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

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...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Tickets to the global market: first US patent award and Chinese firm exports

We investigate how international patent activity enables firms from emerging economies to thrive in the global marketplace. We match Chinese customs data to US patent records, and leverage the quasi-random assignment of ...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...

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

Unsettled: job insecurity reduces home-ownership

We evaluate the link between job insecurity and one of the most-important decisions that individuals take: homeownership. The 1999 rise in the French Delalande tax on firms that laid off older workers produced an unexpec...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

Tickets to the global market: first US patent awards and Chinese firm exports

We investigate how international patent activity enables firms from emerging economies to thrive in the global marketplace. We match Chinese customs data to US patent records and leverage the quasi-random assignment of U...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

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

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

Review of Economics of the Household :

Marriage as insurance: job protection and job insecurity in France

Job insecurity is one of the risks that workers face on the labour market. As with any risk, individuals can choose to insure against it. We here consider marriage as a way of insuring against labour-market risk. The 199...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...

Journal article

Economic Policy:

Unsafe jobs, labour market risk and social protection

This paper proposes a new classification of occupations based on the extent to which they put workers at risk of being infected by aerial-transmitted viruses. We expand on previous work that mainly focused on the identif...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics:

A natural experiment on job insecurity and fertility in France

Job insecurity can have wide-ranging consequences outside of the labour market. A 1999 rise in the French layoff tax paid by large private firms when they laid off older workers made younger workers less secure; this ins...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Omnia Juncta in Uno*: foreign powers and trademark protection in Shanghai's concession era

We examine how trademark protection - a prevalent but underexplored intellectual property right - affects international firms and market outcomes in an emerging economy. Exploiting the unexpected introduction of China's ...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

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...

Journal article

Journal of Health Economics:

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...

Journal article

Journal of International Business Studies:

Multinationals, innovation, and institutional context: IPR protection and distance effects

We characterize the knowledge production process whereby the inventive capabilities of the firm generate innovation output in highly inventive multinational enterprises (MNEs). We explore the sensitivity of this relation...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Marriage as insurance: job protection and job insecurity in France

Job insecurity is one of the risks that workers face on the labour market. As with any risk, individuals can choose to insure against it. We here consider marriage as a way of insuring against labour-market risk. The 199...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:

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

Trade protection along supply chains

During the last decades, the United States has applied increasingly high trade protection against China. We combine detailed information on US antidumping (AD) duties? the most widely used trade barrier ? with US input-o...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...

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...

CEP discussion paper

A natural experiment on job insecurity and fertility in France

Job insecurity can have wide-ranging consequences outside of the labour market. We here argue that it reduces fertility amongst the employed. The 1999 rise in the French Delalande tax, paid by large private firms when th...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...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Intergenerational effects of employment protection reforms

Job insecurity has worsened in most OECD countries in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Using Labour Force Survey data, I estimate the link between parental job insecurity (as measured by the contract type held by pa...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...

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...

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

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...

Journal article

Science:

Inequality in mortality decreased among the young while increasing for older adults, 1990-2010

Many recent studies point to increasing inequality in mortality in the United States over the past 20 years. These studies often use mortality rates in middle and old age. We used poverty level rankings of groups of U.S....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...

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 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

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...

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

Is the WTO Article XXIV Bad?

This paper shows that the WTO's Article XXIV increases the likelihood of free trade, but may worsen world welfare when free trade is not reached and customs unions (CUs) form. We consider a model of many countries. Artic...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

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

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

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

Protection for Sale Made Easy

Formal analysis of the political economy of trade policy was substantially redirected by the appearance of Gene Grossman and Elhanan Helpman?s 1994 paper, ?Protection for Sale?. Before that article a fairly wide range of...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

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

Job Security and Job Protection

We construct indicators of the perception of job security for various types of jobs in 12 European countries using individual data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). We then consider the relation between...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

Threshold Effects and Firm Size: the Case of Firing Costs

We study the role of employment protection legislation (EPL) in determining firm size distribution. In many countries the provisions of EPL are more stringent for firms above certain size thresholds. We construct a simpl...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...