostly focused around evidence from field experiments and micro-level administ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Minimum wages and the China syndrome: causal evidence from US local labor markets

Exposure to Chinese import competition led to significant manufacturing job losses in the United States. Local labor markets, however, differ significantly in how they fared with respect to manufacturing employment. An i...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Pandemic shock and economic divergence: political economy before and after the black death

We document how the Black Death activated politics and led to economic divergence within Europe. Before the pandemic, economic development was similar in Eastern and Western German cities despite greater political fragme...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Population Economics:

Social mobility and political regimes: intergenerational mobility in Hungary, 1949-2017

This paper measures social mobility rates in Hungary during the period 1949 to 2017, using surnames to measure social status. In those years, there were two very different social regimes. The first was the Hungarian Peop...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy:

Education and management practices

The empirical management literature has found that the education of both managers and the workforce more generally appears to be an important driver of better management practices. This article sets out how such relation...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

State capacity and development clusters

The determinants of economic development have been debated for many years. However, some of these determinants have been hard to measure internationally. Tim Besley, Chris Dann and Torsten Persson review evidence from 25...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Multi-task agents and incentives: the case of teaching and research for university professors

This paper exploits a natural experiment to study the effects of providing stronger research incentives to faculty members on universities? average teaching and research performance. The results indicate that professors ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Colonial legacies: shaping African cities

Institutions persisting from colonial rule affect the spatial structure and conditions under which 100s of millions of people live in Sub-saharan African cities. In a sample of 318 cities, Francophone cities have more co...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economic Studies:

Public goods institutions, human capital, and growth: evidence from German history

What are the origins and consequences of the state as a provider of public goods? We study public goods provision established through new laws in German cities during the 1500s. Cities that adopted the laws subsequently ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Europe's transformation after Gutenberg: the impact of new media and competition

Jeremiah Dittmar explores the effects of the printing press and the new forms of competition that accompanied its introduction....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

New media and competition: printing and Europe's transformation after Gutenberg

We study the role of book content in economic, religious, and institutional development after the introduction of printing, and the role of competition in determining the amount and content of local printing. We focus on...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Austerity States, Institutional Dismantling and the Governance of Sub-National Economic Development: The Demise of the Regional Development Agencies in England

Contributing to interpretations of the governance geographies of austerity, the paper explains how, why and in what forms austerity states are constructed by actors in particular political-economic contexts and geographi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

State capacity and public goods: institutional change, human capital and growth in early modern Germany

What are the origins and consequences of the state as a provider of public goods? We study legal reforms that established mass public education and increased state capacity in German cities during the 1500s. These fundam...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Institutions and export dynamics

We study how contract enforcement and export experience shape firm export dynamics in an environment with incomplete information. We show that exporters start with higher volumes and sell for longer periods in countries ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The unbearable divergence of unemployment in Europe

Unemployment in Europe is not only ?too high?, it is also too different across countries that belong to a monetary union. In this paper we i) document this increasing heterogeneity, ii) try to explain it and iii) draw fr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The impact of contract enforcement costs on outsourcing and aggregate productivity

Legal institutions affect economic outcomes, but how much? This paper documents how costly supplier contract enforcement shapes firm boundaries, and quantifies the impact of this transaction cost on aggregate productivit...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Media, markets and institutional change: evidence from the protestant reformation

This research studies the role of competition in the diffusion of radical ideas and institutional change during the Protestant Reformation. We construct a new measure of religious content in the media using data on all k...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...

CEP discussion paper

Optimal contracting and the organization of knowledge

We study contractual arrangements that support an efficient use of time in a knowledge-intensive economy in which agents endogenously specialize in either production or consulting. The resulting market for advice is plag...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Local Institutions and Local Economic Growth: The State of the Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) in England - A National Survey

This study seeks to take stock of where the LEPs are at and where they are heading by analysing their strategies and priorities, organisation and governance, resources, effectiveness and working relations, innovations, l...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unemployment in the Great Recession

This paper studies the responses of unemployment in Germany, the United States and Britain to the Great Recession of 2008-09 by making use of Beveridge curve analysis, and in the entire OECD with other techniques. It is ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A Model of Equilibrium Institutions

Institutions that serve the interests of an elite are often cited as an important reason for poor economic performance. This paper builds a model of institutions that allocate resources and power to maximize the payoff o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Determinants of Intrafirm Trade: Evidence from French Firms

How well does the theory of the firm explain the choice between intrafirm and arms' length trade? This paper uses firm-level import data from France to look into this question. We find support for three key predictions o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Institutions and Export Dynamics

We study the role of contract enforcement in shaping the dynamics of international trade at the firm level. We develop a theoretical model to describe how agents build reputations to overcome the problems created by weak...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Paying for Performance: Incentive Pay Schemes and Employees' Financial Participation

We present new comparable data on the incidence of performance pay schemes in Europe and the USA. We find that the percentage of employees exposed to incentive pay schemes ranges from around 10-15 percent in some Europea...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Explaining Job Polarization in Europe: The Roles of Technology, Globalization and Institutions

This paper shows the employment structure of 16 European countries has been polarizing in recent years with the employment shares of managers, professionals and low-paid personal services workers increasing at the expens...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The End of National Models in Employment Relations?

The erosion of a number of national systems of employment relations, and the evidence from large scale workplace surveys has brought attention to the considerable diversity of employment systems within major economies. T...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Family Types and the Persistence of Regional Disparities in Europe

This paper examines the association between one of the most basic institutional forms, the family, and a series of demographic, educational, social, and economic indicators across regions in Europe. Using Emmanuel Todd?s...Read more...

CEP report

Changes in Wage Inequality

We examine trends in wage inequality in the US and other countries over the past four decades. We show that there has been a secular increase in the 90-50 wage differential in the US and the UK since the late 1970s. By c...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The CEP-OECD Institutions Data Set (1960-2004)

This dataset contains information about the evolution of labour market institutions in twenty OECD countries from 1960 to 2004. The countries in the sample are:<br> Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Are European Labor Markets As Awful As All That?

?The standard explanation of why advanced Europe has generated less work per adult than the US is that something is seriously amiss with EU labor markets. The theme of this piece is simple. Compared to an ideal competiti...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The 'Network Economy' and Models of the Employment Contract: Psychological, Economic and Legal

The emergence of the so-called ?network economy? and the development of project-based work pose a fundamental challenge to established methods of regulating the employment relationship. There appears to be an unsatisfied...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Aggregate Growth and the Efficiency of Labour Reallocation

We consider the potential importance of labour market efficiency for aggregate growth. The idea is that efficient labour markets move workers more quickly from low to high productivity sites, thereby raising aggregate pr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A Picture of European Unemployment: Success and Failure.

Average unemployment in Europe today is relatively high compared with OECD countries outside Europe. The majority of countries in Europe today have lower unemployment than any OECD country outside Europe, including the U...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Educational Attainment, Labour Market Institutions, and the Structure of Production

A key feature of OECD economic growth since the early 1970s has been the secular decline in manufacturing's share of GDP and the secular rise of service sectors. This paper examines the role played by relative prices, t...Read more...