Results

Journal article

Regional Science and Urban Economics: Forthcoming

Caring in the time of austerity

The years after the election of the UK's coalition government in 2010 saw a decline in central funding to local government and a fall in expenditure on a range of local services, including social services. These cuts wer...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Property Investment and Finance:

Real estate insights: sweetening the dog's breakfast that is British property taxes

Purpose - This study aims to stimulate debate on the long overdue strategic reform of property taxes. Design/methodology/approach - This study adopts an approach combining a systematic literature review with economic ana...Read more...

Blog

LSE Inequalities:

How does housing affect educational outcomes? Evidence from the UK's Right to Buy scheme

Right-to-Buy gave tenants of local authority owned 'council' houses the chance to own their home. The policy, which began in 1980, has been criticised for increasing inequality in the housing market, but Richard Disney a...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Return innovation: how migration shapes diffusion of new technologies

Novel products, processes and technologies are important drivers of economic growth. Davide Coluccia and Gaia Dossi show how migrants from Britain to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century not only too...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...

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...

CEP discussion paper

Return innovation: the knowledge spillovers of the British migration to the United States, 1870-1940

This paper documents that out-migration promotes the diffusion of innovation from the country of destination to the country of origin of migrants. Between 1870 and 1940, nearly four million British immigrants settled in ...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

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...

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

Five facts about MPCs: evidence from a randomized experiment

We present experimental evidence on the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) out of transitory transfers, distributing prepaid debit cards with different features. The one-month MPC is substantially higher with a card ex...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

Journal of Urban Economics:

On the economic impacts of mortgage credit expansion policies: evidence from help to buy

We take advantage of two spatial discontinuities in Britain's Help to Buy (HtB) scheme to explore the effectiveness and distributional implications of mortgage credit expansion policies. Employing a Difference-in-Discont...Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Understanding crowding out, displacement, and leakage

Will Brett-Harding discusses what to consider regarding crowding out, displacement and leakage, when thinking about local economic growth policies....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

Access to guns in the heat of the moment: more restrictive gun laws mitigate the effect of temperature on violence

Gun violence is a major problem in the United States, and extensive prior work has shown that higher temperatures increase violent behavior. We consider whether restricting the concealed carry of firearms mitigates or ex...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Imperfect signals

A pre-condition for employer learning is that signals at labor market entry do not fully reveal graduates' productivity. I model various distinct sources of signal imperfection - such as noise and multi-dimensional types...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The signaling value of legal form in debt financing

We examine if a startup's legal form choice is used as a signal by credit providers to infer its risk to default on a loan. We propose that choosing a legal form with low minimum capital requirements signals higher defau...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

On Track to Success? Returns to vocational education against different alternatives

Many countries consider expanding vocational curricula in secondary education to boost skills and labour market outcomes among non-university-bound students. However, critics fear this could divert other students from mo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Sparse production networks

Firm-to-firm connections in domestic and international production networks play a fundamental role in economic outcomes. Firm heterogeneity and the sparse nature of firm-to-firm connections implicitly discipline network ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Charity in the time of austerity: in search of the 'Big Society'

The years after the election of the UK's coalition government in 2010 saw a decline in central funding to local government and a fall in expenditure on a range of local services, including social services. These cuts wer...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economics and Statistics :

Ask a local: improving the public pricing of land titles in urban Tanzania

Information on willingness-to-pay is key for public pricing and allocation of services but not easily collected. Studying land titles in Dar-es-Salaam, we ask whether local leaders know and will reveal plot owners' willi...Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Lessons from a robust evaluation of the UK's Eat Out to Help Out scheme

Eat Out to Help Out had a limited effect on footfall and recruitment. Supporting businesses in any context (Covid-19, energy crisis, etc.) needs consideration of effective mechanisms for encouraging programme take-up and...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Ask a local: improving the public pricing of land titles in urban Tanzania

Information on willingness-to-pay is key for public pricing and allocation of services but not easily collected. Studying land titles in Dar-es-Salaam, we ask whether local leaders know and will reveal plot owners' willi...Read more...

Journal article

Education Economics:

A comparison of earnings related to higher technical and academic education

Not much is known about higher technical education in England, but current education policy looks positively at it to improve labour productivity and social mobility. We provide updated estimates of individual earnings d...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance:

Long-run expectations of households

The rational expectations assumption, e.g. in life-cycle models and portfolio-choice models, prescribes that all actions are in line with a well-structured and unbiased system of expectations. In reality, justification a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Why have house prices risen so much more than rents in superstar cities?

In most countries ? particularly in supply constrained superstar cities ? house prices have risen much more strongly than rents over the last two decades. We provide an explanation that does not rely on falling interest ...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 occasional paper

Regional differences in UK transport BCRs: an empirical assessment

The UK government uses a Value for Money (VfM) framework to help allocate infrastructure expenditure. At the core of this framework is a benefit to cost ratio (BCR) that is calculated using a set of established monetised...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Where versus What: College Value-Added and Returns to Field of Study in Further Education

Enrolling in vocational education and training programs constitutes a natural response to the current dynamics of the labour market, which is being reshaped by routinisation, automation, and outsourcing. We estimate the ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

On the economic impacts of mortgage credit expansion policies: evidence from help to buy

Mortgage credit expansion policies - such as UK's Help to Buy (HtB) - aim to increase access to and affordability of owner-occupied housing and are widespread around the world. We take advantage of spatial discontinuitie...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...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Geography, competition, and optimal multilateral trade policy

How should multilateral trade policy be designed in a world in which countries differ in terms of market access and technology, and firms with market power differ in terms of productivity? We answer this question in a mo...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

The value of progression in further education

In this study, we investigate the value of progression associated with different vocational qualifications disaggregated by subject area of study. Previous analyses of labour market outcomes by subject of study demonstra...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Labour market outcomes disaggregated by subject area using the Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) data

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between labour market outcomes and vocational qualifications disaggregated by subject area of study. Using individuals holding vocational qualifications in any subject at th...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

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...

CVER Research Paper

A comparison of earnings related to higher level vocational/technical and academic education

Using rich administrative data for a full cohort of English secondary school leavers (2002/03 academic year), we compare earnings of people with higher vocational/technical qualifications to the earnings of degree holder...Read more...

Blog

CVER Blog:

Higher vocational education: An alternative to degrees?

A detailed picture of earnings effects of university degrees is emerging, but not much is known about the benefits of higher vocational education. A recent report by the IFS provides evidence on the extensive earnings b...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Geography, competition and optimal multilateral trade policy

How should multilateral trade policy be designed in a world in which countries differ in terms of market access and technology, and firms with market power differ in terms of productivity? We answer this question in a mo...Read more...

Journal article

The Lancet:

Transparency about the outcomes of mental health services (IAPT approach): an analysis of public data

Background: Internationally, the clinical outcomes of routine mental health services are rarely recorded or reported; however, an exception is the English Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) service, which...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Settling the counterfactual debate: Is there a preferable counterfactual when estimating the returns to vocational qualifications?

Using information from the Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) data set, it is now possible to compare the characteristics and estimates for learners with different qualifications encompassing both types of counterfact...Read more...

CVER Briefing Note

Further analysis of the earnings differentials associated with BTECs

We analyse whether there is an earnings differential associated with having a BTEC qualification as a young person?s highest qualification. Previous analyses of wage differentials using survey data on a sample of all wor...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

The earnings differentials associated with vocational education and training using the Longitudinal Education Outcomes data

For the first time, the matched Longitudinal Education Outcomes has been made available for analysis of qualification attainment and labour market outcomes in England. Using comprehensive information from different schoo...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Returning to returns: revisiting the British education evidence

We revisit the question of what is the rate of return to education in Great Britain. We make two contributions. Firstly, we re-assess the robustness of Harmon and Walker (1995), Oreopoulos (2006) and Devereux and Hart (2...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

The longer the better? The impact of the 2012 apprenticeship reform in England on achievement and other outcomes

In this paper, we estimate the effect of a reform of apprenticeships in England in 2012, which changed the duration for Intermediate Apprenticeships in many industries, while other sectors already exceeded the incoming m...Read more...

CVER Briefing Note

An analysis of the duration and achievement of apprenticeships in England

For the cohort of all 516,880 intermediate and advanced apprenticeships starting in England in 2011/12, we find that one third were withdrawn and a further 10 per cent were not completed within 36 months. We find that c...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Is distance dead? Face-to-face communication and productivity in teams

Has technology made face-to-face communication redundant? We investigate using a natural experiment in an organisation where a worker must communicate complex electronic information to a colleague. Productivity is higher...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Fertility and mothers' labor supply: new evidence using time-to-conception

We analyze the impact of children on their mothers' labor market outcomes in the UK. We use time-to-conception of the first child as an exogenous variation in the probability of having more children. We find that having ...Read more...

Journal article

IZA Journal of Labor and Development:

Pathways from school to work in the developing world

This paper uses novel micro data from the ILO-STWT surveys to provide evidence on the duration, endpoint, and determinants of the transition from school to work in a sample of 23 low- and middle-income countries around t...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Social Policy:

Educational inequality, educational expansion and intergenerational mobility

The distribution of education by social background and the mobility prospects of society are intimately connected. To begin to predict future trends in mobility in the UK we bring together evidence on educational inequal...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...

Journal article

Oxford Economic Papers:

Graduate returns, degree class premia and higher education expansion in the UK

We investigate the extent to which graduate returns vary according to the class of degree achieved by UK university students, and examine changes over time in estimated degree class premia. Using a variety of complementa...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Mental health and education decisions

Mental health problems have been rising internationally. The link between poor mental health and low educational outcomes is particularly interesting in the case of the UK which has a low international ranking both on me...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Overseas students: the impact on domestic student numbers

The rapid influx of international students into UK universities over the past two decades has expanded the number of places available for domestic postgraduates, according to research by Stephen Machin and Richard Murphy...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Paying out and crowding out? The globalisation of higher education

We investigate the rapid influx of overseas students into UK higher education and the impact on the number of domestic students. Using administrative data since 1994/5, we find no evidence of crowd out of domestic underg...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Speed 2.0. Evaluating Access to Universal Digital Highways

This paper shows that having access to a fast Internet connection is an important determinant of capitalization effects in property markets. We combine microdata on property prices in England between 1995 and 2010 with l...Read more...

Blog

LSE European Politics and Policy Blog:

Leaving the European Union would likely have a significant negative impact on the UK?s economy

How would leaving the EU affect the UK's economy? Gianmarco Ottaviano, Joao Paulo Pessoa, Thomas Sampson and John Van Reenen outline findings from a new report on the economic consequences of a Brexit. They indicate that...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

On the Measurement of Trade Costs: Direct vs. Indirect Approaches to Quantifying Standards and Technical Regulations

In this article, we review the literature on the measurement of trade costs in international trade with a special emphasis on nontariff measures and in particular on standards and technical regulations. We distinguish `d...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Trade Liberalisation Does Not Always Raise Wage Premia: Evidence from Ugandan Districts

The process of economic integration over the past two decades has been accompanied by an expanding income wedge between skilled and unskilled workers in many developing countries. This was also the case for Ugandan wage ...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Mental Health and Education Decisions

Mental health problems - and depression in particular - have been rising internationally. The link between poor mental health and poor educational outcomes is particularly interesting in the case of the UK which has a lo...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Economics Implications of House Price Capitalization: A Synthesis

In this article I argue that the extent to which fiscal variables are capitalized into house prices has important economic implications. I synthesize an emerging literature that explores the conditions under which public...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Fees and loathing: higher education finance and university participation

With the UK's cap on tuition fees due to rise to #9,000, Gill Wyness looks at the impact of past fee increases on young people's decisions to go to university....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

School Proximity and Child Labor Evidence from Rurul Tanzania

Is improved school accessibility an effective policy tool for reducing child labor in developing countries? We address this question using micro data from rural Tanzania and a regression strategy that attempts to control...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Interrelationship between HR, Strategy and Profitability in Service SMEs: Empirical Evidence from the UK Tourism Hospitality and Leisure Sector

We investigate the strategies, HR attributes and their synergies that are associated with superior performance in service SMEs using data from the UK Tourism Hospitality and Leisure (THL) sector. A major advantage of our...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Spatial Costs in a Monocentric City (And Implications for Agglomeration)

Using water supply as a model for a wider range of infrastructure services, the effect of a negative exponential density gradient on distribution costs is investigated for four monocentric urban development scenarios: (a...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

University Quality and Graduate Wages in the UK

We examine the links between various measures of university quality and graduate earnings in the United Kingdom. We explore the implications of using different measures of quality and combining them into an aggregate mea...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Comparing Willingness-to-Pay and Subjective Well-Being in the Context of Non-Market Goods

In order to value non-market goods, economists estimate individuals? willingness to pay (WTP) for these goods using revealed or stated preference methods. We compare these conventional approaches with subjective well-bei...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Cost of Grade Retention

This paper uses administrative longitudinal micro data on the universe of Junior High school students in Uruguay to measure the effect of grade failure on students' subsequent school outcomes. Exploiting the discontinuit...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...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Returns to Apprenticeship Training in Austria: Evidence from Failed Firms

Little is known about the payoffs to apprenticeship training in the German speaking countries for the participants. OLS estimates suggest that the returns are similar to those of other types of schooling. However, there ...Read more...

Manpower Human Resource Lab paper

Overqualification, Job Dissatisfaction and Increasing Dispersion in the Returns to Graduate Education

Increasing dispersion in the returns to graduate education is found, using quantile regression. This trend is related to rising overqualification. We distinguish between and validate measures of ?Real? and ?Formal? overq...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does the Underground Economy Hold Back Financial Deepening? Evidence from the Italian Credit Market

The paper investigates the relationship between underground activities and financial deepening. The access to external finance requires entrepreneurs to disclose credible information through formal documentation. This re...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Sheepskin or Prozac: The Causal Effect of Education on Mental Health

Mental illness is associated with large costs to individuals and society. Education improves various health outcomes but little work has been done on mental illness. To obtain unbiased estimates of the effect of educatio...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Using Rate of Return Analyses to Understand Sector Skill Needs

Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Changes in Returns to Education in Latin America: the Role of Demand and Supply of Skills

Changes in the relative wages of workers with different amounts of education have profound implications for developing countries, where initial levels of inequality are often very high. In this paper we use micro data fo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Apprenticeship in Europe: 'Fading' or Flourishing?

This paper sets out the extent and defining characteristics of apprenticeship in Europe. Apprenticeship is then situated within the wider context of European provision for education and training of 16-19 year olds and a ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Product Market Competition Returns to Skill and Wage Inequality

This paper shows that increasing product market competition can have a direct impact on the employment relationship and on wage inequality. I develop a simple model in which an increase in product market competition incr...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Human Resources:

Crime and economic incentives

We explore the role that economic incentives, particularly changes in wages at the bottom end of the wage distribution, play in determining crime rates. We use data on the police force areas of England and Wales between ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Buzz: Face-to-Face Contact and the Urban Economy

This paper argues that existing models of urban concentrations are incomplete unless grounded in the most fundamental aspect of proximity; face-to-face contact. Face-to-face contact has four main features; it is an effic...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Why is the Rate of Return to Schooling Higher For Women Than For Men?

The rate of return to schooling appears to be nearly two percentage points greater for females than for males in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data set, despite the fact that females tend to earn less, both a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Education and Italian Regional Development

Given recent emphasis on externality to education, macroeconomic studies have a role to play in the analysis of return to schooling. In this paper we study the connection between growth and human capital in a convergence...Read more...