Results

Blog

Economics Observatory:

What would it take to level up the UK?

The government's levelling up agenda seeks to reduce disparities across the UK. Policies to boost economic performance will need to attract workers and firms away from London and the South East and improve opportunities ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Accidents will happen: (de)regulation of health and safety legislation, workplace accidents and self employment

In 2015, the UK government exempted "low-risk" self-employed workers from legislation on workplace safety. This reversed a move two decades earlier that incorporated the self-employed more fully into the same regulatory ...Read more...

External publication

The Big Brexit

This report finds that the expected large relative decline in UK-EU exports haven't occurred and instead Brexit appears to be weighing on both UK openness and competitiveness across both EU and non-EU markets....Read more...

CentrePiece article

Trade disruptions in the wake of Brexit

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

CentrePiece article

The economics of levelling up

There is an economic tension at the heart of the government’s plans for 'levelling up' the UK, according to CEP's research director Henry Overman. He argues that getting serious about helping people to access good job op...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Why is it so difficult to tackle the lack of affordable housing?

Boris Johnson has pledged that more people will be helped onto the property ladder and that the supply of housing will be improved. Christian Hilber and Olivier Schoni consider the history of housing policy and the chall...Read more...

Blog

LSE Blogs:

What we learnt about the Covid economy

In spring 2020, many countries imposed radical, urgent actions including lockdowns to protect their citizens' health - but there was also a need to protect people from the worst of the ensuing economic storm. Academics a...Read more...

Blog

LSE Europp:

Evidence from Greece: the potential pitfalls of using education as a welfare policy instrument

Policymakers frequently use education as a welfare policy instrument. But can these policies have unintended consequences? Christos Genakos and Eleni Kyrkopoulou present findings from a case study in Greece where a socia...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Improving productivity through better management practices

John Van Reenen, Nicholas Bloom, and Raffaella Sadun explain how the World Management Survey provides the evidence needed for designing industrial strategies to tackle low productivity....Read more...

Blog

LES Blogs:

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

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

Blog

LSE Research:

State effectiveness and the climate crisis

Combatting the climate crisis is not just an issue of finding money for the right kinds of investment but also ensuring that it is spent effectively, says economist Tim Besley....Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Housing policy and affordable housing

Lack of affordable housing is a growing and often primary policy concern in cities around the world. The main underlying cause for the 'affordability crisis', which has been mounting for decades, is a combination of stro...Read more...

External publication

Enduring strengths

A decade of stagnant living standards, weak productivity and low investment combined with a coming decade of major change - driven by Covid-19, Brexit and Net Zero - mean that it is crucial for the UK to renew its econom...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unravelling deep integration: UK trade in the wake of Brexit

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

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Political systems affect innovation

Innovation drives economic growth, however data indicates innovative capability differs across economies. Simon Commander, Saul Estrin and Thamashi De Silva suggest democracy is associated with more innovation overall, t...Read more...

Blog

Wheeler Insititute for Business and Development, London Business School:

Harnessing the potential of urbanisation in Africa: land and housing policy

Tanner Regan examines the potential for urban planning to encourage public and private investment in land and infrastructure....Read more...

CEP Insights

Jobs and wages

Most working-age adults depend on earnings from jobs as their main source of income. Understanding the labour market has always been a central part of research at CEP and its predecessor the Centre for Labour Economics....Read more...

Book

Restarting the future
How to fix the intangible economy

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

Blog

VoxEU:

The hidden costs of incentivising later retirement

Over the past two decades, many countries have reformed their public pension systems in pursuit of desirable fiscal effects, often by introducing or strengthening incentives for later retirement. However, the welfare eff...Read more...

Blog

LSE Blogs:

How multinationals exploited a health crisis to accelerate deforestation in Liberia

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

CEP Insights

Wellbeing

As societies become richer, they do not become happier. This paradox has led to a growing interest in the science of wellbeing, and how policymakers can evaluate policies in terms of what will improve wellbeing. Economis...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Knowledge spillovers from clean and emerging technologies in the UK

The UK government has committed to increase R&D support for clean technologies in an effort to meet its net-zero target by 2050. The opportunity cost of such programs crucially depends on the value of knowledge spillover...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

The progressive quandary: how to design an immigration policy that balances competing objectives

There is a tension between strong employment rights, a supportive welfare state, equal rights for migrants and locals, and an open, non-selective immigration policy that creates hard decisions for progressive politicians...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The effects of college capital projects on student outcomes

What can the UK government expect to get for its £1.5 billion investment in further education colleges? Claudia Hupkau and Sandra McNally investigate the benefits of capital projects in the sector and find that they help...Read more...

CentrePiece article

What have the 2021 Nobel laureates done for us?

The 2021 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens. Jörn-Steffen Pischke explains how the use of natural experiments in empirical economics, work in which they were pione...Read more...

External publication

Spatial disparities across labour markets

Spatial inequalities in the UK are profound and persistent. In 2019, average wages in London were 60% higher than those in Scarborough and Grimsby. Employment rates ranged from 66% in Skegness and Louth to 90% in Harroga...Read more...

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

'Levelling-up': the government's plans aren't enough to promote economic growth and tackle inequality

The government's levelling-up plan dodges the hard choices says Henry Overman. Countering the economic forces behind the UK's spatial disparities requires addressing multiple barriers and allowing differing approaches - ...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

How might an independent Scotland build fiscal capacity?

Tim Besley and Chris Dann explain how developing a sense of common purpose is critical for nation-building - and would be a key issue for an independent Scotland....Read more...

Blog

LSE Blogs:

Why wellbeing should be the goal of policy

Wherever there is a fixed budget constraint, money should be allocated to policies which give the greatest increase in wellbeing per pound of expenditure, argues Richard Layard. Even policy-makers unmoved by wellbeing as...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Have you quit your New Year's resolution by Quitter's Day?

Many people make New Year's resolutions, but by mid-January most resolutions will have been left aside. Workouts are skipped in favour of Netflix. Salads are shunned in favour of pasta. And across the UK Dry January is r...Read more...

Blog

LSE Blogs:

Prosociality and the pandemic: adolescents from poorer backgrounds suffered more

Camille Terrier, Daniel L Chen and Matthias Sutter look at how Covid-19 infections affected adolescents' prosociality, an essential non-cognitive skill. The prosociality gap between students with high and low socio-econo...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

The risks of prolonged higher inflation

With consumer prices rising at the fastest pace for three decades, what are the risks of prolonged higher inflation as a result of the current stance of fiscal and monetary policy, and what is the likely impact of an eas...Read more...

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

The only way to substantially reduce the number of migrants crossing the Channel is through an agreement with France

Current government policy, whatever its rhetoric, is to muddle on, trying to deter crossings, trying to return migrants to safe countries but recognising that borders are inevitably porous. Muddling on is often an under-...Read more...

Blog

Project Syndicate:

The Keys to Inclusive Growth

One of the COVID-19 pandemic's most important economic lessons is that innovation and inclusion need not be mutually exclusive. By pursuing the right policies, Western governments can promote both and thereby help to bri...Read more...

Blog

CVER:

The effects of college capital projects on student outcomes

In the 2020 budget the UK government committed 1.5 billion pounds over five years to improve further education colleges. Stephen Gibbons, Claudia Hupkau, Sandra McNally and Henry Overman write that the policy should help...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

How new technology can help clinical quality, productivity, and the healthcare workforce

Health information and communication technology (HICT) holds enormous potential to improve productivity. Several countries, the UK and the US included, have embraced this idea and spent billions of dollars on promoting H...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Government policy fails to join the dots on the key challenges of innovation, net zero, and levelling up

Anna Valero writes that funding clean technologies, such as ocean and wind energy, can be a triple win, helping to address climate change, generating growth, and contributing to levelling up. Yet the 2021 Budget failed t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Efficient industrial policy for innovation: standing on the shoulders of hidden giants

Research and development is underprovided whenever it creates knowledge spillovers that drive a wedge between its total and private economic returns. Heterogeneity in the intensity of this market failure across technolog...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

"Better the devil you know": are stated preferences over health and happiness determined by how healthy and happy people are?

Most people want to be both happy and healthy. But which matters most when there is a trade-off between them? This paper addresses this question by asking 4,000 members of the public in the UK and the US to make various ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

The Net Zero Strategy provides a foundation which now needs to be cemented in investment, tax, and regulatory decisions

The UK government has delivered on its promise to publish a strategy for driving the country's economy towards net zero emissions by 2050. Esin Serin and Anna Valero write that the economy-wide Net Zero Strategy provides...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Sink or swim time? Social mobility and the 2021 Budget

Lee Elliot Major assesses the prospects for social mobility and economic recovery in Rishi Sunak's 2021 Budget....Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Nobel prize in economics recognises evidence-based impact evaluation

following the announcement of the 2021 Nobel prize in economics being awarded to David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens for their contributions to an evidence-based research, Gonzalo Nunez-Chaim explains the continu...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Natural experiments in labour economics and beyond: The 2021 Nobel laureates David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens

The 2021 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences has been awarded to David Card of the University of California, Berkeley, "for his empirical contributions to labour economics", and to Joshua Angrist of MIT and Guido Imbens of ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Happy to help: NHS volunteering in Covid-19 times

The Covid-19 crisis prompted thousands to register as NHS Volunteer Responders, helping vulnerable people with small daily tasks like shopping. Christian Krekel and colleagues find big increases in wellbeing among those ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Green growth

Many countries have plans for a 'green recovery' from the pandemic. Anna Valero reviews 30 years of CEP research into how environmental and industrial policies can be combined to achieve economic growth that is strong, s...Read more...

External publication

Trading places

This briefing note is the launch paper for the Brexit research theme of The Economy 2030 Inquiry, a joint project between the Resolution Foundation and the London School of Economics, funded by the Nuffield Foundation. I...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In Brief... UK gender pay gap reporting: a crude but effective policy

Forcing employers to reveal their gender pay gap has been effective in its main goal of narrowing the gap, according to research by Jack Blundell who finds the difference between women and men's pay has shrunk by just un...Read more...

Blog

LSE Blogs:

A sense of mutual obligation means that even the rich should see the point of paying their taxes

Creating a strong sense of reciprocity between the state and its citizens makes it more likely they will pay taxes willingly, says Timothy Besley (LSE). As we emerge from a pandemic that emphasised the importance of mutu...Read more...

External publication

The carbon crunch

This report is the launch paper for the net zero strand of the Economy 2030 Inquiry, a joint project between the Resolution Foundation and the London School of Economics. It outlines how net zero can be placed at the cen...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Will vaccine mandates boost the economy? Economists think so

A survey explored US economists' views on President Biden's vaccine mandates. Will the mandates promote a faster and stronger economic recovery? Romesh Vaitilingam writes that the 42 economists who took part in the surve...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Education's biggest challenge is ensuring consistency in what is being done across the system, within each school, and within each classroom

Lee Elliot Major and Andy Eyles write that when it comes to education reform, it is not so much what you do that counts, but how you do it. Policies need to be implemented well to make a difference and delivery needs to ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Blogs:

Evidence from East Germany: How young people's education plans are shaped by their environment

The decision to go to university can have a major impact on an individual's financial future and quality of life. Yet we know relatively little about how these decisions are made and adapted within different contexts. Dr...Read more...

Blog

POID blog:

Risk of Business Failure - POID Tracker

Research by Peter Lambert, Apolline Marion and John Van Reenen find that the number of firms at risk of failing has fallen from that earlier in the pandemic, but that one million jobs are still at risk and advancements c...Read more...

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...

Journal article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy:

The World Management Survey at 18: Lessons and the way forward

Understanding how differences in management 'best practices' affect organizational outcomes has been a focus of both theoretical and empirical work in the fields of management, sociology, economics, and public policy. Th...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:

Vaccines for developing countries: the costs and benefits of waiving patents

There is much debate about whether the patents on COVID-19 vaccines should be waived to allow low-income countries to produce doses for themselves. The Initiative on Global Markets Forum's survey asked European and US ex...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...

Journal article

Economics and Human Biology:

Prenatal economic shocks and birth outcomes in UK cohort data

We consider the effects of major prenatal economic shocks experienced by mothers on two indicators of newborn-infant health, birth weight and head circumference, using detailed microdata from the UK ALSPAC survey. Contro...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Lockdowns widen the gender gap in mental health

Women, the young, and the less educated have borne the brunt of the economic damage caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns in terms of job and earnings losses. As this column reports, women have also suffered far ...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Aiming for zero Covid-19 to ensure economic growth

With the pandemic continuing now for over a year, it has become clear that there is no trade-off between health and wealth. Successful pandemic management has relied on aiming for and protecting Covid-free green zones. T...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:

Almost two-thirds of Black British young people would be reluctant to get a COVID vaccine

We may need to vaccinate under-18s to get the pandemic under control. Patrick Sturgis (LSE), Lindsey Macmillan, Jake Anders and Gill Wyness (UCL Institute of Education) on the findings of a UCL CEPEO / LSE COVID-19 surve...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

How have school closures affected children's mental health?

Children in year groups that were not priorities to return to school before the 2020 summer holidays experienced greater average declines in their mental health. As schools re-open, it is vital to balance efforts to make...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...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

The local economic impacts of regeneration projects: Evidence from UK's single regeneration budget

Many governments aim to improve the labour market outcomes of people living in deprived areas through "place-making" initiatives. Economists are often sceptical about the effectiveness of such policies, but empirical evi...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...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization:

Early-life correlates of later-life well-being: Evidence from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study

We here use data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) to provide one of the first analyses of the distal (early-life) and proximal (later-life) correlates of older-life subjective well-being. Unusually, we have tw...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...

Journal article

Research Policy:

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...

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...

CEP discussion paper

The social determinants of choice quality: evidence from health insurance in the Netherlands

Market provision of impure public goods such as insurance, retirement savings and education is common and growing as policy makers seek to offer more choice and gain efficiencies. This approach induces an important trade...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...

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 discussion paper

Why are pollution damages lower in developed countries? Insights from high income, high-particulate matter Hong Kong

Conventional wisdom suggests that marginal damages from particulate matter pollution are high in less-developed countries because they are highly polluted. Using administrative data on the universe of births and deaths, ...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...

Journal article

World Economy:

The not-so-generalised effects of the Generalized System of Preferences

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

Journal article

Behavioural Public Policy:

A happy choice: a response to the responses

We are very happy to see the engagement of so many eminent scholars in our field with our modest proposal for how to proceed with wellbeing policy formation in the UK. We are also heartened by the apparent endorsement of...Read more...

External publication

World Happiness Report 2020

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 2020 for the first time ranks ci...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...

CEP discussion paper

Machiavelli versus concave utility functions: should bads be spread out or concentrated?

Is wellbeing higher if the same number of negative events is spread out rather than bunched in time? Should positive events be spread out or bunched? We answer these questions exploiting quarterly data on six positive an...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...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

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 either too toug...Read more...

CEP election analysis

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

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

Blog

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...

CEP discussion paper

Dirty density: air quality and the density of American cities

We study whether urban density affects the exposure of city dwellers to ambient air pollution using satellite-derived measures of air quality for the contiguous United States. For identification, we rely on an instrument...Read more...

Journal article

Economica:

Who Got the Brexit Blues? The Effect of Brexit on Subjective Wellbeing in the UK

We use the 2015–16 waves of the UK Household Longitudinal Study (Understanding Society) to look at subjective wellbeing around the time of the June 2016 EU membership Referendum in the UK (Brexit). We employ measures of ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Healthy Minds: the positive impact of a new school curriculum

As the UK government prepares to make personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education compulsory, a recent trial shows how these subjects can be taught successfully. Grace Lordan and Alistair McGuire evaluate the ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Widening the high school curriculum to include soft skill training: impacts on health, behaviour, emotional wellbeing and occupational aspirations

From 2020 the health and relationships aspects of Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education will be compulsory in UK schools for adolescents. However less is known about how it can be taught in an effective manner....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...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

Who becomes an inventor in America? The importance of exposure to innovation

We characterize the factors that determine who becomes an inventor in the United States, focusing on the role of inventive ability (“nature”) versus environment (“nurture”). Using deidentified data on 1.2 million invento...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

Relocation of public sector workers: Evaluating a place-based policy ,

This paper investigates the local labor market impact of a UK relocation initiative – the 2004 Lyons Review. The review resulted in the dispersal of about 25,000 civil service jobs out of London and the South East toward...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Childhood circumstances and young adult outcomes: the role of parental financial problems

Is there a relationship between childhood circumstances and outcomes later on in life? Andrew E. Clark, Conchita D’Ambrosio, and Marta Barazzetta consider the cognitive and non-cognitive consequences on young adults who ...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...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

Monopolistic competition and optimum product diversity under firm heterogeneity

Empirical work has drawn attention to the high degree of productivity differences within industries and their role in resource allocation. This paper examines the allocational efficiency of such markets. Productivity dif...Read more...

Journal article

Health Affairs:

Variation in health spending growth for the privately insured from 2007 to 2014

We examined the growth in health spending on people with employer-sponsored private insurance in the period 2007-14. Our analysis relied on information from the Health Care Cost Institute data set, which includes insuran...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...

Journal article

The Lancet:

Transparency about the outcomes of mental health services (IAPT approach): an analysis of public data

Background: Internationally, the clinical outcomes of routine mental health services are rarely recorded or reported; however, an exception is the English Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) service, which...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...

Journal article

Journal of Housing Economics:

Housing in Europe: A different continent – A continent of differences

This article provides the introduction to the special issue on ‘Housing in Europe: a different continent – a continent of differences’ in the Journal of Housing Economics in 2018. Europe is a large continent with a long ...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...

CentrePiece article

Aid: it’s not just about the money

For more than a decade, CEP research associate Peter Boone and his colleagues at Effective Intervention have been running health and education programmes in some of the poorest parts of the world. As he recounts here, th...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...

Journal article

Social Science and Medicine:

Life satisfaction, QALYs, and the monetary value of health

The monetary value of a quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) is frequently used to assess the benefits of health interventions and inform funding decisions. However, there is little consensus on methods for the estimation o...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...

CEP discussion paper

Medical marijuana laws and mental health in the United States

The consequences of legal access to medical marijuana for individual welfare are a matter of controversy. We contribute to the ongoing discussion by evaluating the impact of the staggered introduction and extension of me...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...

Journal article

American Journal of Health Economics:

Do you have to win it to fix it?: A longitudinal study of lottery winners and their health-care demand

We exploit lottery wins to investigate the effects of exogenous changes to individuals' income on the utilization of health-care services, and the choice between private and public health care in the United Kingdom. Our ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Surprise! Out-of-network billing for emergency care in the United States

Using insurance claims data capturing 8.9 million emergency episodes, we show that in 22% of cases, patients attended in-network hospitals, but were treated by out-of-network physicians. We find that out-of-network billi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Politics, hospital behaviour and health care spending

This paper examines the link between legislative politics, hospital behaviour, and health care spending. When trying to pass sweeping legislation, congressional leaders can attract votes by adding targeted provisions tha...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Early-life correlates of later-life well-being: evidence from the Wisconsin longitudinal study

We here use data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) to provide one of the first analyses of the distal (early-life) and proximal (later-life) correlates of older-life subjective well-being. Unusually, we have tw...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

Social Tenants' Health: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Landlord Interventions

Objectives: To test whether a social landlord can improve health outcomes for older tenants and reduce their NHS usage by simple interventions. Design: Randomised controlled trial. Setting: Social housing in five London ...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...

Journal article

Journal of Health Economics:

Retirement blues

This paper analyses the short- and longer-term effects of retirement on mental health in ten European countries. It exploits thresholds created by state pension ages in an individual-fixed effects instrumental-variable s...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 discussion paper

The hospital as a multi-product firm: the effect of hospital competition on value-added indicators of clinical quality

There is increasing international interest in using Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) to assess health care provider performance. PROMs are a fundamental advance on existing indicators of health care quality in 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...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

Smart and illicit: Who becomes an entrepreneur and do they earn more?

We disaggregate the self-employed into incorporated and unincorporated to distinguish between "entrepreneurs" and other business owners. We show that the incorporated self-employed and their businesses engage in activiti...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...

Journal article

Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Journal of Economic and Human Geography:

The Geography of Foreign Investments in the EU Neighbourhood

This paper aims at investigating the drivers of Multinational Enterprise (MNE) investment in countries linked to the ‘core’ of the European Union (EU 15) by different degrees of functional, economic and political integra...Read more...

Journal article

Kyklos:

Do More of Those in Misery Suffer from Poverty, Unemployment or Mental Illness?

Studies of deprivation usually ignore mental illness. This paper uses household panel data from the USA, Australia, Britain and Germany to broaden the analysis. We ask first how many of those in the lowest levels of life...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...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Agglomeration externalities and urban growth controls

How can land use policy enhance the exploitation of external urban agglomeration economies? In a system of heterogeneous cities, we show that the second-best land use policy constrains city creation, while subsidizing (t...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Urban renewal after the Berlin wall: A place-based policy evaluation

We use a quasi-experimental research design to study the effects of a spatially targeted renewal policy implemented in Berlin, Germany, in the aftermath of the city's division during the Cold War period. Our results sugg...Read more...

Journal article

International Journal of Industrial Organization:

International aspects of merger policy: A survey

This paper surveys the literature on merger policy in open economies. We first adopt a reduced-form approach to derive general insights on the scope for conflict between national antitrust authorities and on the gains fr...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Stimulative Effect of an Unconditional Block Grant on the Decentralized Provision of Care

Understanding the impact of central government grants on decentralized health care provision is of crucial importance for the design of grant systems, yet empirical evidence on the prevalence of flypaper effects in this ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief: Weekend opening of GP practices

Can increased access to GPs reduce overcrowding in hospitals' Accidents & Emergency departments? Research by Peter Dolton and Vikram Pathania assesses whether weekend GP opening hours introduced in 2013 in four surgeries...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economic Studies:

First impressions matter: Signalling as a source of policy dynamics

We provide the first direct empirical support for the importance of signalling in monetary policy by testing two key predictions from a novel structural model. First, all policymaker types should become less tough on inf...Read more...

Journal article

Applied Research in Quality of Life:

Estimating the Mental Health Effects of Social Isolation

It is frequently hypothesized that feelings of social isolation are detrimental for an individual’s mental health, however standard statistical models cannot estimate this effect due to reverse causality between the inde...Read more...

Blog

ESRC blog:

The ‘photo-finish effect’: when third place winners are happier than second

Laura Kudrna, a London School of Economics scholarship PhD candidate, researches the effects of achievement on happiness, particularly focusing on examples of when greater success – be it financial, academic, romantic, o...Read more...

CentrePiece article

A shortage of nurses?

The government’s Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) has reluctantly recommended that nurses remain on the ‘shortage occupation list’, while criticising the health sector for failing to maintain a sufficient supply of UK ...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...

Journal article

Gerontology:

Associations between neighborhood characteristics, well-being and health vary over the life course

Background: Neighborhood characteristics are important determinants of individual health and well-being. For example, characteristics such as noise and pollution affect health directly, while other characteristics affect...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...

Journal article

American Journal of Medical Research:

Why we should spend more on mental health

Mental health problems affect roughly 1 in 5 adults, and 1 in 10 children at any one time. In rich countries they cause roughly 40% of disability, absenteeism and underperformance at work, and cost some 7% of GDP. Under ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Misery and mental health

Mental illness is a far bigger source of human misery than poverty or unemployment, according to research by Sarah Flèche and Richard Layard. They argue that we need to move beyond a purely materialistic conception of mi...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Taking Care of the Budget? Practice-level Outcomes during Commissioning Reforms in England

I investigate whether vesting budgets with doctors impacts treatment decisions and patients outcomes by exploiting the transitional phase of major recent health care reforms in England that passed budgets to consortia of...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

The price ain't right? Hospital prices and health spending on the privately insured

We use insurance claims data covering 28 percent of individuals with employer-sponsored health insurance in the US to study the variation in health spending on the privately insured, examine the structure of insurer-hosp...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...

Journal article

Frontiers in Psychology:

Why more psychological therapy would cost nothing

To tackle the huge problem of mental illness, England has launched a large programme of psychological therapy, which is being watched worldwide. The authors argue that it costs nothing, due to savings on welfare benefits...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...

Blog

ESRC blog:

Making the world a happier place

Professor Lord Richard Layard directs the Wellbeing Programme at the ESRC Centre for Economic Performance, and has made major contributions on unemployment, inflation, inequality and post-Communist reform. Author of the ...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...

Journal article

Economic Development and Cultural Change:

Organization of disaster aid delivery: Spending your donations

Extreme disasters catch the public eye, often resulting in massive infusions of aid that affect not just individual well-being but the fabric of societies. In developing countries, this typically involves foreign nongove...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do more of those in misery suffer from poverty, unemployment or mental illness?

Studies of deprivation usually ignore mental illness. This paper uses household panel data from the USA, Australia, Britain and Germany to broaden the analysis. We ask first how many of those in the lowest levels of life...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...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Mental health and education decisions

Mental health problems have been rising internationally. The link between poor mental health and low educational outcomes is particularly interesting in the case of the UK which has a low international ranking both on me...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 discussion paper

Do you have To win it to fix it? A longitudinal study of lottery winners and their health care demand

We exploit lottery wins to investigate the effects of exogenous changes to individuals' income on health care demand in the United Kingdom. This strategy allows us to estimate lottery income elasticities for a range of h...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...

Journal article

The World Bank Economic Review:

The political economyof trade policy: Gone for good? Subsidies with export share requirements in China: 2002-13

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

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...

Journal article

Feature Issue:

What predicts a successful life? A life-course model of well-being

Policy makers who care about well-being need a recursive model of how adult life‐satisfaction is predicted by childhood influences, acting both directly and (indirectly) through adult circumstances. We estimate such a ...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...

CEP discussion paper

Education and Health Knowledge: Evidence from UK Compulsory Schooling Reforms

We investigate if there is a causal link between education and health knowledge using data from the 1984/85 and 1991/92 waves of the UK Health and Lifestyle Survey (HALS). Uniquely, the survey asks respondents what they ...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

Because I'm Worth It: A Lab-Field Experiment on the Spillover Effects of Incentives in Health

We conduct a controlled lab-field experiment to directly test the short-run spillover effects of one-off financial incentives in health. We consider how incentives affect effort in a physical activity task – and then how...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

Wealth Shocks and Health Outcomes: Evidence from Stock Market Fluctuations

Do wealth shocks affect the health of the elderly in developed countries? The economic literature is skeptical about such effects which have so far only been found for poor retirees in poor countries. In this paper I sho...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 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...

CEP discussion paper

What Predicts a Successful Life? A Life-Course Model of Well-Being

If policy-makers care about well-being, they need a recursive model of how adult life-satisfaction is predicted by childhood influences, acting both directly and (indirectly) through adult circumstances. We estimate such...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

Winning Big But Feeling No Better? The Effect of Lottery Prizes on Physical and Mental Health

We use British panel data to determine the exogenous impact of income on a number of individual health outcomes: general health status, mental health, physical health problems, and health behaviors (drinking and smoking)...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

Free to choose? The impact of healthcare reform

Has the introduction of greater choice and competition in healthcare in England led to improved outcomes for patients? The authors assess changes in the quality of care that hospitals provided for cardiac surgery patient...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

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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

The Marginal Income Effect of Education on Happiness: Estimating the Direct and Indirect Effects of Compulsory Schooling on Well-Being in Australia

Many economists and educators favour public support for education on the premise that education improves the overall well-being of citizens. However, little is known about the causal pathways through which education shap...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Mental Health: The New Frontier for Labour Economics

This lecture argues that mental health is a major factor of production. It is the biggest single influence on life satisfaction, with mental health eight years earlier a more powerful explanatory factor than current inco...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 discussion paper

Moving Up and Sliding Down: An Empirical Assessment of the Effect of Social Mobility on Subjective Wellbeing

Many people remain in the same income group as their parents and this is a cause of much discussion and some concern. In this work, we examine how intergenerational mobility affects subjective wellbeing (SWB) using the B...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 discussion paper

Free to Choose? Reform and Demand Response in the English National Health Service

The impacts of choice in public services are controversial. We exploit a reform in the English National Health Service to assess the impact of relaxing constraints on patient choice. We estimate a demand model to evaluat...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Enduring Impact of Childhood Experience on Mental Health: Evidence Using Instrumented Co-Twin Data

The question of whether there is a lasting effect of childhood experience on mental health has eluded causal measurement. We draw upon identical twin data and econometric instrumentation to provide an unbiased answer. We...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...

CEP discussion paper

Taxes, Cigarette Consumption, and Smoking Intensity: Reply

This paper shows that smoking intensity, i.e. the amount of nicotine extracted per cigarette smoked, responds to changes in excise taxes and tobacco prices. We exploit data covering the period 1988 to 2006 across many US...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

Musn't Grumble. Immigration, Health and Health Service Use in the UK and Germany

A rise in population caused by increased immigration, is sometimes accompanied by concerns that the increase in population puts additional or differential pressure on welfare services which might affect the net fiscal co...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A Cautionary Note on Using Industry Affiliation to Predict Income

Many literatures investigate the causal impact of income on economic outcomes, for example in the context of intergenerational transmission or well-being and health. Some studies have proposed to use employer wage differ...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...

External publication

World Happiness Report 2012

The 2012 World Happiness Report, published by the Earth Institute and co-edited by the institute’s director, Jeffrey Sachs, reflects a new worldwide demand for more attention to happiness and absence of misery as criteri...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...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Mental Health and Education Decisions

Mental health problems - and depression in particular - have been rising internationally. The link between poor mental health and poor educational outcomes is particularly interesting in the case of the UK which has a lo...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 discussion paper

Do Cash Transfers Improve Birth Outcomes? Evidence from Matched Vital Statistics, Social Security and Program Data

There is limited empirical evidence on whether unrestricted cash social assistance to poor pregnant women improves children’s birth outcomes. Using program administrative micro-data matched to longitudinal vital statisti...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

Does High Involvement Management Improve Worker Wellbeing?

Employees exposed to high involvement management (HIM) practices have higher subjective wellbeing, fewer accidents but more short absence spells than “like” employees not exposed to HIM. These results are robust to exten...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...

Journal article

International Review of Psychiatry:

Implementing NICE guidelines for the psychological treatment of depression and anxiety disorders: The IAPT experience

The Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme is a large-scale initiative that aims to greatly increase the availability of NICE recommended psychological treatment for depression and anxiety disorders...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A Model for the Delivery of Evidence-Based PSHE (Personal Wellbeing) in Secondary Schools

Personal Social Health and Economic (PSHE) education is a non-statutory school subject designed to facilitate the delivery of a number of key competencies relevant to health, safety and wellbeing. As well as contributing...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...

CentrePiece article

In brief: Chernobyl: the long-term health and economic consequences

Hartmut Lehmann and Jonathan Wadsworth assess the long-lasting effects of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl disaster on the people of Ukraine....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Impact of Chernobyl on Health and Labour Market Performance

Using longitudinal data from Ukraine we examine the extent of any long-lasting effects of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl disaster on the health and labour market performance of the adult workforce. The variation i...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Crime and Mental Wellbeing

Most estimates of the cost of crime focus on victims. Yet it is plausible that an even larger cost of crime occurs via its indirect impact on the mental wellbeing of non-victims. To test how crime affects individuals’ me...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...

CentrePiece article

In brief: Hospital performance: the impact of good management

CEP research highlights the potential role of improving the quality of hospital management for raising productivity in the UK healthcare sector...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

Did Vietnam Veterans Get Sicker in the 1990s? The Complicated Effects of Military Service on Self-Reported Health

The veterans disability compensation (VDC) program, which provides a monthly stipend to disabled veterans, is the third largest American disability insurance program. Since the late 1990s, VDC growth has been driven prim...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

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...

CEP discussion paper

A Map of Mental Health

This paper provides a comprehensive picture of mental health services in England, including staffing and expenditure, and the number of people in need and the number treated. Historically, this information has been split...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...

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

Making the UK's aid budget work better

All the UK's major parties agree on ring-fencing foreign aid spending at current levels, even while the country's dire financial situation requires sharp cuts to other budgets. Peter Boone draws on the evidence on aid ef...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...

CEP election analysis

CEP Election Analysis 2010 - The complete Series, discussing research on some of the key policy battlegrounds of the 2010 General Election

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CEP election analysis

Health: Higher Spending has Improved Quality, But Productivity Must Increase

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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...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Does Hospital Competition Save Lives? Evidence from the English NHS Patient Choice Reforms

This paper examines whether or not hospital competition in a market with fixed reimbursement prices can prompt improvements in clinical quality. In January 2006, the British Government introduced a major extension of the...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...

CEP discussion paper

Anatomy of a Health Scare: Education, Income and the MMR Controversy in the UK

One theory for why there is an education gradient in health outcomes is that more educated individuals more quickly absorb new health-related information. The measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) controversy provides a case...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

Long-Term Health Effects on the Next Generation of Ramadan Fasting During Pregnancy

Each year, many pregnant women fast from dawn to sunset during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Medical theory suggests that this may have negative long-term health effects on their offspring. Building upon the work of...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 Value of Rude Health': Employees' Well Being, Absence and Workplace Performance

This paper brings new evidence on the relationship between employees' well being, sickness absence and four dimensions of workplace performance i.e. productivity, efficiency, quality of service and profitability. It uses...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...

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

Maternal Smoking During Pregnancy and Early Child Outcomes

We estimate the harm from smoking during pregnancy upon child birth outcomes, using a rich dataset on a cohort of mothers and their births. We exploit a fixed effects approach to disentangle the correlation between smoki...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...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Sheepskin or Prozac: The Causal Effect of Education on Mental Health

Mental illness is associated with large costs to individuals and society. Education improves various health outcomes but little work has been done on mental illness. To obtain unbiased estimates of the effect of educatio...Read more...

CEP report

The Depression Report: A New Deal for Depression and Anxiety Disorders

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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

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

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

Trade Unions and Industrial Injury in Great Britain

Anecdotal evidence suggests that trade unions succeed in ameliorating workplace health and safety, but no attempt has been made to link specific workplace injury rates with a respective union presence. Relying on WERS98,...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...