Results

CEP discussion paper

Employer market power: models and methods

It is now widely recognized that employers hold some wage-setting power over workers, and several recent reviews cover the resulting surge of research on monopsony. We take a high-level view, introducing the idea of the ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Industrial Economics:

Asymmetric pass-through and competition

We study the retail price pass-through of four major tax changes in petroleum products using daily pricing data from gas stations on small Greek islands. We find that (i) the pass-through of the tax hikes is five times h...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

What is the "right" geographic market definition?

This paper examines the "right" geographic definition of relevant markets by analyzing how excise tax pass-through varies with local competition in the retail gasoline market of a large metropolitan city. Using a natural...Read more...

Journal article

International Journal of Industrial Organization:

What is the "right" geographic market definition?

This paper examines the "right" geographic definition of relevant markets by analyzing how excise tax pass-through varies with local competition in the retail gasoline market of a large metropolitan city. Using a natural...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A wartime labor market: the case of Ukraine

Wars disrupt labor markets, yet systematic evidence on how markets for labor services operate during conflicts is almost entirely absent. Ukraine is a rare exception: despite the full-scale Russian invasion, timely data ...Read more...

Journal article

International Journal of Industrial Organization:

VAT pass-through and competition: evidence from the Greek islands

We examine how competition affects VAT pass-through in isolated oligopolistic markets as defined by the Greek islands. Using daily gasoline prices and a difference-in-differences methodology, we investigate how changes i...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

New dawn fades: Trade, labour and the Brexit exchange rate depreciation

This paper studies consequences of the large exchange rate depreciation occurring when the UK electorate unexpectedly voted to leave the European Union. Sterling plummeted, recording the biggest one-day depreciation of a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Asymmetric pass-through and competition

We study the retail price pass-through of four major tax changes in petroleum products using daily pricing data from gas stations on small Greek islands. We find that (i) the pass-through of the tax hikes is five times h...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Fantastic beasts and where to find them

Fantastic beasts are magical creatures that cannot be seen unless one looks for them with the eye of the wizard, but that still play a significant role in the world. The fantastic beasts we hunt and find in the present p...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The trouble with inactivity

Concerns about a recent rise in economic inactivity have prompted new policies aimed at discouraging early retirement and encouraging the labour force participation of women with young children. Stephen Machin and Jonath...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

The trouble with inactivity

Elevated concerns over the consequences of recent rises in the UK economic inactivity rate for growth, wages and prices have prominently featured in recent public debate about the labour market and the economy. This pape...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

VAT pass-through and competition: evidence from the Greek Islands

We examine how competition affects VAT pass-through in isolated oligopolistic markets as defined by the Greek islands. Using daily gasoline prices and a difference-in-differences methodology, we investigate how changes i...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

New dawn fades: trade, labour and the Brexit exchange rate depreciation

This paper studies consequences of the very large exchange rate depreciation occurring in June 2016 due to the UK electorate unexpectedly voting to leave the European Union. As news of a leave vote came in, the value of ...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics :

Competition and pass-through: evidence from isolated markets

We measure how pass-through varies with competition in isolated oligopolistic markets with captive consumers. Using daily pricing data from gas stations on small Greek islands, we study how unanticipated and exogenous ch...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy:

How do households value the future? Evidence from property taxes

Despite the near ubiquity of intertemporal choice, there is little consensus on the rate at which individuals trade present and future costs and benefits. We contribute to this debate by estimating discount rates from ex...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Vehicle currency pricing and exchange rate pass-through

Using detailed firm-level transactions data for UK imports, we find that invoicing in a vehicle currency is pervasive, with more than half of the transactions in our sample invoiced in neither sterling nor the exporter?s...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

The amplifying effect of capitalization rates on housing supply

We provide empirical evidence that increases in housing rental income lead to a larger supply response than price increases of the same percentage value. We rationalize this differential in supply responsiveness with an ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Generalized linear competition: from pass-through to policy

Economic policy and shifts in input market prices often have significant effects on the marginal costs of firms and can prompt strategic responses that make their impact hard to predict. We introduce "generalized linear ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Exchange rates and consumer prices: evidence from Brexit

This paper studies how the depreciation of sterling following the Brexit referendum affected consumer prices in the United Kingdom. Our identification strategy uses input-output linkages to account for heterogeneity in e...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Competition and pass-through: evidence from isolated markets

We measure how pass-through varies with competition in isolated oligopolistic markets with captive consumers. Using daily pricing data from gas stations on small Greek islands, we study how unanticipated and exogenous ch...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Vehicle currency pricing and exchange rate pass-through

Using detailed firm-level transactions data for UK imports, we find that invoicing in a vehicle currency is pervasive, with more than half of transactions in our sample invoiced in neither sterling nor the exporter's cur...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade and worker deskilling

This paper presents new evidence on international trade and worker outcomes. It examines a big world event that produced an unprecedentedly large shock to the UK exchange rate. In the 24 hours in June 2016 during which t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How do households value the future? Evidence from property taxes

Despite the near ubiquity of inter-temporal choice, there is little consensus on the rate at which individuals trade present and future costs and benefits. We contribute to this debate by estimating discount rates from e...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

The price of development: The Penn?Balassa?Samuelson effect revisited

The Penn?Balassa?Samuelson effect is the stylized fact about the positive correlation between cross-country price level and per-capita income. This paper provides evidence that the price?income relation is actually non-l...Read more...

Journal article

Science:

Inequality in mortality decreased among the young while increasing for older adults, 1990-2010

Many recent studies point to increasing inequality in mortality in the United States over the past 20 years. These studies often use mortality rates in middle and old age. We used poverty level rankings of groups of U.S....Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics:

Intermediaries in international trade: products and destinations

This paper examines the factors that give rise to intermediaries in exporting and explores the implications for trade volumes. Export intermediaries such as wholesalers serve different markets and export different produc...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics:

Are happier people less judgmental of other people's selfish behaviors? Experimental survey evidence from trust and gift exchange games

What determines people's moral judgments of selfish behaviors? Here we study whether people's normative views in trust and gift exchange games, which underlie many situations of economic and social significance, are them...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Top Rate of Income Tax

The main political parties disagree about the appropriate rate of income Tax on the highest incomes. This note lays out the economic principles surrounding the top rate of income tax and considers the evidence that high ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Integrated estimates of capital stocks and services for the United Kingdom: 1950-2013

This paper presents annual estimates of fixed capital stocks and capital services for the United Kingdom, 1950-2013, for the whole economy and for the market sector. Our estimates cover eight asset types (structures, mac...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Employee stock purchase plans - gift or incentive? Evidence from a multinational corporation

Many large listed firms offer workers the opportunity to buy shares in the firm at discounted rates through employee stock purchase plans (ESPP). The discounted rate creates a gift exchange, where the firm hopes that wor...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Are happier people less judgmental of other people's selfish behaviors? Laboratory evidence from trust and gift exchange games

What determines people?s moral judgments of selfish behaviors? Here we study whether people?s normative views in trust and gift exchange games, which underlie many situations of economic and social significance, are them...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Optimal Policy for Macro-Financial Stability

In this paper we study whether policy makers should wait to intervene until a financial crisis strikes or rather act in a preemptive manner. We study this question in a relatively simple dynamic stochastic general equili...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Capital Controls or Exchange Rate Policy? A Pecuniary Externality Perspective

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, a new policy paradigm has emerged in which old-fashioned policies such as capital controls and other government distortions have become part of the standard policy toolkit...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Intermediaries in International Trade: Direct Versus Indirect Modes of Export

This paper examines the factors that give rise to intermediaries in exporting and explores the implications for trade volumes. Export intermediaries such as wholesalers serve different markets and export different produc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Provision of Relative Performance Feedback Information: An Experimental Analysis of Performance and Happiness

This paper studies the effect of providing relative performance feedback information on individuals? performance and affective response, under both piece-rate and flat-rate incentives. In a laboratory setup, agents perfo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Autoregressions in Small Samples, Priors about Observables and Initial Conditions

We propose a benchmark prior for the estimation of vector autoregressions: a prior about initial growth rates of the modelled series. We first show that the Bayesian vs frequentist small sample bias controversy is driven...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Penn-Belassa-Samuelson Effect in Developing Countries: Price and Income Revisited

It is conventional wisdom that richer countries have a higher price level than poorer countries. This paper provides evidence that the price-income relationship is non-linear and that it turns negative, or at best flat, ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Portfolio Allocation and International Risk Sharing

Recent contributions have shown that it is possible to account for the so-called consumption-real exchange anomaly in models with goods market frictions where international asset trade is limited to a riskless bond. In t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Communal Responsibility and the Coexistence of Money and Credit Under Anonymous Matching

Communal responsibility, a medieval institution studied by Greif (2006), supported the use of credit among European merchants in the absence of modern enforcement technologies. This paper shows how this mechanism helps t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Currency Unions in Prospect and Retrospect

We critically review the recent literature on currency unions, and discuss the methodological challenges posed by the empirical assessment of their costs and benefits. In the process, we provide evidence on the economic ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Rates of Return and Alternative Measures of Capital Input: 14 Countries and 10 Branches, 1971-2005

We employ the EU KLEMS database to estimate the real rate of return to capital in 14 countries (11 in the EU, three outside the EU) in 10 branches of the market economy plus the market economy as a whole. Our measure of ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Importance of Relative Performance Feedback Information: Evidence from a Natural Experiment using High School Students

We study the effect of providing relative performance feedback information on performance under piece-rate incentives. A natural experiment that took place in a high school offers an unusual opportunity to test this effe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Vulnerability of Currency Pegs: Evidence from Brazil

This paper analyses predictions of a simple model of currency crises in which the peg will be abandoned when the currency overvaluation hits a certain threshold, unknown to the agents. Due to learning about the threshold...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Scylla and Charybdis. The European Economy and Poland's Adherence to Gold, 1928-1936

This paper examines the timing of exit from the gold-exchange standard for European countries based on a panel of monthly observations 1928-1936 for two purposes: first it aims to understand the enormous variation in mon...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Monetary Policy Committees and Interest Rate Smoothing

We extend the New Keynesian Monetary Policy literature relaxing the assumption that the decisions are taken by a single policymaker, considering instead that monetary policy decisions are taken collectively in a committe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Consumption and Real Exchange Rates with Incomplete Markets and Non-Traded Goods

This paper addresses the consumption-real exchange rate anomaly. International real business cycle models based on complete financial markets predict a unitary correlation between the real exchange rate and the ratio of ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Importance of the Wording of the ECB

This paper analyses the ECB communication, focusing in particular on its transparency dimension. We posit that if the ECB is transparent about its future policy decisions, then we should be able to forecast fairly well i...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Home Bias, Transactions Costs, and Prospects for the Euro: A More Detailed Analysis

This paper brings together the literature on determination of home bias in equity holdings and the portfolio balance model of exchange rates to consider whether the dollar might be affected by a change in transactions co...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Explaining Currency Crises: A Duration Model Approach

This paper is an empirical investigation into the duration of exchange rate episodes characterized by the absence of speculative attacks. We estimate a duration model for OECD countries during the 1970-1997 period. Speci...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Macroeconomic Policies and Achievements in Transition Economies, 1989-1999

The paper discusses the reasons for the observed variation in the sequencing, speed and content of reform policies, in the 1990s, among 25 post-socialist countries of Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union. It argues...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Currency Areas, Policy Domains, and the Institutionalization of Fixed Exchange Rates

Emerging-market countries are being urged to choose between freely floating exchange rates and firmly fixed rates supported by strong institutional arrangementsucurrency boards, monetary unions, or formal dollarization. ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

UK Philips Curves and Monetary Policy

This paper documents some stylized facts on evolving UK Phillips curves, and shows how these differ from their US versions. We interpret UK Phillips curve dynamics in a positive theory of monetary policy u how policy-mak...Read more...