Results

CEP discussion paper

Is data privacy a losing game? Evidence from Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy

We study the impact of Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy, which requires apps to obtain explicit user permission before cross-app tracking, on the mobile gaming industry. Using SensorTower US data on the top...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

The economic dynamics of city structure: evidence from Hiroshima's recovery

We provide new theory and evidence on the resilience of the internal city structure after a large shock by analyzing the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Exploiting newly digitized data, we document that the city structure r...Read more...

Journal article

Economica:

Defining the geographical level of competition: a taxonomy of industry tradability

The paper develops a taxonomy of industry tradability to define the geographical level at which competition takes place. First, it creates a novel dataset that combines production and international trade data for both go...Read more...

Journal article

Strategy Science:

Strategic confusopoly: evidence from the UK mobile telecommunications market

Can entire markets strategically confuse consumers to raise market prices? Using a detailed data set covering virtually all mobile phone tariffs and their handsets in the United Kingdom between January 2010 and September...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Hiroshima: urban resilience after the atomic bomb

Why the city centre re-emerged from destruction....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Estimating labour market power: the long and short of it

This paper combines two empirical traditions in the study of employer monopsony power. One tradition estimates static firm labour supply elasticities, while the other focuses on labour market flows, estimating separation...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Firm dynamics and growth with soft budget constraints

We develop a model of endogenous growth and firm dynamics with soft budget constraints, where firms differ in their innovation speed and slower firms need additional financing in order to eventually innovate. As creditor...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Service offshoring and export experience

Service inputs significantly influence export costs and firm internationalisation. A new dataset on French firms? participation in global value chains reveals that experienced exporters are more likely to source services...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

The productivity boom in the British car industry benefited workers, with a caveat

Productivity growth can play an important role in raising wages. The UK car industry experienced fast productivity growth over the past 40 years, and by the 2010s car workers were earning about 37 per cent more than the ...Read more...

Journal article

Demography:

Population growth, immigration, and labor market dynamics

This article provides a first synthesis of population flows and labor market dynamics across immigrant and native-born populations. We devise a novel dynamic accounting methodology that integrates population flows from t...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Workers in finance from lower socio-economic backgrounds don't have equal voice

Employee voice refers to the informal and voluntary sharing of ideas, suggestions, concerns or opinions about work-related matters, with the goal of driving improvement or change. When voice is suppressed or marginalised...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Why delay? Understanding the construction lag, aka the build out rate

We explore the determinants of the speed of residential development after dwelling construction starts. Using a sample of over 140,000 residential developments in England from 1996 to 2015 and employing an instrumental v...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The economic dynamics of city structure: evidence from Hiroshima's recovery

We provide new theory and evidence on the resilience of the internal city structure after a large shock by analyzing the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Exploiting newly digitized data, we document that the city structure r...Read more...

Journal article

Annual Review of Economics:

Industrial policy and the great divergence

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

CEP discussion paper

Immigration and political realignment

This paper examines how immigration reshapes political landscapes, centring on the influx of immigrants from the EU's 2004 enlargement and its implications for the UK. I use a new variation in exposure to immigration bas...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Industrial policy and the great divergence

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

CEP discussion paper

Evaluating merger effects

This paper proposes a new algorithm with which to identify the potential effect of mergers by comparing the outcomes of interest in areas of overlap for the merging parties vis-a-vis areas of no overlap within a differen...Read more...

Journal article

AEA Papers and Proceedings:

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

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

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Sequentially exporting products across countries

Exploiting disaggregated data on French exporters, we show that firms expand their product scope and geographical presence sequentially. This process of internationalization is uneven over time, exhibiting more volatilit...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Globalization and pandemics

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

Journal article

Econometrica:

Dynamic spatial general equilibrium

We incorporate forward-looking capital accumulation into a dynamic discrete choice model of migration. We characterize the steady-state equilibrium; generalize existing dynamic exact-hat algebra techniques to incorporate...Read more...

Journal article

Industrial and Corporate Change :

Industry concentration in Europe and North America

This paper presents new evidence on industry concentration at both the country and the world-region levels. It calculates country-level industry concentration measures from the novel data representative of the entire fir...Read more...

Journal article

Quantitative Economics:

Income dynamics in the United Kingdom and the impact of the Covid-19 recession

In this paper, we use an employer-based survey of earnings and hours to set out the key patterns in UK earnings dynamics from 1975 to 2020, with a particular focus on the most recent recession. We demonstrate that (log) ...Read more...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics :

The slope of the Phillips Curve: evidence from US States

We estimate the slope of the Phillips curve in the cross section of U.S. states using newly constructed state-level price indices for nontradeable goods back to 1978. Our estimates indicate that the slope of the Phillips...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Confusopoly: how mobile phone companies use product complexity to raise prices

Confusing consumers can be profitable for companies, particularly in a highly competitive market. Christos Genakos, Tobias Kretschmer and Ambre Nicolle find evidence that, for a period, phone operators decreased the tran...Read more...

Journal article

Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science :

Modeling clusters from the ground up: a web data approach

This paper proposes a new methodological framework to identify economic clusters over space and time. We employ a unique open source dataset of geolocated and archived business webpages and interrogate them using Natural...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

When oligopolies confuse consumers, beware the rise of confusopoly

Confusing consumers can be profitable for companies, in particular in a competitive market where they can hardly increase their prices without losing their consumers. Ambre Nicolle, Christos Genakos, and Tobias Kretschme...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Population growth, immigration and labour market dynamics

This paper examines the role of population flows on labour market dynamics across immigrant and native-born populations in the United Kingdom. Population flows are large, and cyclical, driven first by the maturation of b...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Strategic confusopoly: evidence from the UK mobile market

Do firms strategically confuse their customers? Using a detailed dataset covering virtually all mobile phone tariffs and their handsets in the UK between January 2010 and September 2012, we examine the co-evolution of pr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Intangibles and industry concentration: supersize me

This paper presents new evidence on the growing scale of big businesses in the United States, Japan and 11 European countries. It documents a broad increase in industry concentration across the majority of countries and ...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...

CEP discussion paper

Dynamic spatial general equilibrium

We develop a dynamic spatial general equilibrium model with forward-looking investment and migration decisions. We characterize analytically the transition path of the spatial distribution of economic activity in respons...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Service offshoring and export experience

Service inputs are a key component of the costs of exporting, and contribute to explain the process of internationalization of firms. A new dataset on the participation of French firms in global value chains reveals that...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Sequential exporting across countries and products

How do exporters expand their product scope and geographical presence? We argue that new exporters are uncertain about their profitability in different countries and products, but learn it as they start to export. As a c...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

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

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

CEP discussion paper

Why have house prices risen so much more than rents in superstar cities?

In most countries ? particularly in supply constrained superstar cities ? house prices have risen much more strongly than rents over the last two decades. We provide an explanation that does not rely on falling interest ...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Gender gaps and the structure of local labor markets

In this paper we discuss some strands of the recent literature on the evolution of gender gaps and their driving forces. We will revisit key stylized facts about gender gaps in employment and wages in a few high-income c...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

Which firms and industries have been most affected by Covid-19?

Almost all UK businesses have been badly affected by the spread of Covid-19, but some industries have been hit harder than others. Financial market data and surveys of firms themselves provide insights into the scale of ...Read more...

Journal article

Heliyon:

Estimating the impact of the Internet of Things on productivity in Europe

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to interconnected devices and objects that collect and transmit data via the Internet. The IoT is an evolving technology, promising to revolutionise industries, but also demanding far-...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A survey of gender gaps through the lens of the industry structure and local labor markets

In this paper we discuss some strands of the recent literature on the evolution of gender gaps and their driving forces. We will revisit key stylized facts about gender gaps in employment and wages in a few high-income c...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

Industry concentration in Europe and North America

This report presents new evidence on industry concentration trends in Europe and in North America. It uses two novel data sources: representative firm-level concentration measures from the OECD MultiProd project, and bus...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...

CEP discussion paper

The best versus the rest: divergence across firms during the global productivity slowdown

We document that labor productivity of the globally most productive firms ? the ?frontier? ? has diverged from all other firms ? the ?rest? ? throughout the 2000s. This divergence remains after controlling for capital in...Read more...

Journal article

IZA Journal of Labor Economics:

Reallocation and the role of firm composition effects on aggregate wage dynamics

Aggregate wages display little cyclicality compared to what a standard model would predict. Wage rigidities are an obvious candidate, but the existing literature has emphasized the need to take into account the growing i...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

War, migration and the origins of the Thai sex industry

This paper analyzes the determinants behind the spatial distribution of the sex industry in Thailand. We relate the development of the sex industry to an early temporary demand shock, that is, US military presence during...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

The time value of housing: historical evidence on discount rates

Most London housing transactions involve trading long leases of varying lengths. We exploit this to estimate the time value of housing ? the relationship between the price of a property and the term of ownership ? over a...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Learning about the prospects for mobility: economic and political dynamics following fundamental policy reform

The political left turn in Latin America, which lagged its transition to liberalized market economies by a decade or more, challenges conventional economic explanations of voting behavior. This paper generalizes the forw...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...

Journal article

Journal of Technology Transfer:

Academic inventors: collaboration and proximity with industry

This paper addresses a number of fundamental research questions on university-industry (U-I) collaborations. Are U-I collaborations intrinsically different from other forms of collaboration, such as inter-firm or inter-u...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

War, migration and the origins of the Thai sex industry

This paper analyzes the determinants behind the spatial distribution of the sex industry in Thailand. We relate the development of the sex industry to an early temporary demand shock, i.e., U.S. military presence during ...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...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Take what you can: property rights, contestability and conflict

Weak property rights are strongly associated with underdevelopment, low state capacity and civil conflict. In economic models of conflict, outbreaks of violence require a prize that is both valuable and contestable. This...Read more...

Journal article

IZA Journal of Labor & Development:

Pathways from school to work in the developing world

This paper uses novel micro data from the ILO-STWT surveys to provide evidence on the duration, endpoint, and determinants of the transition from school to work in a sample of 23 low- and middle-income countries around t...Read more...

Journal article

IZA Journal of Labor Policy:

Wage rigidities and business cycle fluctuations: a linked employer-employee analysis

This paper analyses wage dynamics in Italy in the last 25 years with a special focus on the recent recession. Despite the rather rigid Italian institutional setting, using linked employer-employee data we find that wage ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Aggregate recruiting intensity

We develop a model of firm dynamics with random search in the labor market where hiring firms exert recruiting effort by spending resources to fill vacancies faster. Consistent with micro evidence, in the model fast-grow...Read more...

Journal article

Annual Review of Economics:

The evolution of gender gaps in industrialized countries

Women in developed economies have made major advancements in labor markets throughout the past century, but remaining gender differences in pay and employment seem remarkably persistent. This article documents long-run t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Rethinking deindustrialization

Manufacturing in high-income countries is on the decline and Denmark is no exception. Manufacturing employment and the number of firms have been shrinking as a share of the total and in absolute levels. This paper uses a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The evolution of gender gaps in industrialized countries

Women in developed economies have made major inroads in labor markets throughout the past century, but remaining gender differences in pay and employment seem remarkably persistent. This paper documents long-run trends i...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

Carbon taxes, path dependency, and directed technical change: evidence from the auto industry

Can directed technical change be used to combat climate change? We construct new firm-level panel data on auto industry innovation distinguishing between ?dirty? (internal combustion engine) and ?clean? (e.g., electric, ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Institutions and export dynamics

We study how contract enforcement and export experience shape firm export dynamics in an environment with incomplete information. We show that exporters start with higher volumes and sell for longer periods in countries ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Fiat Chrysler and the future of industry

Machines cannot fully replace people even in a high-tech industry like car-making. That is one of the conclusions of research which uses the example of the newly merged transatlantic car-maker Fiat Chrysler to debunk a n...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Dynemp: a StataA? routine for distributed micro-data analysis of business dynamics

This paper introduces a new Stata? command, dynemp, which implements a distributed micro-data analysis of business and employment dynamics and firm demographics. The data source it requires are business registers or comp...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The dynamics of employment growth: new evidence from 18 countries

Motivated by the on-going interest of policy makers in the sources of job creation, this paper presents results from a new OECD project on the dynamics of employment (DynEmp) based on an innovative methodology using firm...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

Industry Compensation Under Relocation Risk: A Firm-Level Analysis of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme

When industry compensation is offered to prevent relocation of regulated firms, efficiency requires that payments be distributed across firms so as to equalize marginal relocation probabilities, weighted by the damage ca...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The polluter-doesn't-pay principle

By granting discounts on environmental taxes to heavy polluting firms, the government is missing out on significant tax revenues and achieving considerably less in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That is the central c...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Institutions and Export Dynamics

We study the role of contract enforcement in shaping the dynamics of international trade at the firm level. We develop a theoretical model to describe how agents build reputations to overcome the problems created by weak...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Left, Right, Left: Income and Political Dynamics in Transition Economies

The political left turn in Latin America, which lagged its transition to liberalized market economies by a decade or more, challenges conventional economic explanations of voting behavior. While the implications of upwar...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender Gaps Across Countries and Skills: Supply, Demand and the Industry Structure

The gender wage gap varies widely across countries and across skill groups within countries. Interestingly, there is a positive cross-country correlation between the unskilled- to-skilled gender wage gap and the correspo...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

From Russia with Love: The Impact of Relocated Firms on Incumbent Survival

We identify the impact of local firm concentration on incumbent performance with a quasi natural experiment. When Germany was divided after World War II, many firms in the machine tool industry fled the Soviet occupied z...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economics and Statistics:

History and industry location: evidence from German airports

A central prediction of a large class of theoretical models is that industry location is not uniquely determined by fundamentals. Despite the theoretical prominence of this idea, there is little systematic evidence in su...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Theories of Heterogeneous Firms and Trade

This paper reviews the recent theoretical literature on heterogeneous firms and trade, which emphasizes firm selection into international markets and reallocations of resources across firms. We discuss the empirical chal...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...

CEP discussion paper

Sequential Exporting

Firms need to incur substantial sunk costs to break in foreign markets, yet many give up exporting shortly after their first experience, which typically involves very small sales. Conversely, other new exporters shoot up...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

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

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

CEP discussion paper

The Ins and Outs of European Unemployment

In this paper we study the contribution of inflows and outflows to the dynamics of unemployment in three European countries, the United Kingdom, France and Spain. We compare performance in these three countries making us...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

U.S. Labor Market Dynamics Revisited

The picture of U.S. labor market dynamics is opaque. Empirical studies have yielded contradictory findings and debates have emerged regarding their implications. This paper aims at clarifying the picture, which is import...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Growth and the Quality of Foreign Direct Investment: Is All FDI Equal?

In this paper we distinguish different ?qualities? of FDI to re-examine the relationship between FDI and growth. We use `quality? to mean the effect of a unit of FDI on economic growth. However this is difficult to estab...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trust-Based Trade

Weak enforcement of international contracts can substantially reduce international trade. We develop a model where agents build reputations to overcome the difficulties that this institutional failure causes in a context...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

History and Industry Location: Evidence from German Airports

A central prediction of a large class of theoretical models is that industry location is not necessarily uniquely determined by fundamentals. In these models, historical accident or expectations determine which of severa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Offshoring: General Equilibrium Effects on Wages, Production and Trade

A simple model of offshoring is used to integrate the complex gallery of results that exist in the theoretical offshoring/fragmentation literature. The paper depicts offshoring as `shadow migration? and shows that this a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gross Worker Flows in the Presence of Informal Labor Markets. The Mexican Experience 1987-2002

This paper applies recent advances in the study of labor market dynamics to a representative developing country with a large unregulated of ?informal? sector, Mexico. It finds, first, that the formal salaried sector show...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Products and Productivity

Firms' decisions about which goods to produce are often made at a more disaggregate level than the data observed by empirical researchers. When products differ according to production technique or the way in which they e...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Productivity Growth and Employment: Theory and Panel Estimates

Theoretical predictions of the effect of TFP growth on employment are ambiguous, and depend on the extent to which new technology is embodied in new jobs. We estimate a model for employment, wages and investment with an ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Comparative Advantage and Heterogeneous Firms

This paper presents a model of international trade that features heterogeneous firms, relative endowment differences across countries, and consumer taste for variety. The paper demonstrates that firm reactions to trade l...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade Shocks and Industrial Location: the Impact of EEC Accession on the UK

This paper combines detailed production data (from the ARD) with international trade data by port to examine the impact of accession to the EEC on the location of UK manufacturing. The paper has two main objectives. The ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

One Third of the World's Growth and Inequality

This paper studies growth and inequality in China and India u two economies that account for a third of the world's population. By modelling growth and inequality as components in a joint stochastic process, the paper c...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Spatial Agglomeration Dynamics

This paper develops a model of economic growth and activity locating endogenously on a 3-dimensional featureless global geography. The same economic forces influence simulataneously growth, convergence, and spatial agglo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unemployment Dynamics, Duration and Equilibrium: Evidence from Britain

This paper challenges the consensus on the nature of unemployment dynamics in Britain. We show that the argument that changes in unemployment arise mostly from changes in the duration of unemployment (rather than in the ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Cross Country Growth Comparison: Theory to Empirics

This paper reviews the cross-country record of economic growth, using as organizing framework how economic theory has guided that empirical analysis. The paper argues that recent studies of economic growth u both empiric...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Internet Cluster Emergence

Internet development holds the promise of transmitting economic value across physical space at zero marginal cost. In such a 'weightless economy', what factors matter for the location of economic activity and thus for ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Dynamics of International Specialisation

The theoretical literature on trade and growth suggests that comparative advantage is endogenous and evolves over time. However, most empirical analysis of international trade flows is essentially static in nature. This ...Read more...