Results

CEP discussion paper

Dynamic effects of trade

The existence of aggregate welfare gains from trade is one of the classic insights from international economics. However, these conventional welfare gains are static, in the sense that they take existing factor supplies ...Read more...

Journal article

Regional Science and Urban Economics:

Ports, technology and inter-city trade: the economics and geopolitics of evolving maritime transport networks

Maritime transport remains the backbone of global trade, yet the port and ship- ping network that carries it has been transformed by containerization and related technological advances. Drawing on newly available granula...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Ports, technology and inter-city trade: the economics and geopolitics of evolving maritime transport networks

Maritime transport remains the backbone of global trade, yet the port and shipping network that carries it has been transformed by containerization and related technological advances. Drawing on newly available granular ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Brexit has been an economic failure: here?s the evidence

Putting up trade barriers has made the UK poorer...Read more...

Journal article

Review of World Economics:

The changing structure of global value chains and technological change: evidence from the firm-level patent data

This paper explores how changes in the relative position in the Global Value Chains (GVCs) affect firms? innovation activities. The analysis combines matched patent-firm data with information on GVC networks from the OEC...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Cocaine goes bananas: global spillovers from an illicit supply shock

We study how a sharp expansion in Colombian cocaine production propagated internationally through global trade networks, generating substantial social costs. In Colombia, the production surge increased homicide rates by ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The economics of the electric vehicle transition: demand, supply chains, and innovation

Electric vehicles (EVs) are central to decarbonising road transport, a sector responsible for 23% of global energy-related emissions, and their adoption carries both economic and societal implications. This paper provide...Read more...

Journal article

Spatial Economic Analysis:

Digital network centrality and the structure of goods trade

This paper studies how digital infrastructure is associated with the spatial structure of international trade in goods. We embed data availability into a structural gravity framework, conceptualising it as an information...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Digital network centrality and the structure of goods trade

This paper studies how digital infrastructure is associated with the spatial structure of international trade in goods. We embed data availability into a structural gravity framework, conceptualizing it as an information...Read more...

Blog

VoxDev:

Is quality upgrading in agriculture a path to poverty reduction?

Under standard conditions in the Colombian coffee sector, the benefits of producing better coffee are not passed on to farmers, weakening their incentives to invest in higher-quality production. However, when a large int...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Exchange-rate pass-through and invoicing currency choice in international production networks

We study exchange-rate pass-through and currency choice in international transactions, focusing on bilateral bargaining power in relationships between domestic buyers and foreign suppliers. Using detailed transaction-lev...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Innovation union: costs and benefits of innovation policy coordination

What is the scope for international cooperation in innovation policy in economies closely integrated via trade? We address this question by building a two-region innovation-driven growth model with endogenous technology ...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics:

The importance of student-teacher matching: a multidimensional value-added approach

We propose a framework for value-added models that flexibly characterizes heterogeneous teacher productivity based on multidimensional student characteristics. We show that teacher effectiveness heavily depends on the sp...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Deglobalisation in disguise?

Brexit means that UK exporters of services now face more red tape and fewer opportunities....Read more...

Journal article

International Economics:

Reassessing EU comparative advantage: the role of technology

Based on a sufficient statistics approach, we show how the state of technology of European industries relative to the rest of the world can be empirically assessed in a way that is simple in terms of computation, parsimo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

On the shoulders of giants: financial spillovers in innovation networks

Do markets price knowledge spillovers? We show that patent grants influence the stock returns of firms that are connected through technological knowledge dependencies. Using directed patent citations among publicly liste...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

The impact of the 2025 US tariff announcements on UK firms

In the first half of 2025, the US and some of its trading partners announced significant changes to import tariffs. This column uses newly designed questions to study the impact of these changes on UK firms and to assess...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

An alliance for open trade: How to counter Trump's tariffs

The US administration's latest threat to impose sweeping new tariffs on many of its closest allies signals a renewed embrace of aggressive unilateralism and misunderstood economics. This column argues that the only effec...Read more...

Blog

UK in a Changing Europe:

Deglobalisation in disguise?

Shania Bhalotia, Swati Dhingra and Danyal Arnold explain their study on the effect of Brexit on the UK's ability to export services abroad. They argue that exporters now face higher trade costs, more red tape and fewer o...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

The battle for trade currency dominance: The dollar vs the renminbi in Argentina

The US dollar has traditionally dominated the invoicing of international trade. But could other currencies one day replace it? This column examines a unique policy experiment in Argentina in 2023. Amid a severe dollar sh...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

The full returns to higher education in the UK

University education is known to generate significant earnings returns, but its full value may be understated without considering its wider effects on individual wellbeing. This paper estimates the complete lifetime retu...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Human Resources:

Closing the gap between vocational and general education?

Vocational education delivery is widely debated, with ongoing efforts to improve its effectiveness. In 2010, England introduced University Technical Colleges (UTCs), hybrid institutions combining general and vocational e...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

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

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

Blog

Vox EU:

How the 2018/19 US tariffs against China boosted exports and employment in Mexico

In 2018 and 2019, the US administration hiked tariffs on imports from China. This column shows that imports from Mexico partly filled the gap, leading to an export and employment surge in Mexico. Using highly disaggregat...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

The 2025 trade war: Dynamic impacts across US states and the global economy

In 2025, the US government announced a series of tariff increases targeting major trading partners, including Canada, China, and Mexico. This column estimates the economic consequences of these proposed tariffs to the US...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Mapping Functions for Wellbeing Measures to Generate WELLBYs for Use in Economic Evaluation

Ideally, outcome measurements for interventions that affect wellbeing would report the standard, ONS recommended, life satisfaction question. Responses to this question directly correspond to WELLBYs, which can be moneti...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Shocked by Covid: exporting along global value chains

This paper examines the impact of protectionist policies on exports within global value chains (GVCs), using the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment. Leveraging UK customs data (2017-2020) and a shift-share identif...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Willingness to pay for workplace amenities

We develop a revealed preference approach to measure the value of workplace amenities by analyzing how variation in non-wage job attributes affects excess mass in the earnings distribution at budget discontinuities. The ...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

The C-WELLBY: Towards a Universal Measure of Children's Wellbeing for Policy Analysis

There is a pressing need for a universal measure of children's wellbeing, parallel to the WELLBY, for use in cost-benefit analysis. Currently, there is no consensus on how to value the wellbeing of children, raising conc...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Deep integration and trade: UK firms in the wake of Brexit

How does dismantling deep integration affect international trade? This column uses firm-level customs data to study the impact of Brexit on UK goods trade. The authors find that in the short term, exit from the Single Ma...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Human Resources :

Where versus what: college value-added and returns to field of study in further education

We use administrative records on educational and labor market trajectories to estimate the value-added of English further education colleges in terms of educational and labor market outcomes and earnings returns to diffe...Read more...

Journal article

Small Business Economics :

Realizing expectations? High-impact entrepreneurship across countries

Comparative international entrepreneurship research has often used measures of high-growth expectations entrepreneurship to proxy for the construct of high-impact entrepreneurship. We revisit this practice by assessing t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Paper tiger? Chinese science and home bias in citations

We investigate the phenomenon of home bias in scientific citations, where researchers disproportionately cite work from their own country. We develop a benchmark for expected citations based on the relative size of count...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

What impact have trade sanctions had on Russia? (Podcast)

Recorded at the CEPR Paris Symposium. How effective have the trade sanctions imposed on Russia in 2022 been? Politically, they were comprehensive and quick. But anecdotal reporting has suggested that Russian firms that w...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Shock therapy for clean innovation: within-firm reallocation of R&D investments

We analyze how a major negative shock to the producers of fossil fuels may lead to a shift from dirty to clean R&D along the supply chain. First, we develop a theoretical framework of directed technical change, showing t...Read more...

Journal article

International Journal of Industrial Organization:

VAT pass-through and competition: evidence from the Greek islands

We examine how competition affects VAT pass-through in isolated oligopolistic markets as defined by the Greek islands. Using daily gasoline prices and a difference-in-differences methodology, we investigate how changes i...Read more...

Journal article

Canadian Journal of Economics:

Regional specialization: from the geography of industries to the geography of jobs

Our analysis begins with an empirical investigation of how employment concentration in industries and occupations across United States regions has changed over time, and how regional specialization has changed. Results ...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Globalization and conflicts: the good, the bad, and the ugly of corporations in Africa

Using a novel georeferenced datataset on the affiliates and headquarters of multinational enterprises between 2007 and 2018 together with georeferenced conflict data for the African continent, this work establishes a cau...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics:

International friends and enemies

We examine whether, as countries become more economically dependent on a trade partner, they realign politically toward that trade partner. We use network measures of economic exposure to foreign productivity growth deri...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The distributional consequences of trade: evidence from the Grain Invasion

We examine the distributional consequences of trade using the New World Grain Invasion that occurred in the second half of the 19th century. We use a newly-created dataset on population, employment by sector, property va...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Global environmental cooperation and innovation

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

CEP discussion paper

Trade and the end of antiquity

What caused the end of antiquity, the shift of economic activity away from the Mediterranean towards northern Europe? We assemble a large database of coin flows between the 4th and 10th century and use it to document the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Brexit and investment

In 2016, the UK voted to leave the European Union and growth in UK manufacturing investment ground to a halt. This paper uses administrative trade data to investigate the causal relationship between these events. We expl...Read more...

Journal article

Critical Sociology:

A popular backlash against globalization?

Is there a popular backlash against globalization? When did it start and in which forms? What do we know about its causes? We address these questions in the context of advanced democracies. We see the `globalization back...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Putting quantitative models to the test: an application to Trump's trade war

The primary motivation behind quantitative modeling in international trade and many other fields is to shed light on the economic consequences of policy changes. To help assess and potentially strengthen the credibility ...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Education Review:

Teacher value-added and gender gaps in educational outcomes

This paper uses rich administrative data from Chile to estimate teacher value added (TVA) on test scores and on an educational attainment index. We allow each teacher to have a different TVA for male and female students ...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics:

Technology transfer in global value chains

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

CEP discussion paper

Teacher value-added and gender gaps in educational outcomes

This paper uses rich administrative data from Chile to estimate teacher value added (TVA) on test scores and on an educational attainment index. We allow each teacher to have a different TVA for male and female students ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The organizational economics of school chains

We use the insights of firms' organizational economics to study school chains' organization. We match information on decentralization of activities for approximately 400 chains and 2,000 schools in England to student and...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Leaving the global playing field through optimal non-discriminatory corporate taxes and subsidies

Due to markup distortions, in international trade models with monopolistic competition and heterogeneous firms the market equilibrium is inefficient unless demand exhibits constant elasticity of substitution. When it doe...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

When tariffs disrupt global supply chains

We study unanticipated tariffs in a setting with firm-to-firm supply relationships. Firms conduct costly searches and negotiate with potential suppliers that pass a reservation level of match productivity. Global supply ...Read more...

Journal article

Regional Studies:

Global production networks meets evolutionary economic geography

Two of the canonical approaches in regional studies are global production networks (GPNs) and evolutionary economic geography (EEG). Recent geopolitical and economic events have shown the importance of both theories in e...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

The 'child penalty' creates most of the gender earnings gaps in rich countries

After having children, women tend to change their working hours and wage rates, and even transition to new jobs. This phenomenon, known as the child penalty, explains the bulk of the gender earnings gap in developed coun...Read more...

CentrePiece article

How much is your time worth?

Wages indicate how much people want for their time at work, but how can we find out what value they place on time spent doing other things? Christian Krekel and George MacKerron analyse over two million responses to a sm...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Neoclassical growth in an interdependent world

We generalize the closed-economy neoclassical growth model (CNGM) to allow for costly goods trade and capital flows with imperfect substitutability between countries. We develop a tractable, multi-country, quantitative m...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Exporting ideas: knowledge flows from expanding trade in goods

We examine the effect of entry by French firms into a new export market on the dynamics of their patents' citations received from that destination. Applying a difference-in-differences identification strategy with a stag...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The skyscraper revolution: global economic development and land savings

Tall buildings are central to facilitating sustainable urbanization and growth in cities worldwide. We estimate average elasticities of city population and built area to aggregate city building heights of 0.12 and -0.17,...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Unravelling the complexities of sanctions

Sanctions have become a linchpin of foreign policy. But as they have grown more complex, understanding their true impact on targeted economies has become increasingly difficult, and evidence of their firm-level effects i...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Geopolitics and the electric vehicle revolution

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

Journal article

Journal of International Business Studies:

Integrating host-country political heterogeneity into MNE-state bargaining: insights from international political economy

The international business (IB) literature has emphasised the heterogeneity of firm strategies in shaping MNE-state bargaining, but largely ignored the heterogeneity of states. In contrast, the international political ec...Read more...

Journal article

Energy Policy:

Big oil and the energy transition: evidence from M&A

International Oil Companies (IOCs) represent a significant source of capital and expertise that could be deployed to contribute to the investment required to achieve the energy transition to a low carbon future. This pap...Read more...

Blog

Trade Talks:

Did responsible sourcing by multinationals help workers in poor countries? (podcast)

A series of industrial accidents that killed workers in the supply chains of multinational corporations triggered backlash by Western consumers. In response, many global companies committed to treat workers in poor count...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Back to Edgeworth? Estimating the value of time using hedonic experiences

Following early economist Francis Y. Edgeworth's proposal to measure people's hedonic experiences as they go about their daily lives, we use a smartphone app that surveyed a panel of 30; 928 individuals UK-wide over seve...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Dissecting the sinews of power: international trade and the rise of Britain's fiscal-military state, 1689-1823

We evaluate the role of taxes on trade in the development of imperial Britain's fiscal-military state. Influential work, e.g., Brewer's (1989) Sinews of Power, attributed increased fiscal capacity to the taxation of dome...Read more...

External report

Trading up

After nearly half a century of EU membership, Britain needs a trade strategy. The stakes are high: such a strategy shapes what families and firms buy from abroad, and what gets produced domestically; influences our jobs,...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

VAT pass-through and competition: evidence from the Greek Islands

We examine how competition affects VAT pass-through in isolated oligopolistic markets as defined by the Greek islands. Using daily gasoline prices and a difference-in-differences methodology, we investigate how changes i...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

Research Policy:

Global value chains and domestic innovation

This paper explores how changes in both position and participation in Global Value Chain (GVC) networks affect firm innovation. The analysis combines matched patent-firm data for Japan with measures of GVC network centra...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Responsible sourcing? Theory and evidence from Costa Rica

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) increasingly impose "Responsible Sourcing" (RS) standards on their suppliers worldwide, including requirements on worker compensation, benefits and working conditions. Are these policies ...Read more...

Journal article

International Review of Economics and Finance :

Bank default risk propagation along supply chains: evidence from the UK

How does banks' default risk affect the probability of default of non-financial businesses? The literature has focused on the banks' direct corporate customers. It fails to consider the role of supply chain relationships...Read more...

Blog

FRBSF Economic Letter:

Supply Chain Disruptions, Trade Costs, and Labor Markets

Global supply chain disruptions due to the Covid-19 pandemic have increased the costs of trade between countries. Given the interconnectedness of the US economy with the rest of the world, higher trade costs can have imp...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Responsible sourcing: Theory and evidence from Costa Rica

There is growing pressure on multinational enterprises to implement 'responsible sourcing' requirements for their suppliers in low- and middle-income countries. These include minimum standards on working conditions, such...Read more...

Journal article

Ecological Economics:

The environmental cost of the international job market for economists

We provide an estimate of the environmental impact of the recruitment system in the economics profession, known as the "international job market for economists". Each year, most graduating PhDs seeking jobs in academia, ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Environmental costs of the global job market for economists

Each year, the international job market for economists involves more than 1,000 candidates and several hundred recruiters from around the world meeting for short pre-screening interviews at annual congresses in Europe an...Read more...

Journal article

The World Economy:

The electric vehicle revolution: critical material supply chains, trade and development

The emergence of a mass market for electric vehicles (EVs) offers development opportunities for countries that have abundant resources of cobalt, nickel, lithium, copper, aluminium and manganese. Not surprisingly, develo...Read more...

Blog

Vox Dev:

Responsible sourcing? Theory and evidence from Costa Rica

The authors investigate whether responsible sourcing policies implemented by multinational enterprises for their suppliers have impacts on the ground and, if they do, what these mean for firms and workers in the host cou...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Globalization and market power

Economic theory suggests that the markup is a key measure of market power and that its relationship with trade is rich and complex. Trade liberalisation can reduce markups via a decline in the residual domestic demand bu...Read more...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

The effects of joining multinational supply chains: new evidence from firm-to-firm linkages

We study the effects of becoming a supplier to multinational corporations (MNCs) using tax data tracking firm-to-firm transactions in Costa Rica. Event study estimates reveal that domestic firms experience strong and per...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal :

On Target? Sanctions and the interests of elite policy makers in Iran

How successful are sanctions at targeting the economic interests of political elites in affected countries? We study the case of Iran, using information on the stock exchange-listed assets of two specific political entit...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Market size, markups and international price dispersion in the cement industry

Prices for several intermediate inputs, including cement, are higher in developing economies - particularly in Africa. Combining data from the International Comparison Program with a global directory of cement plants we ...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Using machine learning to assess the impact of deep trade agreements

Modern preferential trade agreements contain a host of provisions that go beyond tariff liberalisation. By adapting techniques from the machine learning literature, this column develops data-driven methods for selecting ...Read more...

Journal article

Strategy Science:

Local value chains in European MNEs

Ghemawat's work in international business strategy demonstrates that Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) create value both by overcoming and by exploiting the price differences that exist at country borders. This paper eval...Read more...

CentrePiece article

How Brexit has raised UK food prices

Some products imported to the UK from the European Union have been more affected by the post-Brexit trading rules than others. Jan David Bakker, Nikhil Datta, Josh De Lyon, Luisa Opitz and Dilan Yang find that leaving th...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Trade with nominal rigidities: understanding the unemployment and welfare effects of the China shock

Researchers examine how increased competition from China impacts the welfare of the US labour market....Read more...

External report

Post-Brexit imports, supply chains, and the effect on consumer prices

This report documents the decrease in imports and shows how the patterns of imports vary across sectors following the UK's departure from the Single Market and Customs Union at the end of 2020. The authors, Jan David Bak...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Import liberalisation as export destruction: evidence from the United States

Holger Breinlich, Elsa Leromain, Dennis Novy and Thomas Sampson look at US-China trade relations to examine how import liberalisation brings down import costs and increases competition, but can also lead to lower export ...Read more...

Journal article

Annual Review of Economics :

Risks and global supply chains: what we know and what we need to know

Recent supply disruptions catapulted the issue of risk in global supply chains (GSCs) to the top of policy agendas and created the impression that shortages would have been less severe if GSCs had been either shorter and...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Global supply chain risk and resilience

Supply disruptions caused by systemic shocks such as Brexit, Covid, and Russia-Ukraine tensions have catapulted the issue of risk in global supply chains to the top of policy agendas. In some sectors, however, there is a...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...

CEP discussion paper

Technology transfer in global value chains

Firm-to-firm relationships in global value chains create opportunities for North-South technology diffusion. This paper studies technology transfer in value chains when contracts are incomplete and in-put production tech...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

The environmental burden of the international job market for economists

Each year, the 'international job market for economists' involves over 1,000 junior candidates and several hundred recruiters from all over the world meeting for short pre-screening interviews at annual congresses in Eur...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Quantifying the full impact of country-specific policies on trade flows

Rebecca Freeman, Mario Larch, Angelos Theodorakopoulos and Yoto Yotov propose a solution to issues measuring country-specific impact using structural gravity models - a popular way to analyse the impact of trade policie...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The environmental cost of the international job market for economists

We provide an estimate of the environmental impact of the recruitment system in the economics profession, known as the "international job market for economists". Each year, most graduating PhDs seeking jobs in academia, ...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

The globalisation backlash

As populist parties have surged across advanced democracies so, it seems, has a 'globalisation backlash'. This column provides descriptive evidence on the backlash, discusses its theoretical underpinnings within standard...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

The impact of trade costs can be weak or strong - depending on how much countries trade

Many countries try to bring down trade costs by striking free trade agreements, forming currency unions or joining the WTO. But when trade costs fall, how much does trade increase? Natalie Chen and Dennis Novy explain th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Income and the desire to migrate

We analyse the role of household and country-level personal income in explaining both the desire to emigrate and the desired destination country. We use data from the Gallup World Poll and applications to the US Diversit...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Service offshoring and export experience

Trade in services is important but difficult to measure. This column introduces a new dataset that helps understand the contribution of services to global value chains and their role in the process of exporting goods. Fi...Read more...

Journal article

European Economic Review:

Financial system architecture and the patterns of international trade

Countries differ in the extent to which their financial systems rely on banks or on financial markets. We offer a model featuring a complex relationship between countries? financial system architecture and their comparat...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade and innovation

Two central insights from the Schumpeterian approach to innovation and growth are that the pace of innovation is endogenously determined by the expectation of future profits and that growth is inherently a process of cre...Read more...