Results

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

Do Trump's tariffs signal the end of globalisation?

In this second instalment of his interview with Alexis Papazoglou, Thomas Sampson highlights the many uncertainties the future of global trade faces and argues that the biggest policy question for countries around the wo...Read more...

External publication

International Trade: Issue 2

Over the last four decades, many developing countries initiated reforms that have lowered barriers to trade. Yet despite these reforms, developing countries still remain far less open than developed ones, both because of...Read more...

CentrePiece article

How China’s rise has shaped innovation and exit among European solar firms

Should policymakers protect European firms by restricting imports of solar technology from China? Pia Andres finds that Chinese competition has resulted in many European firms going out of business, but it has also promp...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Leveraging AI to navigate 'deglobalisation'

Trade wars, industrial policy, and myriad other supply chain disruptions have fast become the 'new normal'. Yet, given the highly opaque and complex nature of production processes, knowing how to navigate this rise of de...Read more...

Blog

EGC Voices in Development:

Development Dialogue: How can emerging economies break free from the sidelines of global trade? (podcast)

This episode of Development Dialogues addresses how lower-income countries have engaged with global trade. How have their approaches to trade differed based on their underlying institutional and economic structure? What ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Achieving net zero by 2050 requires changes to the UK skills landscape

As COP29 brings climate action into focus, it's clear that policy must go beyond carbon trading and finance. To make net zero a reality, the workforce must be equipped with the right skills. Aadya Bahl examines what this...Read more...

Journal article

Critical Sociology: Forthcoming

A Popular Backlash against Globalization?

Is there a popular backlash against globalization? When did it start and in which forms? What do we know about its causes? We address these questions in the context of advanced democracies. We see the ‘globalization back...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Brexit and UK trade

This briefing summarises the evidence about how leaving the European Union (EU) has affected UK trade. Overall, Brexit has had a negative effect on UK trade. But, so far, this effect has been smaller than economists expe...Read more...

Blog

United States Politics and Policy:

Will the US remain the world's superpower? | LSE iQ and The Ballpark podcast

A shining city on a hill. America the beautiful. The United States has long been mythologised as the land of dreams and opportunity. And since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s it has been undisputedly the ...Read more...

Journal article

Research Policy:

The great divergence(s)

This paper provides new evidence on the increasing dispersion in wages and productivity using a unique micro-aggregated firm-level data source, representative for the full population of firms in 12 countries. First, we d...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Global Britain has failed - what next?

The vision of post-Brexit Britain was one of international trade deals that would propel the country into a new era of prosperity. That vision of "Global Britain" is now dead. Thomas Sampson argues that the only viable a...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Trade liberalisation can weaken unions and reduce votes for the left

Intuitively, trade liberalisation should increase the appeal of left-wing parties that offer to protect workers with protectionist policies. Pedro Ogeda, Emanuel Ornelas and Rodrigo Soares use evidence from Brazil to sho...Read more...

Blog

Vox Lacea:

Brazil's comparative advantage in soybean production triggered deforestation

In today's globalised world, technology and trade are key driving forces shaping agricultural markets worldwide. Igor Carreira, Francisco Costa and Joao Paulo Pessoa delve into the intricate relationship between trade an...Read more...

Journal article

Spatial Economic Analysis: Forthcoming

The social footprint of globalisation: towards the introduction of strategic industries in quantitative trade models

We argue that our understanding of industrial policy in the presence of ‘strategic’ industries that exert positive externalities on the national economy may benefit from an extension of quantitative general equilibrium t...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Supply chain disruptions: Shocks, links, and hidden exposure

Supply chain disruptions are routinely blamed for things ranging from elevated inflation to shortages of medical equipment in the pandemic. But how should exposure to foreign supply chains be measured? Using a global inp...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Joining multinationals' supply chains can benefit domestic firms' performance

Developing countries compete to attract multinationals to induce development. Becoming suppliers to multinationals could improve domestic firms' technology and managerial practices, and the host country's economy could b...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

More steps in the wrong direction on net zero, at precisely the wrong time

This week's King's Speech has paved the way for a further weakening of climate policy in the UK by introducing a bill to support future oil and gas drilling in the North Sea. Esin Serin and Anna Valero explain how this a...Read more...

Blog

LSE EUROPP:

Interview with Neil Lee - "If we want to have innovative cities, they have to deliver for everyone"

In an interview with LSE Cities, Neil Lee discusses what's driving anti-metropolitan politics in Europe and how a more inclusive innovation economy could help address it....Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Large firms generate positive productivity spillovers

The rising dominance of large firms in many industrialised countries over the last few decades has received much attention, largely focusing on the potential negative effects of this increased market concentration. Using...Read more...

CentrePiece article

CEP Insights: Places and...

CEP research on cities and regions examines the drivers of spatial disparities - what leads certain parts of the country to be richer and others poorer? It explores the impact on economic development and policies that ma...Read more...

Blog

Liberty Street Economics:

Do Large Firms Generate Positive Productivity Spillovers?

Mary Amiti, Cedric Duprez, Jozef Konings and John Van Reenen investigate whether large firms also generate positive effects. Using firm-to-firm transaction data for an industrialised country, Belgium, they find that larg...Read more...

Blog

VoxDev:

How the surveillance state is exported through trade in AI

Autocracies and weak democracies are more likely to import facial recognition AI from China, particularly in years when they experience domestic unrest, say Martin Beraja, Andrew Kao, David Yang and Noam Yuchtman....Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Brazil's comparative advantage in soybean production triggered deforestation

Tropical ecosystems house an immense biomass, which makes it imperative to understand how they are affected by technology and trade. Igor Carreira, Francisco Costa and Joao Paulo Pessoa examine the Brazilian rainforest's...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Why business groups (think Samsung or Tata Group) have an export advantage in emerging markets

With their superior access to capital, knowledge and labour, business groups offer many advantages to their affiliated firms. Daniel Shapiro, Saul Estrin, Michael Carney and Zhixiang (Steven) Liang write that these advan...Read more...

Blog

VoxTalks Economics:

Is green growth possible? (Podcast)

Is innovation our best hope for dealing with climate change and, if so, how can we stimulate the sort of innovation that we need to make the green energy transition? Philippe Aghion tells Tim Phillips that we need both c...Read more...

Blog

Trade Talks:

Did responsible sourcing by multinationals help workers in poor countries? (podcast)

A series of industrial accidents that killed workers in the supply chains of multinational corporations triggered backlash by Western consumers. In response, many global companies committed to treat workers in poor count...Read more...

Blog

Trade Talks:

Industrial policy and the rise of Romania's Silicon Valley (podcast)

In 2001, Romania gave an income tax break to a select group of software programmers. Isabela Manelici explains how this particular industrial policy helped stem Romania's "brain drain" problem, transformed the country's ...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

What is the current state of the Russian economy under sanctions?

Economic sanctions have done considerable damage to Russia's economy. The country's economic situation will improve slowly as supply chains are re-oriented towards other markets, especially in Asia. But perseverance with...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

How have the forecasts on the effect of sanctions on Russia held up a year on?

Commentators were over-optimistic in believing that sanctions would immediately cause a large fall in economic activity in Russia and thereby halt the aggression against Ukraine. But despite the revised forecasts and out...Read more...

Blog

Vox Dev:

All aboard: The effects of port development

There are large potential gains to improving ports, but space constraints and other costs affect who benefits from port infrastructure, say Cesar Ducruet, Reka Juhasz, David Krisztian Nagy and Claudia Steinwender....Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Observing freedom's vanishing act

The political equilibrium in Hong Kong was fundamentally altered in June 2020, when the Chinese Communist Party began coercively suppressing all protest. Noam Yuchtman provides a first-hand account of watching civil libe...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Deep trade agreements: proliferation, provisions, impact

Modern trade agreements between countries contain a host of provisions beyond simple tariff reductions on traded products. Research by Holger Breinlich, Valentina Corradi, Nadia Rocha, Michele Ruta, João Santos Silva and...Read more...

Blog

ProMarket:

A New Framework for Better Industrial Policies

Chiara Criscuolo and Guy Lalanne provide a new, conceptual framework for better industrial policy, considering topical areas such as clean energy, Covid-19, and performance of key business sectors....Read more...

Blog

Vox Ukraine:

"What about the economy?": Vernon Henderson on the challenges of Ukraine's recovery (podcast)

Yulia Mincheva, the Analytics Society at VoxUkraine, and J. Vernon Henderson discuss how to rebuild destroyed cities and create conditions for their repopulation in this podcast, "What about the economy?"...Read more...

Chapter

Accelerating urban economic growth in Ukraine

in Rebuilding Ukraine: Principles and policies

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of what Ukraine should become after the war and what tools policymakers can use to fulfill these goals. The leitmotif of this book is clear: reconstruction is not about rebuildin...Read more...

Blog

CEPR:

The labour market in Ukraine: Rebuild better

Giacomo Anastasia, Tito Boeri, Marianna Kudlyak and Oleksandr Zholud write about how the Ukrainian labour market can be rebuilt effectively in this chapter of 'Rebuilding Ukraine: Principles and policies', which offers a...Read more...

Blog

Springer Nature Research Communities:

Towards Zero Waste: Segregation at Source Can Reduce Our Waste Footprint

Waste management is a key part of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 of making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. Fjolla Kondirolli, Swati Dhingra and Stephen Machin outline the...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Using machine learning to assess the impact of deep trade agreements

Modern preferential trade agreements contain a host of provisions that go beyond tariff liberalisation. By adapting techniques from the machine learning literature, this column develops data-driven methods for selecting ...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Financial crises as drivers of populism: a new channel

Financial crises have severe economic costs. This column shows that they also entail major political costs. It argues that the global financial crisis, and associated Great Recession, represents a watershed for populism ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Trade disruptions in the wake of Brexit

A dramatic fall in the value of UK imports from the European Union relative to the rest of the world occurred when the post-Brexit Trade and Cooperation Agreement came into effect. What's more, according to research by R...Read more...

Blog

Centre for European Reform:

Is Brexit to blame for Britain's economic woes? (podcast)

Thomas Sampson, of the London School of Economics, and John Springford, the CER's deputy director, discuss and compare their findings on how Brexit has affected UK goods trade and inflation, and John shares his latest re...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Trade with nominal rigidities: understanding the unemployment and welfare effects of the China shock

Researchers examine how increased competition from China impacts the welfare of the US labour market....Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Imposing high tariffs on imported Russian gas: would it be effective?

As Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues and many call for a strengthening of sanctions, an alternative to a full energy embargo has been discussed in the form of European Union tariffs on imports of Russian gas. The In...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

UK trade in the wake of Brexit

This paper studies the impact of Brexit on the UK's trade with the EU relative to its trade with the rest of the world. We find no evidence that uncertainty and anticipation effects led to a significant decline in relati...Read more...

Book

Restarting the future
How to fix the intangible economy

The past two decades have witnessed sluggish economic growth, mounting inequality, dysfunctional competition, and a host of other ills that have left people wondering what has happened to the future they were promised. R...Read more...

Blog

Africa at LSE:

How multinationals exploited a health crisis to accelerate deforestation in Liberia

The way multinational enterprises conduct themselves during periods of crisis, such as an epidemic, is of key importance in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. A health crisis may alter the short-run incentives of some multi...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

The globalisation backlash

As populist parties have surged across advanced democracies so, it seems, has a 'globalisation backlash'. This column provides descriptive evidence on the backlash, discusses its theoretical underpinnings within standard...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Inclusion in the workplace: how not to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory

Sitting at a focal point between east and west, Singapore has a nuanced and multi-layered cultural landscape that exemplify the importance of context for behavioural interventions to promote diversity and inclusion (D&I)...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

The impact of trade costs can be weak or strong - depending on how much countries trade

Many countries try to bring down trade costs by striking free trade agreements, forming currency unions or joining the WTO. But when trade costs fall, how much does trade increase? Natalie Chen and Dennis Novy explain th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The backlash of globalization

We review the literature on the globalization backlash, seen as the political shift of voters and parties in a protectionist and isolationist direction, with substantive implications on governments' leaning and enacted p...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Corporate taxes: views of leading economists on profit-shifting, tax base and a global minimum rate

Romesh Vaitilingam reports on economists' responses to the IGM Forum poll on issues surrounding the G7 global deal on corporate taxes....Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

Are bigger banks better? Firm-level evidence from Germany

The effects of large banks on the real economy are theoretically ambiguous and politically controversial. I identify quasi-exogenous increases in bank size in postwar Germany. I show that firms did not grow faster after ...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

The differing effects of globalisation on trade versus migration

Better communications, enhanced transport links, integration agreements between governments, and other factors have all helped increase global economic interconnectedness over the past few decades. This column compares a...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

The distinctive character of policy-driven stock market jumps

When the stock market moves in a big way, journalists try to explain why. This column uses next-day newspaper accounts to characterise the drivers of more than 6,000 big daily moves ('jumps') across 16 national stock mar...Read more...

Journal article

European Economic Review:

Worker and firm responses to trade shocks: The UK-China case

We exploit the recent surge in Chinese export growth to study the effects of a trade shock on workers and firms in a foreign market, the UK, in the period 2000–2007. We find that individuals initially employed in sectors...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Trade protection along supply chains: the negative effects of tariffs on downstream sectors

In a world in which production processes are fragmented across countries, the effects of tariffs propagate along supply chains, with firms in downstream industries suffering from protection upstream. This column studies...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

The trade and welfare benefits of deep trade agreements

Deep trade agreements are widespread and have taken the world beyond tariff liberalisation in goods trade. As the importance of global supply chains and the services sector increased across the world, shallow tariff redu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Worker and firm responses to trade shocks: the UK-China case

We exploit the recent surge in Chinese export growth to study the effects of a trade shock on workers and firms in a foreign market, the UK, in the period 2000-2007. We find that individuals initially employed in sectors...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Are bigger banks better? Firm-level evidence from Germany

The effects of large banks on the real economy are theoretically ambiguous and politically controversial. I identify quasi-exogenous increases in bank size in post-war Germany. I show that firms did not grow faster after...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

How leading economists view antitrust in the digital economy

US and European experts discuss internet giants, and Google's dominance of search and operating practices, writes Romesh Vaitilingam...Read more...

Blog

LSE Covid-19 blog:

How do globalisation and pandemics interact? Surprising insights from a new model

Pandemics are only possible because of international travel. But – perhaps surprisingly – in the absence of social distancing a more globalised country will not necessarily suffer a worse outbreak. Pol Antràs (Harvard), ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Productivity growth in one country affects the relative income and welfare of its trade partners

One of the most dramatic changes in the world economy over the past half century has been the emergence of China as a major force in world trade. A central question in international economics is the implications of such ...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Industrial Organization:

Critically important: the heterogeneous effect of diplomatic tensions on trade

With global value chains interlocking today’s economies, what is the impact of diplomatic tensions on international trade? We exploit variation in monthly data on imports, a measure of imported input use in the domesti...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics:

Product mix and firm productivity responses to trade competition

We document how demand shocks in export markets lead French multi-product exporters to re-allocate the mix of products sold in those destinations. In response to positive demand shocks, French firms skew their export sal...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Globalisation and urban polarisation

External trade affects the internal spatial structure of an economy, promoting growth in some cities or regions and decline in others. Internal adjustment to these changes has often proved to be extremely slow and painfu...Read more...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

The fall of the labor share and the rise of superstar firms

The fall of labor's share of GDP in the United States and many other countries in recent decades is well documented but its causes remain uncertain. Existing empirical assessments typically rely on industry or macro data...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...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

The 2018 trade war: consumers are paying a high price

Over the course of 2018, the Trump administration imposed import tariffs on approximately $283 billion of US imports, with rates ranging between 10 and 50 per cent. In response, US trading partners, especially China, ret...Read more...

Journal article

Review of International Economics:

Globalization and urban polarization

External trade affects the internal spatial structure of an economy, promoting growth in some cities or regions and decline in others. Internal adjustment to these changes has often proved to be extremely slow and painfu...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Firm dynamics and residual inequality in open economies

Wage inequality between similar workers has been on the rise in many rich countries. Recent empirical research suggests that heterogeneity in firm characteristics is crucial to understand wage dispersion. Lower trade cos...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

From final goods to inputs: The protectionist effect of rules of origin

Recent decades have witnessed a surge of trade in intermediate goods and a proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs). FTAs use rules of origin (RoO) to distinguish goods originating from member countries from those o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Managing trade: evidence from China and the US

We study how management practices shape export performance using matched production-trade-management data for Chinese and American firms and a randomized control trial in India. Better managed firms are more likely to ex...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

The buyer margins of firms’ exports

We use detailed data on exporters from Costa Rica, Ecuador and Uruguay as well as on their buyers to show that: aggregate exports are disproportionally driven by few multi-buyers exporters; and each multi-buyer exporter'...Read more...

Journal article

Quarterly Journal of Economics:

The global distribution of economic activity: nature, history, and the role of trade

We explore the role of natural characteristics in determining the worldwide spatial distribution of economic activity, as proxied by lights at night, observed across 240,000 grid cells. A parsimonious set of 24 physical ...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Journal:

Trade, Firm Selection and Innovation: The Competition Channel

We study the welfare gains from trade in an economy with heterogeneous firms, variable markups and endogenous growth. Variable markups arise from oligopolistic competition, and cost-reducing innovation is the engine of l...Read more...

CentrePiece article

TTIP: is free trade coming to the North Atlantic?

If successfully concluded, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) would be the most ambitious free trade agreement in history. Dennis Novy explains that while the potential benefits from liberalised tr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Missing gains from trade?

The theoretical result that there are welfare gains from trade is a central tenet of international economics. In a class of trade models that satisfy a 'gravity equation,' the welfare gains from trade can be computed usi...Read more...

Book

The Future of Finance
The LSE Report

This book presents a novel approach to the reform of the world’s financial system, starting with the basic question, what is a financial system for? It shows that the existing system has become far more complic...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Convergence of Firm-Level Productivity, Globalisation, Information Technology and Competition: Evidence from France

Studies of firm-level data have shown that there is a huge dispersion of productivity across firms even when industries are narrowly defined. So there is a significant opportunity for the least productive firms to catch ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Impact of Trade on Aggregate Productivity and Welfare with Heterogeneous Firms and Business Cycle Uncertainty

This paper presents a model with monopolistic competition, productively heterogeneous firms, and business cycle aggregate shocks. With firm-specific productive heterogeneity, weaker firms quit when faced with a negative ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Evolution of Locations, Specialisation and Factor Returns with Two Distinct Waves of Globalisation

This paper presents an economic geography model with two differentiated sectors that exhibit weaker inter and stronger intra-industry input-output linkages. Labour is also differentiated according to skills in a hierarch...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Internationalisation of Public Welfare Policy

With increasing globalisation of knowledge, there are increased opportunities to 'learn' from the experience of policy interventions elsewhere. This paper presents evidence on the extent of international convergence in p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Globalisation, ICT and the Nitty Gritty of Plant Level Datasets

The net entry contribution to aggregate productivity growth has increased dramatically in the UK over 1990s according to calculations based on data from the Annual Respondents Database (ARD). Some recent studies have tri...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Economic geography and international inequality

This paper estimates a structural model of economic geography using cross-country data on per capita income, bilateral trade, and the relative price of manufacturing goods. We provide evidence that the geography of acces...Read more...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

Globalization and the Inequality of Nations

A monopolistically competitive manufacturing sector produces goods used for final consumption and as intermediates. Intermediate usage creates cost and demand linkages between firms and a tendency for manufacturing agglo...Read more...