Results

Blog

Vox EU:

The evolution of gender in the labour market

Despite significant progress in closing the gender gap in earnings, work remains highly gendered, with women continuing to participate less in the workforce, work fewer hours, and face persistent wage disparities. This c...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The evolution of gender in the labor market

This paper traces the evolution of the study of gender in the labor market, focusing on how academic thinking on this topic has evolved alongside real world developments in gender inequality from the 1980s to the present...Read more...

Chapter

New technologies and evolving market structures

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

Read more...

Chapter

The green transition: understanding and managing impacts for workers

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

Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Achieving net zero by 2050 requires changes to the UK skills landscape

As COP29 brings climate action into focus, it's clear that policy must go beyond carbon trading and finance. To make net zero a reality, the workforce must be equipped with the right skills. Aadya Bahl examines what this...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

US electoral impact of remote work and inter-state migration

Remote work and geographic mobility have surged in the US since 2020. This column examines trends for both and discusses the potential electoral implications. The authors find that remote work opportunities are dispropor...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Voluntary carbon markets are helpful but far from perfect

Voluntary carbon markets are an important tool in the fight against climate change, but several issues make them less effective. Carbon offsets often overstate emissions reductions, and firms use these as a cheaper alter...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Better work: whose business is it?

Regulating the labour market is essential to address the inherent imbalance of power between employers and employees. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the state needs to intervene more than it already does. Alan Ma...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Education makes women, not men, more likely to have children

Given the wide-ranging consequences of declining fertility rates, academics and policymakers around the world are increasingly interested in understanding what influences men's and women's decision to start a family. Han...Read more...

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

Labour's planning reforms - how to make housing targets work

Labour promised serious reforms to the planning system while in opposition. What it has proposed now that it's in Government, including reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework, is very far from a fundamental re...Read more...

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

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

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

Journal article

Journal of International Economics: Forthcoming

New dawn fades: Trade, labour and the Brexit exchange rate depreciation

This paper studies consequences of the large exchange rate depreciation occurring when the UK electorate unexpectedly voted to leave the European Union. Sterling plummeted, recording the biggest one-day depreciation of a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

When trade drives markup divergence: An application to auto markets

When firms sell in multiple markets, estimates of markups from the demand-side will generally diverge from estimates based on the supply-side (e.g. via production functions). The empirical examination of the importance o...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Open Economics:

Spatial disparities across labour markets

We consider disparities across local labour markets in Great Britain. Disparities in wages and employment rates are large and persistent, although smaller than 20 years ago. These disparities largely reflect the concentr...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Open Economics:

Labour market inequality

Wage and earnings inequality has been on the rise in the United Kingdom (UK) since the late 1970s/early 1980s, and with faster increases than comparator countries, it is now one of the countries with the highest levels o...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Gendered change: 150 years of transformation in US hours

The 2023 Nobel Committee awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Claudia Goldin. Among her many contributions is the emphasis on the non-monotonic trend in women's employment...Read more...

Blog

Politics and Policy:

Smarter, not more regulation will lead to better work

A long tradition in economics says that if an employer and a worker agree a contract on any terms both parties must be made better-off or otherwise they would not have agreed to the contract in the first place. If that w...Read more...

External publication

Labour Economics: Thinking through Labour's economic agenda

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

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Why representation matters in the economics profession

What prompts someone to become an economist? How important is representation in inspiring the next generation of black economists? And how positive should women economists be about the future? Felicia Odamtten, an econom...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Gender gaps from labour market downturns

How quickly do men and women find work after mass lay-offs due to workplace closures? Research by Ria Ivandic and Anne Sophie Lassen reveals that women face a greater risk of unemployment than men and lose a larger share...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Claudia Goldin: the economics of women and the labour market

The study of gender was far from mainstream in economics when Claudia Goldin began her research on women and work in the 1980s. Barbara Petrongolo discusses the impact of the 2023 economics Nobel laureate in shaping toda...Read more...

CEP Insights

Insights: condensed

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

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy :

Local Retail Prices, Product Variety, and Neighborhood Change

We study how local grocery markets within a city are affected by changes in housing markets. Our empirical strategy exploits a shift in the spatial distribution of construction activity induced by a large-scale, place-ba...Read more...

Journal article

Explorations in Economic History:

The impact of public transportation and commuting on urban labor markets: Evidence from the New Survey of London Life and Labour, 1929–1932

The growth of public transport networks in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries had profound effects on commuting in the industrialized world, yet the consequences for labor markets during this important per...Read more...

Book

Innovation for the Masses
How to Share the Benefits of the High-Tech Economy

From San Francisco to Shanghai, many of the world's most innovative places are highly unequal, with the benefits going to a small few. Rather than simply asking how we can create more high-tech cities and nations, Innova...Read more...

Journal article

PLOS ONE :

Access to digital finance: Equity crowdfunding across countries and platforms

Financing entrepreneurship spurs innovation and economic growth. Digital financial platforms that crowdfund equity for entrepreneurs have emerged globally, yet they remain poorly understood. We model equity crowdfunding ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Adapting or compounding? The effects of recurring labour shocks on stated and revealed preferences for redistribution

The evidence on the impact of employment shocks on preferences for redistribution is mixed on stated outcomes and sparse on revealed ones. We conduct a survey of US workers to measure the impact of repeated labour market...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

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

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

Blog

Vox EU:

Tracking the skills behind the AI boom: Evidence from 14 OECD countries

As artificial intelligence rapidly reshapes economies and societies, companies are seeking professionals with AI-related skills. This column uses data from online job postings to explore changes in the demand for these p...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

What Claudia Goldin taught economics about women, labour markets and pay gaps

When Claudia Goldin's research on women's work became influential in the 1980s, the study of gender was far from mainstream in economics. Four decades later, that is no longer the case, in large part thanks to her influe...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The trouble with inactivity

Concerns about a recent rise in economic inactivity have prompted new policies aimed at discouraging early retirement and encouraging the labour force participation of women with young children. Stephen Machin and Jonath...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Making the invisible hand visible: Managers and the allocation of workers to jobs

Why do managers matter for firm performance? This paper provides evidence of the critical role of managers in matching workers to jobs within the firm using the universe of personnel records from a large multinational fi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Free to improve? The impact of free school attendance in England

We investigate the impact of attending a free school in England - that is, a new start-up school that enjoys considerable autonomy while remaining in the state sector. We analyse the effects of two secondary free schools...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

What explains the gender division of labour and how can it be redressed?

Adam Smith's division of labour was about the efficiency gains from task specialisation in factories. But the gender division - gaps between men and women in pay, prestige, career progression and much more - can also be ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Spatial wage inequality in North America and Western Europe: changes between and within local labour markets 1975-2019

The rise of economic inequalities in advanced economies has been often linked with the growth of spatial inequalities within countries, yet there is limited comparative research that studies the relationship between nati...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

More education signals ability to employers, but does it really improve skills?

Better educated workers may earn higher wages for two possible reasons: because they acquire more skills or because more education signals their intellect and enthusiasm. Economists believe that signalling plays a role a...Read more...

Blog

LSE Impact of Social Sciences:

New approaches to economics research are reshaping how we understand and respond to gender stereotypes

New ways of analysing data from images and text are being used by economists to study discrimination in the labour market. A recent workshop, hosted by the Centre for Economic Performance and the Department of Social Pol...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Loss aversion and consumer inertia: new evidence from phone subscriptions

Across a range of everyday markets, consumers make recurrent tariff choices in the face of a multitude of fees and plans, leading to concerns they may fail to make optimal choices of suppliers or contracts. Christos Gena...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Management Studies: Forthcoming

Business Groups and Export Performance: The Role of Coordination Failures and Institutional Configurations

We explore the nature of business groups (BGs) and their affiliates in emerging markets through the lens of the coordination failures associated with economic development. We propose that BGs develop distinct economic an...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Firming up price inflation

We use data from a large panel survey of UK firms to analyze the economic drivers of price setting since the start of the Covid pandemic. Inflation responded asymmetrically to movements in demand. This helps to explain w...Read more...

Journal article

Applied Economics Letters: Forthcoming

Telework and productivity: insights from an original survey

Using a unique dataset of approximately 1,400 French manufacturing firms, this study provides insights into their utilization of telework in 2019. Our findings reveal firms that engaged in telework benefit from a Total F...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...

Blog

CATO Institute:

The Impact of Regulation on Innovation

Many scholars have been concerned that slower growth in countries with heavy labour regulations could be due to firms' reluctance to innovate given the burden of red tape. Philippe Aghion, Antonin Bergeaud and John Van R...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Non-compete agreements in a rigid labour market: the case of Italy

Non-compete clauses (NCCs) limiting the mobility of workers have been found to be rather widespread in the US, a flexible labour market with large turnover rates and a limited coverage of collective bargaining. This pape...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

City of dreams

Bigger cities offer more valuable experiences and opportunities in exchange for higher housing costs. While higher-ability workers benefit more from bigger cities, they are not more likely to move to one. Our model of ur...Read more...

Chapter

Families, labor markets, and policy

in Handbook of the Economics of the Family

Handbook of the Economics of the Family, Volume One includes comprehensive surveys of the current state of the economics literaure in the field, prepared by leading scholars, with a particular empahsis on the most recent...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Growth and immigration: unpicking the confusion

More people in a country leads to a bigger economy, but not necessarily an improved standard of living. Alan Manning unpicks the complexities in the debate....Read more...

CentrePiece article

The paradox of vocational education

Despite a UK labour market that is hungry for skills, academic education has triumphed over training, apprenticeships and preparation for specific occupations. Alison Wolf looks at why vocational education continues to l...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Commute and thrive

The advent of commuting in 1930s London opened up opportunities to working-class people. Andrew Seltzer and Jonathan Wadsworth show how public transport boosts the labour market....Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Self-employment dwindles amid the cost-of-living crisis

As the Covid-19 crisis has made way for inflation and skyrocketing energy prices, the self-employed have not yet found their way out of the recent economic adversities. And many of them are now finding their way out of s...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Multinationals, robots and the labor share

Using a panel of Spanish manufacturing firms covering the 1990-2017 period, this paper shows that firms acquired by multinational enterprises experience a reduction in the labor share. Acquisitions drive significant chan...Read more...

Blog

LSE American Politics and Policy:

For the US to again become the "Land of Opportunity" we need a better understanding of how geography and industrial change affects incomes

Kohei Takeda unpacks the relationship between declining manufacturing in parts of the US - which are often termed the 'Rust Belt' - and workers' income mobility....Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

The labour market in Ukraine: Rebuild better

Rebuilding Ukraine will require emergency measures that address the effects of war alongside structural reforms that address pre-existing political and economic issues. Giacomo Anastasia, Tito Boeri, Marianna Kudlyak and...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Commute time savings when working from home

The large shift to work from home during the Covid-19 pandemic reduced the amount of time that workers spend commuting. This column reports on a global survey of workers in 27 countries showing that working from home sav...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

The family consequences of job insecurity: Fertility and marriage

Fertility rates have fallen sharply in OECD countries over the last 60 years, a drop mirrored in diminished employment protection over the same period. This column asks whether this greater job insecurity has contributed...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...

CEP discussion paper

The geography of structural transformation: effects on inequality and mobility

The interplay between structural transformation in the aggregate and local economies is key to understanding spatial inequality and worker mobility. This paper develops a dynamic overlapping generations model of economic...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The spillover effect of services offshoring on local labour markets

I provide new empirical evidence on the direct and indirect impact of services off-shoring on local employment and wages, using a unique dataset on firms in the UK for the period 2000-2015. Exploiting variation in firms'...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

New dawn fades: trade, labour and the Brexit exchange rate depreciation

This paper studies consequences of the very large exchange rate depreciation occurring in June 2016 due to the UK electorate unexpectedly voting to leave the European Union. As news of a leave vote came in, the value of ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Defying distance? The provision of services in the digital age

Digital platforms are transforming services by making the physical distance between provider and user less relevant. I quantify the potential gains this flexibility offers in the context of digital primary care in Sweden...Read more...

Journal article

Fiscal Studies:

The gendered division of paid and domestic work under lockdown

This paper provides novel empirical evidence on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the division of labour between parents of school-aged children in two-parent opposite-gender families. In line with existing evidenc...Read more...

External publication

Adopt, adapt and improve

Worries that jobs will be lost to automation are not new, but have been heightened since the release of Frey and Osborne's 2013 study, which warned that nearly half of jobs in the US were at 'high risk' of automation. Ne...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The wage elasticity of recruitment

One of the factors affecting the market power of employers is the extent to which higher wages makes recruitment easier. There is very little research on this. This paper presents a methodology for estimating the wage el...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Supporting the UK's self-employed

Two years after the Covid-19 crisis began, incomes of the UK’s self-employed remain well below their pre-pandemic levels. Robert Blackburn and Maria Ventura explain why the solo self-employed, who represent about 85% of ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Managerial input and firm performance. Evidence from a policy experiment

We study the effects of a subsidy program designed to boost small and medium enterprises' export capabilities through a Temporary Export Manager (TEM), hired for at least 6 months to provide consulting on how to reach fo...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Structural change within versus across firms: evidence from the US

One feature of the US economy over the last five decades has been the transition away from manufacturing towards services. This column takes a firm-level view of structural change from 1977-2019 to study these sectoral d...Read more...

CEP Insights

Crime

What can economics tell us about crime? Economists have discovered that young people who leave school during a recession are more likely to end up in prison than those who enter the labour market when the economy is buoy...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Covid-19 and the self-employed - A two year update

The fifth LSE-CEP survey of the self-employed of May 2022 provides an up to date picture of how Covid-19 and its aftermath keep affecting the self-employed. The findings show that, although working on average a little mo...Read more...

Journal article

Economica:

Information provision and postgraduate studies

This is the first paper to examine experimentally effects of information provision on beliefs about pecuniary and non-pecuniary returns of postgraduate education, enrolment intentions and realized enrolment. We find that...Read more...

Journal article

Indian Economic Review:

Unemployment and labour market recovery policies

Evidence shows long-term unemployment (LTU) can have life-long scarring impacts on the future employment and earning prospects of individuals and lead to an overall deterioration in the wellbeing of communities. This art...Read more...

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...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Low pay and insecurity in the UK labour market

Minimum wage increases have driven down the incidence of low hourly pay, but there has been much less progress elsewhere for low earners. Low pay is widespread among the self-employed, who do not benefit from the minimum...Read more...

Chapter

On the employment consequences of automation and offshoring

in Robots and AI - a new economic era

We argue that automation may make workers and firms more selective in matching their specialized skills and tasks. We call this phenomenon "core-biased technological change", and wonder whether something similar could be...Read more...

Chapter

The effects of automation on labor demand: a survey of the recent literature

in Robots and AI - a new economic era

Robots and artificial intelligence (AI) are powerful forces that will likely have large impacts on the size, direction, and composition of international trade flows. This book discusses how industrial robots, automation,...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Foreign ownership and robot adoption

This paper shows that multinational enterprises (MNEs) spur the adoption of industrial robots. First, I document a positive and robust correlation between multinational production and robot adoption using a new cross-cou...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Education Review:

Deregulating teacher labor markets

This paper examines how the removal of national pay scales, a common feature of public sector labor markets, affects productivity. We exploit a reform that compelled all schools in England to replace pay scales with scho...Read more...

Journal article

Mothers in the Labor Market:

Temporal flexibility, breaks at work, and the motherhood wage gap

We analyze the relationship between temporal flexibility at work (i.e., the ability to vary or change the time of beginning or ending work) and the motherhood wage gap of working parents, in the US. To that end, we first...Read more...

Chapter

Temporal flexibility, breaks at work, and the motherhood wage gap

in Mothers in the labor market

We analyze the relationship between temporal flexibility at work (i.e., the ability to vary or change the time of beginning or ending work) and the motherhood wage gap of working parents, in the US. To that end, we first...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...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

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...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

Should we insure workers or jobs during recessions?

What is the most efficient way to respond to recessions in the labor market? To this question, policymakers on the two sides of the pond gave diametrically opposed answers during the COVID-19 crisis. In the United States...Read more...

Blog

LSE Covid-19:

Working harder and longer: how managers use their time when working from home

Managers worked longer hours during the pandemic and changed how they used their time, find Thomaz Teodorovicz, Raffaella Sadun, Andrew L. Kun, and Orit Shaer. They suggest how better technology, including AI, could help...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Recidivism and neighbourhood institutions

Between 30% and 50% of individuals sentenced to prison are re-incarcerated in the two years after their release. Andres Barrios-Fernandez and Jorge Garcia-Hombrados examine links between church openings in Chile and re-i...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Human Resources:

The urban wage premium in imperfect labor markets

Using administrative data for West Germany, this paper investigates whether part of the urban wage premium stems from fierce competition in thick labour markets. We first establish that employers possess less wage-settin...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

Two years on, how has the pandemic affected businesses in the UK?

Two years on from the start of the pandemic, this article takes stock of how businesses were affected, the extent to which things have recovered and where the effects of Covid-19 are still being felt....Read more...

External publication

Monopsony in local labour markets

In this commentary, we propose a monopsony model of the labour market in which market power stems from idiosyncratic worker preferences over non-wage attributes of jobs. In this set-up, the relationship between wages and...Read more...

External publication

Labour market inequality

Wage and earnings inequality has been on the rise in the UK since the late 1970s / early 1980s, and with faster increases than comparator countries it is now one of the countries with the highest levels of wage and earni...Read more...

External publication

Firms and inequalities

There have been some dramatic changes in the business landscape in American firms over the last four decades that have been extensively documented by researchers and are the subject of much public debate (e.g. Van Reenen...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Misallocation explains worse management among Mexican firms

The implications of poor management in developing countries are becoming well known, but what drives these differences is less clear. Based on large new surveys in Mexico and the US, this column argues that misallocation...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... How Pelé changed Brazilian football

A ban on non-compete agreements in Brazilian football led to an increased lifetime income for players. But as research by Bernardo Guimaraes, João Paulo Pessoa and Vladimir Ponczek reveals, it was older players who gaine...Read more...

CentrePiece article

UK labour shortages and immigration: looking at the evidence

Can the shortages of workers reported by the UK's food and drink sector be solved by making it easier to hire migrants? How will wages in these sectors change? And is there a conflict between short- and long-term fixes? ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Will the US child tax credit reduce poverty and improve outcomes for children and parents?

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 temporarily increased the value of the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,000 for children aged 6-16 and to $3,600 for younger children. To date, the Biden administration has been una...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Teleworking is here to stay and may raise productivity if implemented appropriately

The pandemic triggered a surge in teleworking, raising questions about its persistence as well as its impact on firm performance and worker wellbeing. This column argues that teleworking is here to stay - for most worker...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

Are we really witnessing a 'great resignation'?

Jonathan Wadsworth questions the idea that the Covid-19 pandemic has led to a large rise in the number of people quitting their jobs, either to move to a new job or a new life outside work....Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Working from home and corporate real estate

As remote working became more common during Covid-19, Antonin Bergeaud, Jean Benoit Eymeoud, Thomas Garcia and Dorian Henricot examine how corporate real-estate market participants adjusted to the growth of teleworking i...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:

The value of online gig economy platforms

The gig economy and online labour platforms often trade off increased flexibility for lower employment security. Christopher Stanton and Catherine Thomas show how traditional labour market regulations, such as minimum wa...Read more...

Blog

LSE Covid-19:

Covid has hit social mobility in the UK, and young people's prospects are shrinking

The economic impact of Covid has hit young people, and especially poorer young people, harder than others. Andrew Eyles assesses the extent of the shock and what it means for social mobility, which was already in decline...Read more...

External publication

Changing jobs?

This report is about the nature and speed of change in the UK's labour market, about how past periods of rapid change have happened, and about workers' experiences as they have lived through these changes. It is written ...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

The human side of productivity: uncovering the role of skills and diversity for firm productivity

Rising dispersion in productivity across firms has focused attention on the drivers of superior performances of a minority of firms at the 'productivity frontier' and disappointing performances of the remaining 'producti...Read more...