Results

CentrePiece article

Firms are leaving major energy savings on the table

Some use 20 times more energy than their peers to produce the same output...Read more...

CentrePiece article

EV growth driven by batteries, not oil shocks

As the electric vehicle network reaches a tipping point, the economics changes and the link with oil prices breaks...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Innovation partnerships for development along green value chains

Growth and development success stories are often linked to new technological waves and innovation success. Green technologies emerge as a new technology category in which innovation quality in Emerging and Developing Eco...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Measuring the prevalence and direction of innovation: a pilot approach using LLMs

This paper pilots a method for measuring firms' product and process innovation at scale. Our approach uses LLMs to complete a detailed innovation survey for a sample of 600,000 companies operating across 40 countries. Th...Read more...

CEP report

Skills for growth: what the UK can learn from international approaches for incentivising employer-based training

This report reviews international evidence on approaches to increasing employer investment in training, focusing on three broad models: coordination between employers and training providers; sector-based employment and t...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics:

Net zero and growth go hand in hand

Net zero is often criticised as being responsible for high energy prices and for stalling economic growth. In her interview to Anna Bevan, Anna Valero argues that not only does net zero not stall growth, but that innovat...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Input uncertainty and firm performance: evidence from critical minerals

We study the effect of perceived input uncertainty about critical minerals on firm performance, separating second-moment risk from first-moment shocks and general firm-level uncertainty. Using earnings call transcripts m...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

China's accession to the WTO increased pollution via coal powerplants, not exporters or their suppliers and consumers

As countries consider trade deals to foster development, the question of how trade impacts pollution keeps resurfacing. This column examines how China's rapid entry into world markets in the early 2000s affected pollutio...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Take-away findings from food delivery apps

Do delivery apps reduce or enhance the attraction of cities?...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Polarisation is not a myth

Political views shape the creation and spread of technology...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Informing industrial strategy for clean technologies

Spillovers from innovation can boost regional growth...Read more...

Journal article

Organization Science:

The cybernetic teammate: a field experiment on generative AI and teamwork

We examine how artificial intelligence (AI) impacts three core pillars of collaboration?performance enhancement, expertise integration, and social engagement?through a preregistered field experiment with 791 professional...Read more...

Blog

Unibo Magazine :

Declining forests and rising greenhouse gases: the impact of multinationals in Africa

The expansion of multinationals in Africa is making a significant contribution to the loss of forest cover, the reduction of crop diversity and, in part, the rise in greenhouse gas emissions. These are the findings of a ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The broken ladder: AI, remote work, and early-career hiring

Is generative AI replacing junior workers? A growing literature answers yes, citing large declines in early-career hiring concentrated in GenAI-exposed occupations. We argue that this verdict is premature because GenAI e...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Returns to green tasks in Europe: evidence from online job vacancies

There is growing evidence that green jobs have higher skill requirements, but whether they offer sufficient wage incentives to encourage workers to acquire those skills remains unclear. We study the green wage premium an...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Skills, not scale: GenAI and technology adoption

Do the determinants of technology adoption depend on technological architecture? Using administrative data on Turkish firms from 2021 to 2024, we compare the adoption of traditional and generative artificial intelligence...Read more...

CEP report

Catalysing climate resilience

The UK is experiencing increasing impacts from climate change, including more frequent and severe floods, heatwaves and storms. It needs to prepare more for these impacts. It also needs to honour its pledge to support cl...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Health Economics:

The value of a park in crises: quantifying the health and wellbeing benefits of green spaces using exogenous variations in use values

Most people consider parks important for their quality of life, yet systematic causal evidence is missing. We exploit exogenous variations in their use values to estimate causal effects. Using a representative household ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

AI unbound: digital infrastructure, AI adoption, and firm performance

We study how digital infrastructure relaxes constraints on the diffusion and economic impact of artificial intelligence (AI). Using administrative data and a nationally representative enterprise survey from Turkey (2021?...Read more...

Blog

OECD blog:

While governments brace for another energy crisis, firms are leaving major energy savings on the table

New OECD research finds that some firms use 20 times more energy than their peers producing the same output. Reducing the gap could cut industrial energy use by more than half using technologies that already exist. This ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Technology spillovers, diffusion and rivalry in firm networks

We examine how upstream firms' technology adoption affects the performance and adoption decisions of downstream partners. Using business-to-business data with administrative records on advanced technology adoption, we fi...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Ray of hope? The rise of solar energy in China

China's solar industry is a poster child for the countrya??s economic rise over the last four decades. The output of Chinese solar grew by 76% annually between 2004 and 2013, and by 2019 Chinese firms accounted for 63% o...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Regeneration and Renewal:

Green belts and the inefficient allocation of land

Land is an economic resource, so the efficiency with which it is used is essentially an economic problem. This paper, therefore, approaches the issue from an economic perspective. Having surveyed the economic definitions...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Cleaner energy, higher risk?

Why critical materials are central to global strategic partnerships...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unpacking the restaurant experience: how food delivery technology favors the affluent urban core

We study how technological innovation has transformed the valuation of consumption services, using the sudden national expansion of food delivery services (FDS) in China as a natural experiment. Using a Bartik-style inst...Read more...

CEP report

Pathways to a productive and inclusive net zero

The transition to net zero can bring economic benefits - improving productivity and living standards while tackling climate change and this collection of briefing papers shows how. Pathways to productive and inclusive ne...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Cleaner energy, higher risk? Firm-level exposure to critical minerals

To what extent has the rise of clean energy technologies created new vulnerabilities in global supply chains? In this paper, I study the role of a new type of 'input uncertainty' associated with critical minerals that un...Read more...

Blog

LSE USAPP:

The US-China rare earths deal shows the importance of critical materials in a new era of strategic interdependence

The accelerating shift to clean energy and advanced technologies is redrawing the map of global economic power. As nations and firms race to secure critical minerals, rare earths - small in trade value but high in strate...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Anatomy of automation: CNC machines and industrial robots in UK manufacturing, 2005-2023

Using a novel proprietary survey of UK manufacturing sites, we study the impact on employment of arguably the two most important industrial automation technologies of the past fifty years: computer numerical control (CNC...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The value of green spaces

Using wellbeing data to assess benefits for residents....Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Human after all: occupations at the core of AI adoption

This paper investigates how firms? occupational structure shapes the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) using matched administrative data on French firms and relying on an instrumental variable Probit model. We ide...Read more...

External report

Innovation in Green Technologies

Demand for cleaner, more efficient technologies is transforming global markets and with it, the geography of innovation. Over the last 15 years, markets for new energy technologies and climate resilience have outpaced gr...Read more...

CEP report

The innovation race on geological carbon removal: who is best placed to lead?

This report analyses innovation activity represented by patenting data for two carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies - bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and direct air carbon capture and storage (DACC...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Export strength does not equal tech strength: Rethinking EU comparative advantage

Amid geopolitical shocks, the EU is revisiting its industrial strategy. However, traditional metrics often paint a misleading picture of Europe's underlying strength. This column uses a new approach to measure the EU's r...Read more...

Blog

Centre for Cities:

A review of the Green Book review

While correctly rejecting criticisms that existing guidance is biased, the latest Green Book review suggests changes that should improve appraisal and decision making....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The value of a park in crises: quantifying the health and wellbeing benefits of green spaces using exogenous variations in use values

Most people consider parks important for their quality of life, yet systematic causal evidence is missing. We exploit exogenous variations in their use values to estimate causal effects. Using a representative household ...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

How an oil price crash sparked clean innovation: Insights from Norway

The transition to clean energy will require a significant reallocation of technological investments away from fossil energy sources towards cleaner alternatives. This column investigates whether leveraging the technologi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Firm-level technology adoption in times of crisis

We investigate the diffusion of frontier technologies across German firms before and during the Covid-19 crisis. Our analysis tracks the nature, timing, and pandemic-related motivations behind technology investments, usi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Firm climate investment: a glass half-full

We analyse the importance of climate-related investment using a large economy-wide survey of UK firms. Over half of firms expect climate change to have a positive impact on their investment in the medium term, with aroun...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

LSE Politics and Policy:

How to make Labour's National Wealth Fund work

Labour's plans for growth include the creation of a National Wealth Fund. A closer look at the proposals reveals that this is not like other Sovereign Wealth Funds, but is in fact more like a Green Investment Bank, meant...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Technology spillovers, diffusion, and rivalry in firm networks

Quantifying technology adoption, spillovers, and diffusion across firms is crucial for understanding industry dynamics, and in turn countries' growth. This column combines firm-level input-output VAT data from Turkey wit...Read more...

Chapter

The green transition: understanding and managing impacts for workers

in Handbook on Labour Markets in Transition: Promoting Resilience in a World in Flux.

The transition to net zero will have far-reaching and unequal effects on labour markets, as some jobs disappear, existing jobs change, and new jobs aligned with or supportive of the net-zero objective are created. The ev...Read more...

Government consultation

Invest 2035: the UK's modern industrial strategy

This document presents the submission made in response to the consultation on "Invest 2035: the UK's modern industrial strategy." The consultation was conducted by the Department for Business and Trade from 14 October 20...Read more...

CEP report

The green industrial policy matrix: Informing an industrial strategy for clean energy technologies

This paper presents new evidence to inform industrial strategy prioritisation of clean energy technologies in the UK. It focuses on seven technology categories relevant for reducing emissions across power, heat and indus...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...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Britain needs nerds

Science, technological, mathematical and engineering (STEM) skills have been crucial to economic growth in the UK in the past, but how important are they to the adoption of the latest digital technologies such as AI? Mir...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Distance from innovation is a barrier to the adoption of artificial intelligence

While distance may seem unimportant in the face of technological progress in transportation and communication, several studies have found that distance is a barrier to the diffusion of inventive activity and technology a...Read more...

CentrePiece article

in brief... Designing carbon markets that deliver change

Ever since the European Union created its market-based carbon policy, governments and businesses have been keen to assess its impact. Jonathan Colmer, Ralf Martin, Mirabelle Muuls and Ulrich Wagner explain why analysing ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The unequal health effects of smart tech in the workplace

How does technological progress affect workers' health? Melanie Arntz, Sebastian Findeisen, Stephan Maurer and Oliver Schlenker explore the effects of digitalisation and find evidence of worsening health among manual wor...Read more...

Blog

LSE EUROPP:

How China's rise has shaped innovation and exit among Europe's solar firms

Should the EU protect European firms by restricting imports of solar technology from China? Drawing on new research, Pia Andres finds that Chinese competition has resulted in many European firms going out of business, bu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The new wave? The role of human capital and STEM skills in technology adoption in the UK

Which types of human capital influence the adoption of advanced technologies? We study the skill biased adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) across two waves in the UK. Specifically, we compare th...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Global environmental cooperation and innovation

In the ongoing debate on climate change, one of the most pressing challenges is fostering effective international cooperation. This column examines the success of the 1987 'Montreal Protocol' in phasing out harmful chlor...Read more...

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

Labour's planning reforms - building on grey belts and missed opportunities

Perhaps the proposal that people are most aware of when it comes to Labour's planning reform plans, the one that hit the headlines, is the idea of potentially re-defining small areas of green belts as "grey belt land". T...Read more...

Blog

Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment:

Harnessing the UK's strengths for green growth

Esin Serin and Pia Andres set out evidence on the UK's sectoral and technological strengths to assist policymakers as they consider how to allocate support across the economy in a way that maximises green growth opportun...Read more...

Blog

Jam Tomorrow (Podcast):

The Green Belt: Fields forever? (podcast)

Ros Taylor talks to LSE professor Paul Cheshire and journalist Jonn Elledge about the problems facing Labour as it tries to persuade Britons of the need for more housing and infrastructure. And Paul Cheshire sets out a p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Transition to green technology along the supply chain

We analyze a model of green technological transition along a supply chain. In each layer, a good is produced with a dirty technology, or, if the required "electrification" innovation has occurred, with a clean technology...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

What an LSE-CBI survey reveals about net-zero action in UK firms

Sustainability is the focus of this second blog post about the survey of UK businesses carried out by LSE's Centre for Economic Performance and the Confederation of British Industry. Juliana Oliveira-Cunha, Bruno Serra-L...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Energy and climate change

The scale of change and investment required for net zero is challenging, but early action is the most cost-effective way to achieve the 2050 target and could bring opportunities....Read more...

Journal article

Management Science :

Managerial and financial barriers to the green transition

Using data on 10,776 firms across 22 emerging markets, we show that both credit constraints and weak green management hold back corporate investment in green technologies embodied in new machinery, equipment, and vehicle...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade, skills and productivity

We examine how firms adjust their production and technology in response to exogenous trade shocks. We develop a model in which revenue TFP can be distinguished from quantity TFP, and where skill upgrading is explicitly e...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Growth and productivity

The collapse in productivity growth underlies many of the problems of the UK economy ? from squeezed public services to stagnant living standards. Productivity growth in the UK has been weak relative to its own past and...Read more...

Blog

Imperial College Business School:

Do carbon markets work?

Ever since the EU created its market-based carbon policy, governments and businesses have been keen to see an impact. But analysing how effective policies can be on a noisy economic and global stage is complex - and hard...Read more...

Blog

IFS Zooms In (podcast):

Election 2024: How to grow the economy (podcast)

After years of sluggish growth and flatlining productivity, a rare political consensus has emerged that growing the economy is one of the key priorities of the next government. With an election on the way, we're bound to...Read more...

Journal article

Town Planning Review:

Pushing water uphill: containment policies doomed to fail

London has had a green belt for seventy years making it the `canary in the coal mine? for `zero land take?. Because of strong demand for housing space, rising prosperity underlies rising urban land demand so rigid physic...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics:

Technology transfer in global value chains

Global value chains create opportunities for North-South technology diffusion. This paper studies technology transfer in value chains when contracts are incomplete and input production technologies are imperfectly exclud...Read more...

Blog

INSEAD Knowledge:

Consumers' green conscience fosters clean innovation

Alexandra Roulet and Philippe Aghion explain how consumers' green conscience can foster clean innovation and provide tips for how companies can reach green goals in a highly competitive market....Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Cool cities: The value of urban trees

Cities are warming faster than their rural surroundings. But the ecosystem support provided by urban forestry is often omitted from climate policies due to the difficulty in assigning to it a credible monetary sum. Lu Ha...Read more...

External report

Labour Economics: Thinking through Labour's economic agenda

With the Labour Party having vowed to achieve the fastest growth in the G7, the Social Market Foundation has brought together leading economic experts to provide independent analysis of the party's proposed approach - an...Read more...

Journal article

Annual Review of Economics:

Industrial policy and the great divergence

We discuss recent work evaluating the role of the government in shaping the economy during the long nineteenth century, a practice we refer to as industrial policy. States deployed a vast variety of different policies ai...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Mais lecture - a serious approach for sustainable and inclusive growth

In her Mais lecture, the Shadow Chancellor diagnosed the UK's problems of economic stagnation, persistent inequality and the instability that geopolitical shocks and climate change bring. Anna Valero outlines what a solu...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Industry Competition and Trade:

A new approach for better industrial strategies

Industrial policy is back. After having been considered a taboo since the 1970s, ?new industrial policies? are at the core of governments? strategies to support countries during crises and enable the green and digital tr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Are we yet sick of new technologies? The unequal health effects of digitalization

This study quantifies the relationship between workplace digitalization, i.e., the increasing use of frontier technologies, and workers' health outcomes using novel and representative German linked employer-employee data...Read more...

Blog

Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment:

The UK's Spring Budget 2024: more of the same on growth and net zero?

The Spring Budget 2024 prioritised short-run tax cuts, with Chancellor Jeremy Hunt taking an extra 2% off national insurance contributions. This was anticipated, given we are in an election year - but it marks another mi...Read more...

Journal article

LSE Public Policy Review:

Net zero and the labour market: evidence from the UK

The urgent need for tackling climate change brings with it the need to understand the impacts of net zero policies on the labour market. Various approaches have been taken in attempts to measure and describe green jobs, ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Development Economics:

The deforestation effects of trade and agricultural productivity in Brazil

This paper quantifies the relative footprint of trade and agricultural productivity on deforestation across Brazilian municipalities between 2000 and 2017. Using remote-sensing data, we identify distinct effects of these...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Ending stagnation

What can be done to address Britain?s relative economic decline over the past decade and a half? The final report of the Economy 2030 Inquiry presents an ambitious strategy for reversing decades of under-investment, by t...Read more...

Blog

Grantham Research Institute commentary:

Sustainable investment is good macroeconomics and fiscally prudent for the UK

In the global race for supremacy in 21st century markets, the UK must create expertise in building and deploying new energy technologies, and access the opportunities for stronger and more resilient growth that will brin...Read more...

CEP Insights

Insights: condensed

The Insights series is an introduction to the work of the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP). Each Insight highlights the contribution of CEP researchers to both academic understanding and policymaking in one area of ...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

A novel way to estimate car longevity shows that electric vehicles' life mileage is increasing fast

A car's longevity is important for consumers' budgets as well as for the environment. But reliable evidence on the longevity of electric vehicles is hard to come by. Viet Nguyen-Tien and Robert Elliot, with fellow author...Read more...

External report

The state of the UK economy 2024

The state of the UK economy is always an important matter, but it is all the more so in what looks likely to be an election year. This UK in a Changing Europe report takes stock of the UK economy in order to assess how i...Read more...

CEP report

Boosting growth and productivity in the United Kingdom through investments in the sustainable economy

It is now widely accepted that the UK has a major productivity growth problem, with chronic underinvestment across both the public and private sectors being a key cause. Continued low public investment, as laid out in th...Read more...

Journal article

PLoS ONE:

Identifying technology clusters based on automated patent landscaping

We introduce a new general methodological approach for accurately and consistently retrieving a large set of patents related to specific technologies. We build upon the automated patent landscaping algorithm by incorpora...Read more...

External report

Ending stagnation

The UK has great strengths, but is a decade and a half into a period of stagnation. The toxic combination of slow growth and high inequality was straining the living standards of low- and middle-income Britain well befor...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics :

Induced innovation and international environmental agreements: evidence from the ozone regime

This paper revisits one of the rare success stories in global environmental cooperation: the Montreal Protocol and the phase-out of ozone-depleting substances. I show that the protocol increased science and innovation on...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Autumn Statement: Is the UK gearing up on policies for sustainable growth?

Growth will be a key focus of the forthcoming Autumn Statement, which the Chancellor of the Exchequer will deliver this Wednesday. Anna Valero, Esin Serin and Brendan Curran argue that effective measures to promote green...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...

External report

Finance for the future

The UK Government has an opportunity to mobilise far greater amounts of private investment for public policy priorities than is the case now. Blended finance, deployed well, offers a tried and tested pathway for public a...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Britain can promote private investment and economic growth. Here's how

The UK investment ecosystem needs rewiring across the board to increase firms' desire to invest in productive and sustainable assets, and to enhance their ability to do so. Paul Brandily, Mimosa Distefano, Krishan Shah, ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Geopolitics and the electric vehicle revolution

Rising demand for electric vehicles (EVs) is changing the geopolitical landscape, as the world pivots away from fossil fuels towards the green minerals critical to the EV supply chain. Benjamin Jones, Viet Nguyen-Tien, R...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Induced innovation, inventors and the energy transition

We study how individual inventors respond to incentives to work on 'clean' electricity technologies. Using natural gas price variation, we estimate output and entry elasticities of inventors and measure the medium-term i...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Industrial policy and the great divergence

We discuss recent work evaluating the role of the government in shaping the economy during the long 19th century, a practice we refer to as industrial policy. We show that states deployed a vast variety of different poli...Read more...

Blog

LSE Review of Books:

Creative destruction for growth and change

John Van Reenen introduces his new book, The Economics of Creative Destruction, co-edited with Ufuk Akcigit, which explores how technological innovation can be used to drive growth and tackle problems from inequality to ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

What can house prices tell us about the environmental costs of overhead power lines?

The transition to green energy requires many new electrical power lines to be constructed. In the UK, this construction is a contentious planning and political issue. Steve Gibbons and Cheng Keat Tang show the local cost...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Induced innovation and international environmental agreements: evidence from the ozone regime

This paper revisits one of the rare success stories in global environmental cooperation: the Montreal Protocol and the phase-out of ozone-depleting substances. I show that the protocol increased science and innovation on...Read more...

Blog

The News Agents:

Is this Sunak's 'moment of shame'? (podcast)

Rishi Sunak was propelled into explaining his new position in a hastily arranged press conference after details of plans to adjust (water down) his commitment to green policies were leaked to the BBC. Anna Valero and Lor...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

The UK should lead on a green industrial strategy not roll back

The UK government appears to be watering down its commitments to net zero, breaking the cross-party consensus on the need for Britain to lead in the global battle against climate change. Yet now is the time to double dow...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...

Book

The Economics of Creative Destruction
New Research on Themes from Aghion and Howitt

A stellar cast of economists examines the roles of creative destruction in addressing today’s most important political and social questions. Inequality is rising, growth is stagnant while rents accumulate, the env...Read more...

Blog

RSA:

Investment for inclusive and sustainable growth in cities

This is a decisive decade for addressing the UK's longstanding productivity problems, large and persistent inequalities across and within regions, and delivering on net zero commitments. Anna Valero has contributed this ...Read more...