Results

CEP discussion paper

Counting the costs: a quantitative assessment of Brexit?s effect on UK regional economies

This paper examines the implications of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) using a dynamic spatial general equilibrium model. Unlike previous studies that primarily projected potential impacts of Brexit base...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economic Studies:

Temporal-difference estimation of dynamic discrete choice models

We study the use of Temporal-Difference learning for estimating the structural parameters in dynamic discrete choice models. Our algorithms are based on the conditional choice probability approach but use functional appr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Measuring quality of life under spatial frictions

Using a quantitative spatial model as a data-generating process, we explore how spatial frictions affect the measurement of quality of life. We find that under a canonical parameterization, mobility frictions - generated...Read more...

Blog

Politics and Policy:

Can Starmer avoid the mistakes of the past?

Many think that the UK's crisis is the result of a series of mistakes individual prime ministers made: Boris Johnson, Theresa May, Liz Truss. But a deeper look reveals the source of these mistakes: the ideology of rampan...Read more...

Blog

British Politics and Policy:

What economists think of Labour's economic policy

The UK will soon have an election and, if the polls are right, Labour will take power for the first time since 1997. There are many similarities between now and then. As in 1997, the Conservative party look tired, voters...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics:

Measuring absolute income mobility: lessons from North America and Europe

We use linked parent-child administrative data for five countries in North America and Europe, as well as detailed survey data for two more, to investigate methodological challenges in the estimation of absolute income m...Read more...

Journal article

AEA Papers and Proceedings:

The local labor market effects of modern manufacturing capital: evidence from France

Using an event study methodology and comprehensive micro data from the French manufacturing sector, we analyze the local labor market effects of investments in modern manufacturing capital, including modern automation te...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Globalization and pandemics

We provide theory and evidence on the relationship between globalization and pandemics. Business travel facilitates trade and travel leads to human interactions that transmit disease. Trade-motivated travel generates an ...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Financial Studies :

Estimating general equilibrium spillovers of large-scale shocks

Large-scale shocks directly affect some firms and households and indirectly affect others through general equilibrium spillovers. In this paper, I describe how researchers can directly estimate spillovers using quasi-exp...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Optimal minimum wages

We develop a quantitative spatial model with heterogeneous firms and a monopsonistic labour market to derive minimum wages that maximize employment or welfare. Quantifying the model for German micro regions, we find that...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...

CEP discussion paper

Quality of life in a dynamic spatial model

We develop a dynamic spatial model in which heterogeneous workers are imperfectly mobile and forward-looking and yet all structural fundamentals can be inverted without assuming that the economy is in a stationary spatia...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

The impact of terrorism on individual well-being: evidence from the Boston Marathon bombing

A growing literature has concluded that terrorism affects the economy, yet less is known about its impact on individual welfare. This article estimates the impact of the 2013 Boston marathon bombing on well-being, exploi...Read more...

CentrePiece article

People, places and politics: the challenge of 'levelling up' the UK

As has been much discussed since the election, economic performance varies widely among the towns, cities and regions of the UK. Henry Overman argues that policies to address these spatial disparities should be judged on...Read more...

CEP election analysis

#GE2019Economists: the research evidence on key issues for voters in the 2019 UK General Election

The general election of 2019 was called after negotiations over how the UK should leave the European Union became increasingly tortuous. While Brexit may have been the trigger for the election, it was far from being the ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Brexit will leave the UK worse off economically in all scenarios

Since the UK voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, Brexit has dominated UK politics and economic policy. Three and a half years after the referendum, the UK is yet to leave the EU, there is no certainty over if...Read more...

Blog

LSE Brexit:

Economic consequences of Brexit are overwhelmingly negative

The economic consequences of Brexit are overwhelmingly negative, estimate Swati Dhingra and Thomas Sampson (LSE). The more the UK distances itself from the EU?s economic institutions and policies, the greater will be the...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

John Van Reenen: `A lot of promises are just smoke and mirrors?

As director of LSE's Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) up to 2016, British economist John Van Reenen led a team of academic researchers who produced detailed analysis of the consequences a divorce from the European U...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Brexit economics

Since the UK voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, Brexit has dominated UK politics and economic policy. Three and a half years after the referendum, the UK is yet to leave the EU, there is no certainty over if...Read more...

CEP election analysis

People, places and politics

Economic performance varies widely between the towns, cities and regions of the UK. On some measures, this variation has widened since the financial crisis. These disparities have already proved to be a key theme in the ...Read more...

CEP election analysis

The labour market

The UK labour market, at first glance, seems to be playing at Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Employment (in terms of both levels and rates) is at record highs, yet wage growth has been extraordinarily weak. One view is that thes...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Social mobility

Debates over how to improve life prospects for people irrespective of their family background promise to be a key theme in the run-up to the 2019 General Election. This briefing summarises evidence on social mobility fro...Read more...

Journal article

International Journal of Industrial Organization:

Flex cars and competition in fuel retail markets

We study how the diffusion of flex (bi-fuel) cars affected competition on ethanol and gasoline retail markets. We propose a model of price competition in which the two fuels become closer substitutes as flex cars penetra...Read more...

Journal article

Urban Studies:

Does the law of one price hold for hedonic prices?

Hedonic prices of locational attributes in urban land markets are determined by a process of spatial arbitrage that is similar to that which underpins the law of one price. If hedonic prices deviate from their spatial eq...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Relational knowledge transfers

We study how relational contracts mitigate Becker's classic problem of providing general human capital when training contracts are incomplete. The firm's profit-maximizing agreement is a multiperiod apprenticeship in whi...Read more...

CEP election analysis

#GE2017Economists: The Research Evidence on Key Issues for Voters in the 2017 UK General Election

The unexpected UK general election of 2017 was intended to be all about Brexit, one that will give the incoming government a mandate to negotiate the terms of the UK?s exit from the European Union (EU). But many other pu...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Brexit as Climate Policy: The Agenda on Energy and the Environment

The Great Recession and a sluggish economic recovery were instrumental in meeting the legally binding climate change targets that the UK has set for itself. But without more drastic policy interventions, it is unlikely t...Read more...

CEP election analysis

The UK's New Industrial Strategy

`Industrial strategy? has returned to the policy agenda, with the government recently setting out its plans in a Green Paper, and dedicated sections appearing in the election manifestos of all three main parties. Until r...Read more...

CEP election analysis

The NHS and Social Care: Prospects for Funding, Staffing and Performance into the 2020s

Health featured prominently in the 2016 referendum on the UK?s membership of the European Union (EU), with the Leave campaign?s claim that Brexit would mean that #350 million extra money per week could be transferred fro...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Real Wages and Living Standards in the UK

Since the global financial crisis of 2007/08, workers? real wages and family living standards in the UK have suffered to an extent unprecedented in modern history. Real wages of the typical (median) worker have fallen by...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The costs and benefits of leaving the EU: trade effects

This paper estimates the welfare effects of Brexit, focusing on trade and fiscal transfers. We use a standard quantitative general equilibrium trade model with many countries and sectors and trade in intermediates, as in...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Relational knowledge transfers

An expert with general knowledge trains a cash-constrained novice. Faster training increases the novice?s productivity and his ability to compensate the expert; it also shrinks the stock of knowledge yet to be transferre...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Where is the real Manifesto for Growth?

As voters go to the polls in a knife-edge election, Labour?s popularity on the NHS is counter-balanced by the Tory?s reputation for economic competence. But is this reputation deserved? John Van Reenen writes that a real...Read more...

CEP election analysis

#ElectionEconomics: The Research Evidence on Key Issues for Voters in the 2015 UK General Election

Please see the CEP #ElectionEconomics report(Paper 1)and the Executive Summary (Paper 2) that cover all the election 2015 briefings, discussing the research evidence on 15 of the UK's key policy battlegrounds: immigratio...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Health: How Will the NHS Fare in a Cold Climate?

With the NHS a central issue of the 2015 general election, the parties are debating funding, the form of provision, quality and productivity. This paper looks at the NHS record under the coalition government and consider...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Regarding public service spending, the UK electorate faces real choices this election

The possible spending plans of Labour and the Tories illustrate the fact that there are real choices to be made at the election, writes John Van Reenen. When viewed over the longer term, the state of the UK economy is no...Read more...

CEP election analysis

The Economic Performance of UK Cities: Can Urban and Regional Policy Make a Difference to the North-South Divide

There are large variations in economic performance across UK cities and on some measures, they have widened since the global financial crisis. All main parties promise action to reduce them, but there is little differenc...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Should We Stay or Should We Go? The economic consequences of leaving the EU

We analyze the effects of Brexit on the UK economy. The most important economic consequence of Brexit would likely be reduced trade with EU countries. We consider an optimistic scenario with relatively small increases in...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Austerity in the UK: past, present and future

In this article, John Van Reenen looks at the UK?s economic performance since the global financial crisis and assesses the impact of austerity policies. He also examines the fiscal plans of the three major parties over t...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Austerity: Growth Costs and Post-Election Plans

The austerity programme of the coalition government knocked at least one percent per year off growth in the first two years of this Parliament. In retrospect, this looks like a mistake and the slower pace of austerity in...Read more...

Journal article

The World Bank Economic Review:

The political economy of trade policy: gone for good? Subsidies with export share requirements in China: 2002-13

This paper presents a simple model of subsidies with export share requirements (ESR) in a heterogeneous firm environment. A two-country general equilibrium version of the model with a single 100% ESR is calibrated using ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Flex cars and competition in ethanol and gasoline retail markets

In Brazil, gasoline and ethanol coexist as automotive fuels and are becoming closer substitutes as flex cars become more widely adopted. We employ this source of variation in a large panel of weekly prices at the station...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

External Benefits of Brownfield Redevelopment: An Applied Urban General Equilbirum Analysis

Does brownfield redevelopment warrant government support? We explore several external benefits in an urban general equilibrium framework. Preferences are modelled such that demand for housing units in the city is downwar...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Unequal Britain: how real are regional disparities?

Average earnings vary widely across the regions of Britain, a fact that has prompted many decades of policies aimed at reducing regional disparities. But as Henry Overman and Steve Gibbons demonstrate, such variation rev...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Real Earnings Disparities in Britain

This report estimates housing-cost-earnings differentials across labour market areas in Britain. We show that quality-adjusted housing costs rise on average, one for one with the skill-adjusted earnings of the average wo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

There Will Be Money

A common belief among monetary theorists is that monetary equilibria are tenuous due to the intrinsic uselessness of fiat money (Wallace (1978)). In this article we argue that the tenuousness of monetary equilibria vanis...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Recovering the Sunk Costs of R&D: the Moulds Industry Case

Sunk costs for R&D are an important determinant of the level of innovation in the economy. In this paper I recover them using a Markov equilibrium framework. The contribution is twofold. First, a model of industry dynami...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Trade, Wages and Productivity

We develop a new general equilibrium model of monopolistic competition with heterogeneous firms, variable demand elasticity and multiple asymmetric regions, in which trade integration induces wage and productivity change...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade, Wages and Productivity

We develop a new general equilibrium model of monopolistic competition with heterogeneous firms, variable demand elasticity and multiple asymmetric regions, in which trade integration induces wage and productivity change...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Creative Destruction with On-the-Job Search

This paper is about the labour market consequences of creative destruction with on-the-job search. We consider a matching model in an economy with embodied technological progress and show that its dynamics are profoundly...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Evaluating the employment impact of a mandatory job search program

This paper exploits area-based piloting and age-related eligibility rules to identify treatment effects of a labor market program-the New Deal for Young People in the U.K. A central focus is on substitution/displacement ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Minimum Wages and On-the-Job Training

Becker's theory of human capital predicts that minimum wages should reduce training investments for affected workers because they prevent these workers from taking wage cuts necessary to finance training. In contrast, i...Read more...