Results

Blog

What Works Wellbeing:

Book launch - a handbook for wellbeing policy-making

Christian Krekel gives an overview of his new book, co-authored with Paul Frijters, about the realities of policy-making and how wellbeing measures can improve what the public sector does....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...

CEP discussion paper

Import liberalization as export destruction? Evidence from the United States

How does import protection affect export performance? In trade models with scale economies, import liberalization can reduce an industry's exports by cutting domestic production. We find this export destruction mechanism...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business review:

Will President Biden's economic stimulus cause inflation? Economists are unsure

Amid fierce public debates about the size of the Biden administration's coronavirus protection and stimulus package, the Initiative on Global Markets Forum (the University of Chicago Booth School of Business) invited a p...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Start-ups in the time of COVID-19: Facing the challenges, seizing the opportunities

Flavio Calvino, Chiara Criscuolo and Rudy Verlhac explore ways for policymakers to incentivise businesses and speed up economic recovery against Covid-19's effect on start-ups and new firms....Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

How should we measure the impact of Covid-19 policies on our wellbeing?

Paul Dolan and Christian Krekel explain how measuring changes in life experience, as well as life expectancy, will enable richer evaluation of policies....Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Pollution reductions during lockdowns can teach us how to build back better a sustainable economy

Though Covid-19 lockdowns prompted a 35-45% reduction in pollution, effects across the world were unequal and policies aimed at combatting climate change must account for such diverse outcomes. This research highlights h...Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Reflections on struggling high streets

Henry Overman reflects on the findings from the What Works Centre's Recovery Workshop focusing on the British high street, looking at how an economic recovery from the pandemic focused on policy may best help our high st...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The motherhood penalty for working women in Spain

Spain has seen a huge influx of women into the workplace in recent decades, but their experiences of work remain very different from those of men. As Claudia Hupkau and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela explain, there is scope for...Read more...

CentrePiece article

in brief... Covid-19 and self-employment

The pandemic has had particularly damaging economic effects on self-employed people in the UK. CEP has now run three surveys to capture the experience of these workers during the crisis. Stephen Machin and Maria Ventura ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The impact of regulation on innovation

It is widely feared that private sector innovation is constrained by 'red tape'. Philippe Aghion and colleagues test that view on data from France, where firms of more than 50 employees face far heavier regulatory obliga...Read more...

CentrePiece article

UK house prices in Covid-19 times

The pandemic lead to increased demand for bigger homes and gardens. With housing supply limited by strict UK planning regulations and the market propped up by a stamp duty waiver and the furlough scheme, prices of detach...Read more...

Book

A Handbook for Wellbeing Policy-Making
History, Theory, Measurement, Implementation, and Examples

Around the world, governments are starting to directly measure the subjective wellbeing of their citizens and to use it for policy evaluation and appraisal. What would happen if a country were to move from using GDP to u...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...

Blog

LSE Blogs:

The 2020s will be a crunch decade that will determine the UK's trajectory into the mid-21st century

As vaccines roll out and restrictions are lifted, public debate is turning to the economic recovery from Covid-19 and the deepest annual downturn for 300 years that came in its wake. But viewing the years ahead simply as...Read more...

External publication

The UK's decisive decade: the launch report for The Economy 2030 Inquiry

This report marks the launch of The Economy 2030 Inquiry, a landmark collaboration between the Resolution Foundation and the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, funded by the Nuffield Found...Read more...

Blog

LSE Blogs:

Government urban regeneration initiative failed to improve Britain's most deprived areas

In 1994, John Major's Conservative government launched an initiative to improve a range of societal issues through regeneration. The Single Regeneration Budget ran for nearly a decade, but failed to create opportunities ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Data-intensive innovation and the State: evidence from AI firms in China

Artificial intelligence (AI) innovation is data-intensive. States have historically collected large amounts of data, which is now being used by AI firms. Gathering comprehensive information on firms and government procur...Read more...

Blog

Rebuilding Macroeconomics:

Understanding Educational Progression at the Local Level: Portsmouth, The Northern City on the South Coast

Understanding regional inequalities is likely to be key to understanding the UK's overall macroeconomic performance. In this article, Jo Blanden, Hector Espinoza, Sandra McNally and Guglielmo Ventura analyse the educatio...Read more...

Blog

LSE Blogs:

World Happiness Report: living long and living well

The 2021 World Happiness Report comes as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to claim lives and lay waste to livelihoods around the world. Richard Layard and Ekaterina Oparina introduce the WELLBY Approach and look at how we...Read more...

Blog

LSE Blogs:

How a focus on wellbeing can help us make better policy decisions

Deaths, hospitalisations and cases have been the default metrics for policymakers during the pandemic. Paul Dolan (LSE) and a team of behavioural science experts propose a broader way of measuring policy outcomes that co...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Wage responses to gender pay gap reporting requirements

In this paper I study a policy in which employers are required to publicly report gender pay gap statistics. Proponents argue that increasing the information available to workers and consumers places pressure on firms to...Read more...

Blog

LSE Blogs:

COVID-19 and self-employment ten months into the crisis

Almost a year into the crisis, the latest lockdown has hit the self-employed hard in the UK. In January 2021, 57% of surveyed self-employed workers were earning less than £1,000 per month, up from 31% in January 2020 an...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Build back happier

In CEP’s first anniversary lecture marking 30 years since the Centre began, founder director Richard Layard outlined the science of wellbeing and its implications for public policy. As society tries to recover from the c...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Increasing support for clean innovation: a win-win-win strategy?

Political support for government spending to deal with the economic aftermath of the COVID pandemic has grown. It is now greater than during the 2008 financial crisis, and 'build back better' pledges have multiplied. Ral...Read more...

Blog

LSE US Centre:

Trade protection along supply chains: how antidumping measures against China hurt downstream industries

Production processes are often no longer confined to a single country; supply chains can be fragmented across great distances. By contrast, tariffs are often used by individual countries to protect certain industries. In...Read more...

External publication

UK Economic Diplomacy in the 21st Century: The LSE Economic Diplomacy Commission Final Report

The LSE Economic Diplomacy Commission was convened in 2019 to establish a strategic direction for a new age of foreign economic policy, to understand the domestic ramifications of changes to the UK's trade agenda, and to...Read more...

Blog

Bloomberg Stephanomics Podcasts:

The economic cost of Covid-19's mental health crisis

Richard Layard talks about why the coronavirus should make us rethink how we treat mental illness, how "building back better" should mean services rather than roads and railways, and why money really doesn't make us happ...Read more...

Blog

FE Week:

Why urgent support is needed to address UK skills deficit

New incentives are needed for businesses to train their employees for a post-Covid world, writes Guglielmo Ventura....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

State of Working Britain Blog:

Redundancies and the labour market under Covid. Has furlough helped? And other related things you may have missed

Redundancies are often seen as commensurate with unemployment - but not always. In this blog post, Jonathan Wadsworth analyses the links between the UK's furlough scheme and redundancies....Read more...

Blog

CVER blogs:

Stark contrast between pre- and post-16 provision in UTCs

At a time when Prime Minister Boris Johnson has put the government’s skills policy agenda in the spotlight, Guglielmo Ventura presents findings from his research seeking to understand whether UTCs were successful at br...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Place-based policies and spatial disparities across European cities

Spatial disparities in income levels and worklessness in the European Union are profound, persistent and may be widening. We describe disparities across metropolitan regions and discuss theories and empirical evidence th...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Policy:

School choice during a period of radical school reform. Evidence from academy conversion in England

We study how demand responds to the rebranding of existing state schools as autonomous 'academies' in the context of a radical and large-scale reform to the English education system. The academy programme encouraged scho...Read more...

Journal article

Research Policy: Forthcoming

Does light touch cluster policy work? Evaluating the tech city programme

Cluster policies are popular with policymakers, but we know surprisingly little about their effectiveness. This paper evaluates the causal impact of a flagship UK technology cluster programme that uses 'light touch', mar...Read more...

Blog

The BMJ Opinion:

Taking a wellbeing-years approach to policy choice

Every day, policy makers have to decide whether a policy is desirable. They do so by examining its impact on a whole range of outcomes. But the problem is how to aggregate these disparate outcomes against issues such as ...Read more...

Blog

LSE blogs:

City of dreams no more: COVID-19 in urban India

COVID-19 has decimated livelihoods in urban India and created a new underclass of workers who are being pushed into poverty. Shania Bhalotia, Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli (LSE) say a national work guarantee is nee...Read more...

Blog

LSE US Centre:

How economists view the US debate on extending jobless benefits

Experts discuss the trade-offs between work incentives and income support; whether top-ups should be reduced, and how economics and public health might determine federal contribution levels, writes Romesh Vaitilingam....Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Labour markets in the time of Coronavirus: measuring excess

Recessions are usually accompanied by some combination of job loss, hiring freezes, wage cuts or hours reductions. In a rapidly evolving economic crisis there is a need for timely information to assess labour market perf...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Covid-19 is increasing the divide in life chances between rich and poor

Covid-19 is increasing the divide in life chances between rich and poor Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin propose reforms and urgent actions to tackle economic and educational inequalities in the UK....Read more...

CEP occasional paper

When to release the lockdown: A wellbeing framework for analysing costs and benefits

In choosing when to end the lockdown, policy-makers have to balance the impact of the decision upon incomes, unemployment, mental health, public confidence and many other factors, as well as (of course) upon the number o...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

How the UK government should respond to the unequal local economic impacts of COVID-19

The economic crisis caused by COVID-19 will play out unequally across areas. Unfortunately, the unusual nature of this crisis makes its local impacts hard to predict. This complicates attempts to formulate appropriate ar...Read more...

Journal article

World Trade Review:

Reopening Pandora's Box in Search of a WTO-Compatible Industrial Policy? the Brazil-Taxation Dispute

We critically assess the Appellate Body (AB) report on the Brazil-Taxation dispute, taken to the World Trade Organisation by the European Union and Japan, and encompassing seven different Brazilian industrial programmes ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Rising protectionism and global value chains: quantifying the general equilibrium effects

Quantifying the effects of trade policy in the age of ’global value chains’ (GVCs) requires an enhanced analytical framework that takes the observed international input-output relations in due account. However, existing ...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Budget 2020: will it move the economy onto a sustainable and inclusive growth path?

The UK's challenges around productivity, regional disparities and the transition to net zero emissions are complex and interconnected, made even more so by the coronavirus outbreak and Brexit. Anna Valero argues that whi...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Budget 2020: a bold response to coronavirus, but more must be done if it becomes widespread in the UK

While the 2020 Budget offers an overall adequate response to the challenges currently posed by coronavirus, there are three issues that need to be addressed further, especially as the outbreak becomes more widespread, wr...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Measuring the impact of malfunctioning credit markets on productivity

Since the Global Crisis, there has been a renewed awareness of how frictions in credit markets can damage economic efficiency due to a higher cost of capital and/or capital being misallocated away from its most productiv...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

We can increase happiness through public policy - and in our jobs and private lives too

As research shows us what makes us happy, a world happiness movement is being born, write Richard Layard and George Ward....Read more...

Blog

UK in a Changing Europe:

New chancellor, new challenge: evaluating the coronavirus budget

Thomas Sampson examines the first UK budget to balance the shocks of Covid-19 and Brexit....Read more...

CEP report

Seizing sustainable growth opportunities from zero emission passenger vehicles in the UK

This is a Special report for the LSE Growth Commission, produced with the Centre for Economic Performance, that provides a set of actionable recommendations to the UK government to drive sustainable growth in the context...Read more...

Blog

CEP Urban and Spatial Programme Blog:

Housing: 'no shortage' - is it nonsense?

Paul Cheshire questions arguments that Britain is not suffering from a housing shortage, pointing out errors in common understanding....Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

The UK’s housing crisis: what should the next government do?

Since 2015, neither the government nor any opposition party has had any effective policy to tackle our housing crisis symbolised most starkly by Starter Homes. To the extent there has been action, it is largely ineffecti...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Immigration

Immigration remains a highly contentious issue and its purported effects on the labour market and the wider economy are still highly contested. The discussion in this briefing is intended as a short overview of what we k...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Eurosceptic votes are less likely when EU interventions visibly boost local job markets

Eurosceptic votes are less likely when EU interventions visibly boost local job markets Anti-systemic political movements have emerged in recent years in a large number of countries across the globe. These parties genera...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A happy choice: wellbeing as the goal of government

In this article, we lay out the basic case for wellbeing as the goal of government. We briefly review the history of this idea, which goes back to the ancient Greeks and was the acknowledged ideal of the Enlightenment. W...Read more...

CEP Brexit analysis

The economic impact of Boris Johnson’s Brexit proposals

The Prime Minister Boris Johnson has set out a means of escaping the Brexit stalemate, but his new Brexit proposals have, as yet, not managed to overcome the impasse. What has been striking, though, is the extent to whic...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Reopening Pandora's box in search of a WTO-compatible industrial policy? The Brazil-taxation dispute

The Brazil-Taxation dispute concerns the complaints taken to the World Trade Organisation by the European Union and Japan against seven different Brazilian industrial subsidy programmes. One concerned the automotive sect...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 British Politics and Policy:

Residential mobility in the UK: how distance and local economic conditions drive residential choices

Monica Langella and Alan Manning find that high unemployment in an area induces people to move away, and has an even stronger effect on the attractiveness of that area to potential movers. They also find that younger and...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Innovation union: costs and benefits of innovation policy coordination

In this paper, we document large heterogeneity in innovation policy and performance between old and new EU member states, and present firm-level evidence on the close link between foreign direct investment (FDI) spillove...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Joseph Schumpeter Lecture, EEA Annual Congress 2017: Do Tax Cuts Produce more Einsteins? The Impacts of Financial Incentives VerSus Exposure to Innovation on the Supply of Inventors

Many countries provide financial incentives to spur innovation, ranging from tax incentives to research and development grants. In this paper, we study how such financial incentives affect individuals' decisions to pursu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Affordability, financial innovation and the start of the housing boom

At their peak in 2005, roughly 60 percent of all purchase mortgage loans originated in the United States contained at least one non-traditional feature. These features, which allowed borrowers easier access to credit thr...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...

CentrePiece article

Sustainable growth in the UK

Anna Valero and colleagues urge the UK government to put action on climate change and sustainability at the heart of its growth strategy....Read more...

CentrePiece article

When innovation policy trumped protectionism: the Reagan years

Giammario Impullitti and colleagues show that it was the Reagan administration's innovation policy - not a retreat from globalisation - that promoted US growth....Read more...

External publication

World Happiness Report 2019

The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness that ranks 156 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be. The World Happiness Report 2019 focuses on happiness and th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do tax cuts produce more Einsteins? The impacts of financial incentives vs. exposure to innovation on the supply of inventors

Many countries provide financial incentives to spur innovation, ranging from tax incentives to research and development grants. In this paper, we study how such financial incentives affect individuals' decisions to pursu...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Some causal effects of an industrial policy

We exploit changes in the area-specific eligibility criteria for a program to support jobs through investment subsidies. European rules determine whether an area is eligible for subsidies, and we construct instrumental v...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Innovation and trade policy in a globalized world

How do import tariffs and R&D subsidies help domestic firms compete globally? How do these policies affect aggregate growth and economic welfare? To answer these questions we build a dynamic general equilibrium growth mo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Subsidizing labor hoarding in recessions: the employment and welfare effects of short time work

The Great Recession has seen a revival of interest in policies encouraging labor hoarding by firms. Short time work (STW) policies, which consist in offering subsidies for hours reductions to workers in firms experiencin...Read more...

CEP industrial strategy paper

Sustainable growth in the UK: seizing opportunities from technological change and the transition to a low-carbon economy

An overarching strategy for sustainable growth is required to address the dual challenges of restoring productivity growth and managing a transition to a low-carbon economy – priorities in both the UK and other G20 count...Read more...

CEP Brexit analysis

The economic consequences of the Brexit deal

Amidst the political fighting and fevered speculation about leadership challenges and parliamentary defeats for the government, one crucial issue seems to have been lost from sight. The deal negotiated with the European ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The not-so-generalized effects of the generalized system of preferences

We use an empirical gravity equation approach to study how nonreciprocal trade preferences (NRTPs), enacted mainly through the Generalized System of Preferences, affect the exports of the beneficiary nations. In line wit...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Increasing differences between firms: market power and the macro-economy

A rich understanding of macro-economic outcomes requires taking into account the large (and increasing) differences between firms. These differences stem in large part from heterogeneous productivity rooted in managerial...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The economic impacts of constraining home investments

We investigate how political backlash against wealthy investors in high-amenity places affects local residents. We exploit a quasi-natural experiment: the ‘Swiss Second Home Initiative’, which banned the construction of ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Intended versus unintended consequences of migration restriction policies: Evidence from a natural experiment in Indonesia

This article studies the consequences of restrictions to migration at the origin on labor market outcomes and school enrolment in origin communities. Our difference-indifferences specification exploits the differential i...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Consumer Psychology:

The Power of Voice in Stimulating Morality: Eliciting Taxpayer Preferences Increases Tax Compliance

Decisions about paying taxes represent one of the most common moral quandaries faced by citizens. In the present research, we argue that taxpayer compliance can be raised by increasing "voice": allowing taxpayers to expr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Beyond tariff reductions: what extra boost from trade agreement provisions?

There is a growing recognition that for developed economies, like the UK, tariff-free market access is just one of a number of measures that ease cross-border trade flows. Modern trade agreements go beyond tariff reducti...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

From periphery to core: Measuring agglomeration effects using high-speed rail

We analyze the economic impact of the German high-speed rail (HSR) connecting Cologne and Frankfurt, which provides plausibly exogenous variation in access to surrounding economic mass. We find a causal effect of about 8...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Cohesion Policy Incentives for Collaborative Industrial Research. The Evaluation of a Smart Specialisation Forerunner Programme

This paper evaluates a program of subsidies for Collaborative Industrial Research (co-) funded by the EU Cohesion Policy in Italy mobilizing over 1 billion euros. This program anticipated in the 2007-2013 funding cycle s...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

One or Many Cohesion Policies of the European Union? On the Diverging Impacts of Cohesion Policy across Member States

Do regions in all Member States (MSs) of the European Union (EU) benefit from Cohesion Policy? Are regional impacts persistently diversified across countries? In order to answer these questions this paper explores how th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The effect of minimum wages on low-wage jobs: evidence from the United States using a bunching estimator

We propose a novel method that infers the employment effect of a minimum wage increase by comparing the number of excess jobs paying at or slightly above the new minimum wage to the missing jobs paying below it. Using st...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Interaction of Public and Private Employment: Evidence from a German Government Move

We use the German government move from Bonn to Berlin in 1999 to test competing views about the impact of public employment on private sector activity in a local labor market. A relocated public sector job might create n...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Where industry is strong and where it’s weak – key facts of UK business geography

Financial services aren’t as London-centric as the creative industries, and the coast-inland divide is growing, write Sandra Bernick, Richard Davies, and Anna Valero. The UK’s financial services industry is not nearly as...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Local Economic Impacts of Regeneration Projects: Evidence from UK's Single Regeneration Budget

We study the local economic impacts of a major regeneration programme aimed at enhancing the quality of life of local people in deprived neighbourhoods in the UK. The analysis is based on a panel of firm and area level d...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The end of free college in England

A growing movement in the United States is promoting 'free college' for young people. Richard Murphy, Judith Scott Clayton and Gill Wyness ask what can be learned about the likely outcomes from England's move in the oppo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The key determinants of happiness and misery

Understanding the key determinants of people’s life satisfaction will suggest policies for how best to reduce misery and promote wellbeing. This paper provides evidence from survey data on USA, Australia, Britain and Ind...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 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...

CentrePiece article

Origins of happiness

Understanding the key determinants of people’s life satisfaction makes it possible to suggest policies for how best to reduce misery and promote wellbeing. A forthcoming book by Richard Layard and colleagues discusses ev...Read more...

CEP report

UK growth: a new chapter

The UK Economy is at a critical juncture. Leaving the EU creates economic challenges that necessitate widespread policy change. But this also generates an opportunity to tackle some of the long-standing challenges which ...Read more...

Book

Origins of Happiness

What makes people happy? Why should governments care about people's well-being? How would policy change if well-being were the main objective? The Origins of Happiness seeks to revolutionize how we think about human prio...Read more...

CentrePiece article

in brief... Children's reading: evaluating a new teaching method

Children at risk of struggling with their reading get long-term benefits from ‘synthetic phonics’, the current favoured method among education policy-makers in England. The benefits for disadvantaged pupils justify the f...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Protectionism through exporting: subsidies with export share requirements in China

We study the effect of subsidies subject to export share requirements (ESR) - that is, conditioned on a firm exporting at least a given fraction of its output - on exports, the intensity of competition and welfare, throu...Read more...

CEP Brexit analysis

Brexit and the impact of immigration on the UK

A reduction in immigration from the European Union (EU) following a vote for Brexit would not lead to any improvement in living standards for those born in the UK. Cuts in EU immigration would not offset the big fall in ...Read more...

CEP report

Why Governments Won't Invest

The UK Government is currently exerting a sharp and tightening squeeze on public investment at a time when borrowing for public investment has never, historically, been cheaper with interest rates close to zero in real t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Special and differential treatment for developing countries

Special and Differential Treatment for Developing Countries (SDT) constitutes a central feature of the GATT/WTO system. Its formal goal is to foster export-led growth in developing countries. Its theoretical foundations ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Crime and violence in Latin America and the Caribbean: towards evidence-based policies

Latin America and the Caribbean account for a third of the world’s homicides but under 10% of the world’s population. What’s more, homicide rates in the region are higher than they should be given countries’ levels of in...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The (Displacement) Effects of Spatially Targeted Enterprise Initiatives: Evidence from UK LEGI

We investigate the impacts of a significant area-based intervention (LEGI) that aimed to increase employment and entrepreneurial activity in 30 disadvantaged areas across England. We examine the spatial pattern of effect...Read more...

CEP real wages update

Slowing UK Wage Growth

We have previously examined the path of nominal and real wages in the UK (Blanchflower and Machin, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c). In that work, we expressed the view that in recent years there has been sufficient slack in the lab...Read more...

External publication

Measuring competitiveness in Europe: resource allocation, granularity and trade:

The importance of micro data in assessing aggregate outcomes

In recent years, researchers and policymakers have been able to use sophisticated databases to provide insightful economic analysis. The increasing variety of available microeconomic databases and the improvement in the ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Information frictions and adverse selection: policy interventions in health insurance markets

This paper develops and implements a general framework to study insurance market equilibrium and evaluate policy interventions in the presence of choice frictions. Friction-reducing policies can increase welfare by facil...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Regulatory reform in Greece: the benefits of removing maximum mark-ups

Regulations that impose maximum mark-ups are intended to protect consumers from firms exercising market power. But a study by Christos Genakos and colleagues suggests that they can have the opposite effect: when Greece l...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Measuring economic policy uncertainty

We develop a new index of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) based on newspaper coverage frequency. Several types of evidence – including human readings of 12,000 newspaper articles – indicate that our index proxies for m...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Merger policy in a quantitative model of international trade

In a two-country international trade model with oligopolistic competition, we study the conditions on market structure and trade costs under which a merger policy designed to benefit domestic consumers is too tough or to...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Making a difference in education

A new book by Sandra McNally and colleagues surveys the evidence on which policies and practices are working in UK schools....Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... A Global Apollo Programme to tackle climate change

Leading thinkers across the worlds of science, public service and academia have launched a new global programme to combat climate change. Richard Layard outlines their proposal for big public investment in research that ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The optimal timing of UI benefits: theory and evidence from Sweden

This paper provides a simple, yet general framework to analyze the optimal time profile of benefits during the unemployment spell. We derive simple sufficient-statistics formulae capturing the insurance value and incenti...Read more...

CEP election analysis

A New Priority for Mental Health

Mental illness (especially depression and chronic anxiety) is the biggest single cause of misery in advanced countries. But only one quarter of those who are ill receive treatment. Mental health is crucial for wellbeing ...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...

CEP election analysis

Gender Gaps in the UK Labour Market: jobs, pay and family-friendly policies

Differences in the labour market experiences of men and women have fallen over the last 20 years, but there are still sizeable ‘gender gaps’ in employment and wages. Certain factors help to explain a good part of gender ...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Paying for Higher Education

The UK Higher Education sector has changed radically as a result of Coalition Policies – most obviously through the dramatic increase in the tuition fee cap from £3,375 to £9,000 per year. However, the greatest issue ari...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

From Periphery to Core: Measuring Agglomeration Effects Using High-Speed Rail

We analyze the economic impact of the German high-speed rail (HSR) connecting Cologne and Frankfurt, which provides plausibly exogenous variation in access to surrounding economic mass. We find a causal effect of about 8...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Schools: The Evidence on Academies, Resources and Pupil Performance

England’s performance in international tests of student achievement continues to be disappointing. Further improvement is essential not only for students’ themselves but also for economic growth. This briefing considers ...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...

CEP election analysis

Productivity and Business Policies

UK productivity stagnated after the Great Recession of 2008-09 and remains about 15 percent below historical trends. This 'productivity puzzle' is due to a mixture of cyclical and structural effects - the fall is not ent...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...

CEP election analysis

Immigration and the UK Labour Market

During periods of strong economic growth, migration is and has always been important for filling gaps in the labour market. Perceptions do not seem to line up with the existing academic evidence. On balance, the evidence...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Educational efficiency: value for money in public spending on schools

Which national education systems deliver the best value for money? Peter Dolton and colleagues rank 30 of the world’s richest countries based on their expenditure on teacher costs (which account for 80% of education budg...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The dilemma of central bank transparency

If central banks publish the transcripts of their internal policy debates, will discussions be enhanced or inhibited? Michael McMahon and colleagues use tools from computational linguistics to analyse the positive and ne...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Mapping Information Economy Businesses with Big Data: Findings for the UK

Governments around the world want to develop their ICT and digital industries. Policymakers thus need a clear sense of the size and characteristics of digital businesses, but this is hard to do with conventional datasets...Read more...

CEP policy analysis

The impact of 'clean innovation' on economic growth: evidence from the transport and energy industries'

Policies on climate change that encourage 'clean innovation' while displacing 'dirty innovation' could have a positive impact on short-term economic growth while avoiding the potentially disastrous reduction in GDP that ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Impact of Maximum Markup Regulation on Prices

Markup regulation is a common yet understudied type of regulation. We analyze the repeal of maximum wholesale and retail markup regulation in an oligopolistic and vertically non-integrated market. By comparing the prices...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The ‘investor route’ to UK citizenship

Simple reforms to the ‘investor route’ system whereby wealthy foreigners can get permanent residence in the UK would benefit current residents and signal that the country is open. That’s the view of Sir David Metcalf, ch...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Policy for better mental health

Treating mental illness should be a top national priority, especially as proven psychological therapies effectively cost nothing. Richard Layard explains how CEP research has led to a new deal for mental health – but muc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Knowledge Spillovers from Clean and Dirty Technologies

How much should governments subsidize the development of new clean technologies? We use patent citation data to investigate the relative intensity of knowledge spillovers in clean and dirty technologies in two technologi...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

The impact of a carbon tax on manufacturing: Evidence from microdata

We estimate the impact of a carbon tax on manufacturing plants using panel data from the UK production census. Our identification strategy builds on the comparison of outcomes between plants subject to the full tax and p...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Industry compensation under relocation risk: a firm-level analysis of the EU emissions trading scheme

When regulated firms are offered compensation to prevent them from relocating, efficiency requires that payments be distributed across firms so as to equalize marginal relocation probabilities, weighted by the damage cau...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gone for Good? Subsidies with Export Share Requirements in China: 2002-2013

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

Reconciling Observed Tariffs and the Median Voter Model

Median voter theory applied to trade policy predicts positive tariffs in capital-abundant countries and negative tariffs in labor-abundant countries. Negative tariffs are rare, and this paper reconciles the median voter ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

HRM Practices and Knowledge Processes Outcomes: Empirical Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment on UK SMEs in the Tourism Hospitality and Leisure Sector

This paper presents empirical evidence of the relationship between human resources practices and the effectiveness of a firm to capitalise on investment in knowledge as measured by the returns to innovation and business ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Transparency and Deliberation within the FOMC: A Computational Linguistics Approach

How does transparency, a key feature of central bank design, affect the deliberation of monetary policymakers? We exploit a natural experiment in the Federal Open Market Committee in 1993 together with computational ling...Read more...

Book

Urban Economics and Urban Policy
Challenging Conventional Policy Wisdom Hardcover

In this bold, exciting and readable volume, Paul Cheshire, Max Nathan and Henry Overman illustrate the insights that recent economic research brings to our understanding of cities, and the lessons for urban policy-making...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Eliciting Taxpayer Preferences Increases Tax Compliance

Two experiments show that eliciting taxpayer preferences on government spending—providing taxpayer agency--increases tax compliance. We first create an income and taxation environment in a laboratory setting to test for ...Read more...

CEP policy analysis

Immigration, the European Union and the UK Labour Market

During periods of strong economic growth, migration is and has always been important for filling gaps in the labour market. On balance, the evidence for the UK labour market suggests that fears about adverse consequences...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Minimum wages: the economics and the politics

The UK’s national minimum wage has tackled extreme low pay – but the wider problem of low pay remains as serious as ever. That is one of the conclusions of Professor Alan Manning in a discussion of the growing popularity...Read more...

External publication

Report on Wellbeing and Public Policy

An independent commission chaired by Gus O'Donnell proposes a radical reform of public policy-making, targeted at wellbeing, or life satisfaction, not simply economic growth.Its report, Wellbeing and Policy, commissioned...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Policy Paper

Evaluating Spatial Policies

In most countries economic prosperity is very unevenly distributed across space: regions, cities and neighbourhoods seem to be very unequal, whether we look at average earnings, employment, education or almost any other ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Relocation of Public Sector Workers: Evaluating a Place-based Policy

This paper investigates the local labor market impact of a UK relocation initiative, the 2014 Lyons Review. The review resulted in the dispersal of about 25,000 civil service jobs out of London and the South East towards...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Tackling long-term unemployment

Barbara Petrongolo surveys the research evidence on the effectiveness of the 'sticks' and 'carrots' of active labour market policies....Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief: Mrs Thatcher's industrial legacy

John Van Reenen examines the 'unbalancing' of Britain's economy away from manufacturing since 1979....Read more...

CentrePiece article

Economics of higher education

In brief: Economics of higher education...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief: Tough choices for a troubled euro

Nobel laureate Christopher Pissarides thinks that either the euro should be dismantled or the direction of European economic policy reversed....Read more...

CentrePiece article

Does school spending matter?

Increases in resources for schools are typically more effective in disadvantaged schools and for disadvantaged pupils. That is one of the many findings of a review by Steve Gibbons and Sandra McNally of the research evid...Read more...

External publication

World Happiness Report 2013

The second World Happiness Report, released on Sept 9th 2013, further strengthens the case that well-being should be a critical component of how the world measures its economic and social development....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Effects of Resources Across School Phases: A Summary of Recent Evidence

This report provides an overview and discussion of the past decade of academic evidence on the causal effects of resources in schooling on students’ outcomes. Early evidence lacked good strategies for estimating the effe...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief: China's trading success: the role of pure exporter subsidies

China's government provides a wide range of incentives to encourage firms to produce almost exclusively for the foreign market. The authors analyse the impact of these 'pure exporter subsidies' on both the Chinese econom...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Macroeconomic Assessment: Interest Rates, Taxes and Spending

Read more...

CentrePiece article

Education in Scotland: performance in a devolved policy area

As the people of Scotland consider their vote in next year's referendum, what evidence is there that the nation can succeed 'on its own'? Gill Wyness and colleagues explore how Scotland compares with the rest of the UK i...Read more...

Journal article

Educational Research:

Educational attainment across the UK nations: performance, inequality and evidence

Political devolution occurred in the UK in 1998-99, following many years in which some degree of policy administration had been devolved to the four nations. Since devolution, all four countries of the UK have pursued in...Read more...

CEP report

Education in a Devolved Scotland: A Quantitative Analysis

Education is an area that is highly devolved in the UK, and the fact that all four constituent countries have pursued very different policies in the recent past provides a good testing ground to undertake a comparative r...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Pushing On a String: US Monetary Policy is Less Powerful in Recessions

We estimate the impulse response of key US macro series to the monetary policy shocks identified by Romer and Romer (2004), allowing the response to depend flexibly on the state of the business cycle. We find strong evid...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Innovation, Reallocation and Growth

We build a model of firm-level innovation, productivity growth and reallocation featuring endogenous entry and exit. A key feature is the selection between high- and low-type firms, which differ in terms of their innovat...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Concentration Versus Re-Matching? Evidence About the Locational Effects of Commuting Costs

Using administrative employer-employee data from Germany, I exploit two reductions of tax breaks for commuting in 2003/4 and 2006/7 to estimate commuting costs’ effect on the decision to switch job and move house. Standa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Great Stagnation: What Can Policymakers Do?

Although the economic recovery in the UK has been disappointing, it is inappropriate to either assert that Japan’s two lost decades illustrate the ineffectiveness of stimulative monetary policy or that the UK is predesti...Read more...

CEP report

Investing for Prosperity: Skills, Infrastructure and Innovation

What institutions and policies are needed to sustain UK economic growth in the dynamic world economy of the twentyfirst century? After years of inadequate investment in skills, infrastructure and innovation, there are lo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

China's Pure Exporter Subsidies

One third of Chinese exporters sell more than ninety percent of their production abroad. We argue that this distinctive pattern is attributable to a wide range of subsidies that provide incentives to these “pure exporter...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Immigration and the UK Labour Market

David Metcalf, chair of the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), outlines recent changes in the regulatory framework for immigrant workers....Read more...

CEP US election analysis

Healthcare Reform: The US Policy Debate

The ability of the next US president to rein in spending on healthcare and improve the productivity of the healthcare system is largely going to determine the country’s fiscal future. That is one of the conclusions of th...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

Policy Design in a Model with Swings in Risk Appetite

This paper studies the policy implications of habits and cyclical changes in agents' appetite for risk-taking. To do so, it analyses the non-linear solution of a New Keynesian (NK) model, in which slow-moving habits help...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief: Mental illness and the NHS

Richard Layard and colleagues reveal the shocking scale of mental illness in Britain - and how little the NHS does about it....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 policy analysis

Immigration and the UK Labour Market: The latest evidence from economic research

During periods of strong economic growth, migration is and has always been important for filling gaps in the labour market. On balance, the evidence for the UK labour market suggests that fears about the consequences of ...Read more...

CEP report

How mental illness loses out in the NHS a report by the Centre for Economic Performance's Mental Health Policy Group

Mental illness accounts for a massive share of the total burden of disease. Even when we include the burden of premature death mental illness accounts for 23% of the total burden of disease. Yet, despite the existence of...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief: Can industrial policy boost jobs?

Business support policies designed to raise productivity and employment are common worldwide, but rigorous micro-econometric evaluation of their causal effects is rare. We exploit multiple changes in the area-specific el...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief: Urban schools: does money make a difference?

This research paper is motivated by a long tail at the bottom of the educational distribution, educational inequality between those from high and low socio-economic groups and the question as to what role an increase in ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Growth and productivity: UK economic performance since 1997

A common view is that the performance of the UK economy between 1997 and 2010 under Labour was very weak and that the current economic problems are a consequence of poor policies in this period. In this report, we analys...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Matching Firms, Managers, and Incentives

We exploit a unique combination of administrative sources and survey data to study the match between firms and managers. The data includes manager characteristics, such as risk aversion and talent; firm characteristics, ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Heterogeneity, Demand for Insurance and Adverse Selection

Recent empirical work finds that surprisingly little variation in the demand for insurance is explained by heterogeneity in risks. I distinguish between heterogeneity in risk preferences and risk perceptions underlying t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Environmental Policy and Directed Technological Change: Evidence from the European Carbon Market

This paper investigates the impact of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) on technological change. We exploit installations-level inclusion criteria to estimate the impact of the EU ETS on firms patenting. We find t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Cyclical Risk Aversion, Precautionary Saving and Monetary Policy

This paper analyzes the conduct of monetary policy in an environment in which cyclical swings in risk appetite affect households' propensity to save. It uses a New-Keynesian model featuring external habit formation to sh...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Policy uncertainty: a new indicator

The damaging impact of economic uncertainty on growth has been reasonably well studied - but what happens when there is uncertainty about economic policy-making? Nicholas Bloom and colleagues have developed a measure of ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Big ideas: wellbeing and public policy

Richard Layard outlines the development of CEP research on what makes people happy and how society might best be organised to promote happiness....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Household Effects of Government Spending

This paper provides new evidence on the effects of fiscal policy by studying, using household-level data, how households respond to shifts in government spending. Our identification strategy allows us to control for time...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Some Causal Effects of an Industrial Policy

Business support policies designed to raise employment and productivity are ubiquitous around the world. We exploit changes in the area-specific eligibility criteria for a major program to support manufacturing jobs thro...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Causal Effects of an Industrial Policy

Business support policies designed to raise productivity and employment are common worldwide, but rigorous micro-econometric evaluation of their causal effects is rare. We exploit multiple changes in the area-specific el...Read more...

CEP policy analysis

Apprenticeship Policy in England: Increasing Skills versus Boosting Young People's Job Prospects

Successive British governments have committed substantial public resources to apprentice training, but far too few young people benefit and not enough high value skills have been developed. That is the central conclusion...Read more...

CEP report

UK economic performance since 1997: growth, productivity and jobs

A common view is that the performance of the UK economy between 1997 and 2010 under Labour was very weak and that the current economic problems are a consequence of poor policies in this period. In this report, we analys...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

In Search of a Theory of Debt Management

A growing literature integrates debt management into models of optimal fiscal policy. One promising theory argues the composition of government debt should be chosen so that fluctuations in its market value offsets chang...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Agglomeration Externalities and Urban Growth Controls

Should constraints on urban expansion be relaxed because of external agglomeration economies? In a system of heterogeneous cities, we demonstrate that second-best land use policy consists of a tax on city creation and a ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Young People Without Qualifications: How 'Headline Numbers' Shape Policy and Aspiration

England's most widely used indicator of young people's education and labour market status is the NEET category - 'not in education, employment or training'. Making comparisons with how France and Germany measure school l...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

First Impressions Matter: Signalling as a Source of Policy Dynamics

We first establish that policymakers on the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee choose lower interest rates with experience. We then reject increasing confidence in private information or learning about the struc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How Experts Decide: Identifying Preferences versus Signals from Policy Decisions

A large theoretical literature assumes that experts di ffer in terms of preferences and the distribution of their private signals, but the empirical literature to date has not separately identi ed them. This paper propos...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 occasional paper

Climate Change Policy and Business in Europe. Evidence from Interviewing Managers

This report presents new evidence relating to the effects of climate policy in Europe, particularly the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). The evidence is based on new data from almost 800 phone interviews...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

From ‘Plan B’ to ‘Plan V’: what the UK economy needs to reboot and rebalance growth

With the threat of stagflation and interest rate rises, the current economic climate shows little sign of improvement in the near future. John Van Reenen finds that the government’s severe austerity programme, with its v...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Anatomy of a Paradox: Management Practices, Organisational Structure and Energy Efficiency

This paper presents new evidence on managerial and organizational factors that explain firm level energy efficiency and TFP. We interviewed managers of 190 randomly selected manufacturing plants in the UK and matched the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade and Labor Market Outcomes

This paper reviews a new framework for analyzing the interrelationship between inequality, unemployment, labor market frictions, and foreign trade. This framework emphasizes firm heterogeneity and search and matching fri...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Academy schools under Labour combated disadvantage and increased pupil achievement: the coalition’s new policy may exacerbate existing inequalities

With the recent accusation that Michael Gove has been sending ‘mixed messages’ over academy schools, it is clear that the policy is still very controversial. Stephen Machin and James Vernoit take a step back and compar...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Bank Bailouts, International Linkages and Cooperation

Financial institutions are increasingly linked internationally. As a result, financial crisis and government intervention have stronger effects beyond borders. We provide a model of international contagion allowing for b...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Monetary Policy Rules and Foreign Currency Positions

Using an endogenous portfolio choice model, this paper examines how different monetary policy regimes can lead to different foreign currency positions by changing the cyclical properties of the nominal exchange rate. We ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

In Search of the 'Economic Dividend' of Devolution: Spatial Disparities, Spatial Economic Policy and Decentralisation in the UK

After a decade of devolution and amid uncertainties about its effects, it is timely to assess and reflect upon the evidence and enduring meaning of any ‘economic dividend’ of devolution in the UK. Taking a multi-discipli...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How Big (Small?) are Fiscal Multipliers?

We contribute to the intense debate on the real effects of fiscal stimuli by showing that the impact of government expenditure shocks depends crucially on key country characteristics, such as the level of development, ex...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Political Competition, Policy and Growth: Theory and Evidence from the United States

This paper develops a simple model to analyze how a lack of political competition may lead to policies that hinder economic growth. We test the predictions of the model on panel data for the US states. In these data, we ...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

To avoid creating a ‘lost generation’, with perhaps a fifth of all 18 year olds unemployed and outside training, a new push on apprenticeships would help

With record numbers of young people not gaining university places, the viability of apprenticeships could make a huge difference in preventing a ‘lost generation’ out of touch with the labour market. Dr Hilary Steedman o...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Capitalization of Central Government Grants into Local House Prices: Panel Data Evidence from England

We explore the impact of central government grants on local house prices in England using a panel data set of local authorities (LAs) from 2001 to 2008. Electoral targeting of grants to LAs by the incumbent national gove...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Productivity Spreads, Market Power Spreads and Trade

Much of recent Trade theory focuses on heterogeneity of firms and the differential impact trade policy might have on firms with different levels of productivity. A common problem is that most firm level dataset do not co...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

LSE Centre for Economic Performance – A Note on Academy School Policy

The Academies programme3 was first introduced by the Labour government in September 2002, with the stated aim of improving the educational outcomes of some of the most disadvantaged pupils in English secondary schools. T...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills special paper

The Interdependence and Determinants of Childhood Outcomes: The Relevance for Policy. Report to the Department of Children, Schools and Families

The Centre for the Economics of Education was asked to bring together a wide range of academic evidence (primarily England-based) to investigate the extent to which academic and non-academic childhood outcomes are comple...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

LSE Centre for Economic Performance: Reducing Crime: More Police, More Prisons or More Pay?

Crime is usually high on the list of voter concerns. This might seem surprising since total crime has fallen significantly since the mid 1990s. Yet two thirds of the population still (wrongly) think that crime is rising ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Europe's emissions trading scheme: taxpayers versus sthe industry lobby

The European Commission plans to tighten the greenhouse gas emissions targets in the Emissions Trading System. Ralf Martin and colleagues examine the likely impact on affected businesses, and conclude that industry is ex...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief: Producing superstars for the economic World Cup

Most countries' education policies make raising average student performance their priority. Yet just as in the football World Cup, the quality of the top performers is the key to competing successfully at the global leve...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

LSE Centre for Economic Performance – all election analyses are now available

The complete series of Election Analyses from the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) is now available, summarising research evidence on some of the key policy battlegrounds of the 2010 UK General Election. The followi...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Evaluating Education Policies: The Evidence from Economic Research

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CEP discussion paper

Depression Econometrics: A FAVAR Model of Monetary Policy During the Great Depression

The prominent role of monetary policy in the U.S. interwar depression has been conventional wisdom since Friedman and Schwartz (1963). This paper presents evidence on both the surprise and the systematic components of mo...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

How Much Can We Learn from International Comparisons of Intergenerational Mobility?

This paper summarises research on the relative level of intergenerational mobility – whether classified by income, social class, social status or education – considering observations from 65 countries. With the exception...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Dynamics of FDI Location: A Markov Analysis for British Regions

The paper uses the framework of Markov chains to examine convergence in the location of inward foreign direct investment across the regions of Great Britain over 1985-2005. An analysis is undertaken by industry group tha...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Why Do Some Firms Undertake R&D Whereas Others Do Not?

Data for the UK show Northern Ireland remains at the bottom of the productivity league table, and that its R&D performance is consistently amongst the lowest across the UK regions. This paper analyses the data from a sur...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Monetary Policy Under Alterative Asset Market Structures: the Case of a Small Open Economy

Can the structure of asset markets change the way monetary policy should be conducted? Following a linear-quadratic approach, the present paper addresses this question in a New Keynesian small open economy framework. Our...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Impacts of the Climate Change Levy on business: Evidence from Microdata

We estimate the impacts of the Climate Change Levy (CCL) on manufacturing plants using panel data from the UK production census. Our identification strategy builds on the comparison of outcomes between plants subject to ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Macroeconomic Role of Unemployment Compensation

The standard motivation for unemployment compensation is consumption smoothing and most papers in the literature have analyzed trade-offs involving consumption smoothing and moral hazard. This paper shows how such policy...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

On the International Dimension of Fiscal Policy

This paper analyses the international dimension of fiscal policy using a small open economy framework in which the government finances its spending by levying distortionary taxation and issuing non-state-contingent debt....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Central Bank's Two-Way Communication with the Public and Inflation Dynamics

Using a model of island economy where financial markets aggregate dispersed information of the public, we analyze how two-way communication between the central bank and the public affects inflation dynamics. When inflati...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Government's Review of Sub-National Economic Development and Regeneration: Key Issues

We are now in the midst of another concerted attempt by Government to make sense of and tidy up the sub-national governance of economic development and regeneration. This is a challenging task made all the more difficult...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Sales and Monetary Policy

A striking fact about prices is the prevalence of ``sales': large temporary price cuts followed by a return exactly to the former price. This paper builds a macroeconomic model with a rationale for sales based on firms ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Wage Setting Patterns and Monetary Policy: International Evidence

Systematic differences in the timing of wage setting decisions among industrialized countries provide an ideal framework to study the importance of wage rigidity in the transmission of monetary policy. The Japanese Shunt...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Delayed Doves: MPC Voting Behaviour of Externals

The use of independent committees for the setting of interest rates, such as the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) at the Bank of England, is quickly becoming the norm in developed economies. In this paper we examine the i...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Talking Less and Moving the Market More: Is this the Recipe for Monetary Policy Effectiveness? Evidence from the ECB and the Fed

This paper examines and compares the communication strategies of the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, and their effectiveness. First we do a comparative study exercise. We find that on monetary policy commi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A Swing-State Theory of Trade Protection in the Electoral College

This paper develops an infinite-horizon, political agency model with a continuum of political districts, in which incumbent politicians can improve their re-election probability by attracting swing voters in key states t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A Simple Model of the Juggernaut Effect of Trade Liberalisation

This paper posits a formal political economy model where the principle of reciprocity in multilateral trade talks results in the gradual elimination of tariffs. Reciprocity trade talks turn each nation’s exporters into a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Robustly Optimal Monetary Policy

This paper analyses optimal monetary policy in response to shocks using a model that avoids making specific assumptions about the stickiness of prices, and thus the nature of the Phillips curve. Nonetheless, certain robu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Maastricht Convergence Criteria and Optimal Monetary Policy for the EMU Accession Countries

The EMU accession countries are obliged to fulfill the Maastricht convergence criteria prior to entering the EMU. What should be the optimal monetary policy satisfying these criteria? To answer this question, the paper p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Economic Linkages Across Space

We develop a diagrammatic framework that can be used to study the economic linkages between regions or cities. Hitherto, such linkages have not been the primary focus of either the theoretical or empirical literatures. W...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Labor Search and Matching in Macroeconomics

The labor search and matching model plays a growing role in macroeconomic analysis. This paper provides a critical, selective survey of the literature. Four fundamental questions are explored: how are unemployment, job v...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Seigniorage

In this paper I analyse four different but related concepts, each of which highlights some aspect of the way in which the state acquires command over real resources through its ability to issue fiat money. They are (1) s...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

The Timing of Monetary Policy Shocks

A vast empirical literature has documented delayed and persistent effects of monetary policy shocks on output. We show that this finding results from the aggregation of output impulse responses that differ sharply depend...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Journal:

Happiness and public policy: a challenge to the profession

The theory behind public economics needs radical reform. It fails to explain the recent history of human welfare and it ignores some of the key findings of modern psychology. Indeed these two failings are intimately link...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Education Policy in the UK

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Book

Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market

This book aims to provide a basis for better unemployment policy: showing how the lessons learned from experience and theory can be applied to greatly reduce the waste and misery of high unemployment. The book survey...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

Agglomeration and the Adjustment of the Spatial Economy

We consider the literatures on urban systems and New Economic Geography to examine questions concerning agglomeration and how areas respond to shocks to the economic environment. We first propose a diagrammatic framework...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Fiscal Discipline and the Cost of Public Debt Service: Some Estimates for OECD Countries

We use a panel of 16 OECD countries over several decades to investigate the effects of government debts and deficits on long-term interest rates. In simple static specifications, a one-percentage-point increase in the pr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Designing Target Rules for International Monetary Policy Cooperation

This study analyzes a two-country dynamic general equilibrium model with nominal rigidities, monopolistic competition and producer currency pricing. A quadratic approximation to the utility of the consumers is derived an...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Inflation, Inequality and Social Conflict

This paper presents a political economy model of inflation as a result of social conflict. Agents are heterogeneous in terms of income. Agents’ income levels determine their ability to hedge against the effects of inflat...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

Monetary Policy and Welfare in a Small Open Economy

This paper characterizes welfare in a small open economy and derives the corresponding optimal monetary policy rule. It shows that the utility-based loss function for a small open economy is a quadratic expression in dom...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender Segregation in Employment Contracts

This paper presents evidence on gender segregation in employment contracts in 15 EU countries, using micro data from the ECHPS. Women are over-represented in part-time jobs in all countries considered, but while in north...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Collateral Value and Forbearance Lending

We investigate the foreclosure policy of collateral-based loans in which the endogenous collateral value plays a crucial role. If creditors are able to commit, then the equilibrium arrangement is more likely to feature f...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unemployment in Britain: A European Success Story

Unemployment in Britain has fallen from high European-style levels to US levels. I argue that the key reasons are first the reform of monetary policy, in 1993 with the adoption of inflation targeting and in 1997 with the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Regional Influences on U.S. Monetary Policy: Some Implications for Europe

This paper looks at the monetary policy decisions of the U.S. Federal Reserve and asks whether those decisions have been influenced solely by national concerns, or whether regional factors have played a role. All of the ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Monopsony and the Efficiency of Labour Market Interventions

Implicit in many discussions of labour market policy is the assumption that, in the absence of interventions, the operation of the labour market is well-approximated by the perfectly competitive model. The merits or deme...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Product Standards, Trade Disputes and Protectionism

Trade disputes over national product standards are a growing source of tension in the international trading system. The usual pattern is that a country introduces a new product standard for all sales of a good in its loc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Neighbourhood Effects in Small Neighbourhoods

This paper uses data on a sample of Australian teenagers to test for neighbourhood effects on school dropout rates. The data allows us to test for neighbourhood effects at two different spatial scales. We find that educa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Whence Reform? A Critique of the Stiglitz Perspective

This paper discusses the key hypotheses which Joseph Stiglitz proposed, in his wide-ranging critique of the 'Washington Consensus', with regard to transition reforms and economic polices in China and Russia. The primar...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Monetary Misconceptions

The paper identifies a number of misconceptions about the monetary policy process and the monetary transmission mechanism in the UK. Among the misconceptions about the process are the alleged lack of regional and sectora...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 arrangementsûcurrency boards, monetary unions, or formal dollarization. ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

R&D in Developing Countries: What Should Governments Do?

I consider the implications of recent research for R&D policy in developing countries. Typical new growth models, which assume free entry and no strategic behaviour by R&D producers, are less appropriate for policy guida...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Fallacy of the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level

It is not common for an entire scholarly literature to be based on a fallacy, that is, 'on faulty reasoning; misleading or unsound argument'. The 'fiscal theory of the price level', recently re-developed by Woodford,...Read more...