Results

CentrePiece article

In brief... How citizens help expose environmental wrongdoing

Does enabling citizens to complain about public services provide an effective way of improving government services, or should we be concerned about the accuracy and reliability of such reports? Jonathan Colmer, Mary Evan...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Environmental citizen complaints

Citizen complaints feature prominently in public oversight contexts. The nature and effects of complaints, however, are poorly understood. Here, we investigate attitudes about citizen complaints using a nationally repres...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...

CEP discussion paper

(In)convenient stores? What do policies pushing stores to town centres actually do?

England's Town Centre First Policy, introduced in 1996, restricted the opening of new retail and other 'traditional town centre activities' to 'Town Centre' (TC) locations. The aim was to halt the decay of high streets. ...Read more...

Chapter

Housing policy and affordable housing

in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance

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

CentrePiece article

Policies for affordable housing: options and obstacles

The crisis of housing affordability has been mounting for decades, driven by growing demand for properties in desirable areas where supply is limited. Numerous policies have been enacted across countries, but many are in...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

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

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

Journal article

International Journal of Human Computer Studies:

Multitasking while driving: a time use study of commuting knowledge workers to assess current and future uses

Commuting has enormous impact on individuals, families, organizations, and society. Advances in vehicle automation may help workers employ the time spent commuting in productive work-tasks or wellbeing activities. To ach...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Housing policy and affordable housing

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

CEP discussion paper

How does working from home during Covid-19 affect what managers do? Evidence from time-use studies

We assess how the sudden and widespread shift to working from home during the pandemic impacted how managers allocate time throughout their working day. We analyze the results from an online time-use survey with data on ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Multitasking while driving: a time use study of commuting knowledge workers to access current and future uses

Commuting has enormous impact on individuals, families, organizations, and society. Advances in vehicle automation may help workers employ the time spent commuting in productive work-tasks or wellbeing activities. To ach...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...

CEP discussion paper

Is online retail killing coffee shops? Estimating the winners and losers of online retail using customer transaction microdata

Is online retail a complement or substitute to local offline economies? This paper provides the first evidence that consumers use time saved from online retail to increase their trips for time-intensive services like cof...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Epidemics and rapacity of multinational companies

Do multinationals engage in rent-seeking behaviour in developing countries during crises? With a difference in discontinuity approach, we use the Ebola epidemic in Liberia as a natural experiment on the sharp increase in...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...

Journal article

Human-Computer Interaction: Forthcoming

How does working from home during COVID-19 affect what managers do? Evidence from time-use studies

Read more...

Journal article

Land Economics: Forthcoming

Urban land use fragmentation and human wellbeing

We study how land use fragmentation affects the life satisfaction of city dwellers. To this end, we calculate fragmentation metrics based on exact geographical coordinates of land use from the European Urban Atlas and of...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

The amplifying effect of capitalization rates on housing supply

We provide empirical evidence that increases in housing rental income lead to a larger supply response than price increases of the same percentage value. We rationalize this differential in supply responsiveness with an ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

Are bigger banks better? Firm-level evidence from Germany

The effects of large banks on the real economy are theoretically ambiguous and politically controversial. I identify quasi-exogenous increases in bank size in postwar Germany. I show that firms did not grow faster after ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The impact of regulation on innovation

It is widely feared that private sector innovation is constrained by 'red tape'. Philippe Aghion and colleagues test that view on data from France, where firms of more than 50 employees face far heavier regulatory obliga...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Local economic conditions and the nature of new housing supply

We explore the effects of local economic conditions on the type and size of newly constructed housing units in a city. Exploiting the 1984–2004 metro area samples of the American Housing Survey and US Census building per...Read more...

Blog

UK in a Changing Europe:

Trade after Brexit: the initial numbers

Thomas Sampson argues that, although the full effects of Brexit won't be known for many years, regulatory divergence is likely to further reduce trade, as firms face the challenge of satisfying different regulations in t...Read more...

Journal article

Real Estate Economics: Forthcoming

Offices scarce but housing scarcer: Estimating the premium for London office conversions

British planning is among the most restrictive in the world and has been restrictive for longer than elsewhere. Restrictive regulation substantially increases the costs of office space and, especially in London, increase...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Regulation chills minor (but not radical) technological innovations

While there is suggestive evidence that regulations may have a stifling effect on innovation, there is as yet no rigorous economic framework to quantify the magnitude of such regulatory effects on innovation and the aggr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The impact of regulation on innovation

We present a framework that can be used to assess the equilibrium impact of regulation on endogenous innovation with heterogeneous firms. We implement this model using French firm-level panel data where there is a sharp ...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...

CEP discussion paper

Are bigger banks better? Firm-level evidence from Germany

The effects of large banks on the real economy are theoretically ambiguous and politically controversial. I identify quasi-exogenous increases in bank size in post-war Germany. I show that firms did not grow faster after...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The grandkids aren't alright: the intergenerational effects of prenatal pollution exposure

Using newly linked survey and administrative data, providing more than 150 million parent-child links, we show that regulation-induced improvements in early life air quality have intergenerational effects on human capita...Read more...

Journal article

Fiscal Studies:

Work, Care and Gender during the COVID-19 Crisis

We explore the effects of the COVID-19 crisis and the associated restrictions to economic activity on paid and unpaid work for men and women in the United Kingdom. Using data from the COVID-19 supplement of Understanding...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does pricing carbon mitigate climate change? Firm-level evidence from the European Union emissions trading scheme

In theory, market-based regulatory instruments correct market failures at least cost. However, evidence on their efficacy remains scarce. Using administrative data, we estimate that, on average, the EU ETS - the world's ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

Land tenure and land-use in a developing city: A quantitative spatial model applied to Kampala, Uganda

Land rights and tenure systems are an important factor behind poor housing and inefficient land-use in developing country cities. In Kampala, Uganda, four systems of land tenure coexist, allowing a detailed study of the ...Read more...

Journal article

Economica:

'Trophy architects' and design as rent-seeking: quantifying deadweight losses in a tightly regulated office market

Britain tightly restricts the supply of office space, creating substantial economic rents, but its development restrictions are politically administered and therefore gameable, inducing rent-seeking activity. We find tha...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Center-based care and parenting activities

We estimate the effects of center-based care on parenting activities with children using data from time diaries and a family survey for Germany. Our estimates imply that usage of center-based care reduces the amount of t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Generalized linear competition: from pass-through to policy

Economic policy and shifts in input market prices often have significant effects on the marginal costs of firms and can prompt strategic responses that make their impact hard to predict. We introduce "generalized linear ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Offices scarce but housing scarcer: estimating the premium for London office conversions

The British system of land use planning is one of the most restrictive in the world. It substantially increases the costs of office space (Cheshire & Hilber, 2008; Cheshire & Dericks, 2020) and, especially in London, inc...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

The role of demand in land re-development

Vacant, previously-developed land in cities can generate negative externalities on surrounding areas, and is often the target of policies to promote re-development. This paper provides estimates of the price sensitivity ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

On the economic impacts of mortgage credit expansion policies: evidence from help to buy

Mortgage credit expansion policies – such as UK’s Help to Buy (HtB) – aim to increase access to and affordability of owner-occupied housing and are widespread around the world. We take advantage of spatial discontinuitie...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

The energy costs of historic preservation

We explore the impact of historic preservation policies on domestic energy consumption. Using panel data for England from 2006 to 2013 and employing a fixed effects strategy, we document that (i) rising national energy p...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management:

Ease vs. noise: Long-run changes in the value of transport (dis)amenities

For a complete cost-benefit analysis of durable infrastructures, it is important to understand how the value of non-market goods such as transit time and environmental quality changes as incomes rise in the long-run. We ...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...

CEP discussion paper

Ease versus noise: long-run changes in the value of transport (dis)amenities

For a complete cost-benefit analysis of durable infrastructures, it is important to understand how the value of non-market goods such as transit time and environmental quality changes as incomes rise in the long-run. We ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

The preservation of historic districts - Is it worth it?

Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Housing Economics:

Institutional settings and urban sprawl: Evidence from Europe

This article explores the role of institutional settings in determining spatial variation in urban sprawl across Europe. We first synthesize the emerging literature that links land use policies and local fiscal incentive...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Housing Economics:

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

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

Journal article

Review of Economics and Statistics:

Tall buildings and land values: Height and construction cost elasticities in Chicago, 1870-2010

Despite unprecedented vertical growth in large cities, the economics of skyscrapers remain understudied. We combine data on tall buildings with a panel of land prices covering 140 years to analyze the determinants of urb...Read more...

Journal article

Small Business Economics:

The evolution and adoption of equity crowdfunding: entrepreneur and investor entry into a new market

Equity crowdfunding (ECF) offers entrepreneurs an online social media marketplace where they can access numerous potential investors who, in exchange for an ownership stake, may supply them with finance. In this paper, w...Read more...

Journal article

National Institute Economic Review:

Broken Market or Broken Policy? The Unintended Consequences of Restrictive Planning

This paper summarises the evidence from recent research relating to the British Planning system's impact on the supply of development. Planning serves important economic and social purposes but it is essential to disting...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The economic impacts of constraining home investments

We investigate how political backlash against wealthy investors in high-amenity places affects local residents. We exploit a quasi-natural experiment: the ‘Swiss Second Home Initiative’, which banned the construction of ...Read more...

Journal article

CESifo Economic Studies:

Take me to the Centre of your Town! Using micro-geographical data to identify Town Centres

© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Ifo Institute, Munich. All rights reserved. We often talk about 'Town Centres' (TCs), but defining their location and extent is surprisingly difficu...Read more...

Journal article

CESifo Economic Studies:

Weights to address non-parallel trends in panel difference-in-differences models

Causal inference using the difference-in-differences (DD) method relies on the untestable assumption of parallel counterfactual trends across units that are assigned to different treatments. To facilitate the application...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Medical marijuana laws and mental health in the United States

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

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Who gets the urban surplus?

High productivity in cities creates an economic surplus relative to other areas. How is this divided between workers and landowners? Simple models with homogenous labour suggest that it accrues largely-or entirely-in the...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Empty homes, longer commutes

In areas of Britain where there are empty houses, planners typically allocate less land for development and make it more difficult to build or adapt houses. Research by Paul Cheshire, Christian Hilber and Hans Koster exp...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Empty homes, longer commutes: The unintended consequences of more restrictive local planning

We investigate the impact of land use regulation on housing vacancy rates. Using a 30-year panel dataset on land use regulation for 350 English Local Authorities (LAs) and addressing potential reverse causation and other...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Equity crowdfunding and early stage entrepreneurial finance: damaging or disruptive?

Equity crowdfunding (ECF) offers founders of new ventures an online social media marketplace where they can access a large number of investors who, in exchange for an ownership stake, provide finance for business opportu...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Energy Costs of Historic Preservation

We explore the impact of historical preservation policies on domestic energy consumption. Using panel data for England from 2006 to 2013 and employing a fixed effects-strategy, we document that (i) rising national energy...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Towards a new UK industrial strategy

The regulation of business has been a rollercoaster ride for the UK over the past 20 years. Drawing on their work with the LSE Growth Commission, Anna Valero and Richard Davies outline an opportunity to build a new syste...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

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

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

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Using Micro-Geography Data to Identify Town-Centre Space in Great Britain

We often talk about ‘Town Centres’, but defining their location and extent is surprisingly difficult. Their boundaries are hard to pin down and intrinsically fuzzy. Nevertheless, the British government introduced very sp...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

International expansion and riskiness of banks

We exploit an original dataset on European G-SIBs to assess how banks’ internationalization affects risk in the banking sector. We find a robust negative correlation between foreign expansion and banking risk as captured...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Housing Market Impacts of Constraining Second Home Investments

We investigate how political backlash against wealthy second home investors in high-amenity places – tourist areas or superstar cities – affects local residents. We develop a general equilibrium model and exploit a quasi...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Preservation of Historic Districts - Is it Worth it?

I investigate the welfare effect of conservation areas that preserve historic districts by regulating development. Such regulation may improve quality of life but does so by reducing housing productivity – the efficiency...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Geography of City Liveliness and Land Use Configurations: Evidence from Location-Based Big Data in Beijing

This paper explores the complexity in the connection between city liveliness and land use configurations for housing and consumption amenities. The sources of this complexity are captured by an integrated spatial and tem...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

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 two things: the prize must be both valuable and con...Read more...

Journal article

Ecological Economics:

The greener, the happier? The effect of urban land use on residential well-being

We investigate the effect of urban land use on residential well-being in major German cities, using panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and cross-section data from the European Urban Atlas. We reduce concerns...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Regulatory reform in Greece: the benefits of removing maximum mark-ups

Regulations that impose maximum mark-ups are intended to protect consumers from firms exercising market power. But a study by Christos Genakos and colleagues suggests that they can have the opposite effect: when Greece l...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Regulating Housing Vacancies Away? The Paradoxical Effects of Mismatch

Policy makers agree that vacant houses are undesirable. Moreover the existence of empty houses is used as an argument for allocating less land for new construction. So higher vacancy rates tend to trigger tighter restric...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Vertical City: The Price of Land and the Height of Buildings in Chicago 1870-2010

We analyze the determinants of building heights in Chicago by combining a micro-geographic data set on tall buildings with a unique panel of land prices covering 140 years. Consistent with the predictions of classic urba...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Evaluating the impact of Sunday trading deregulation

During the past few decades a number of European countries lifted the regulations that restricted the opening hours of shops on Sunday. In this paper we examine the impact of Sunday trade deregulation on employment, expe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The impact of maximum markup regulation on prices

Markup regulation is a common yet understudied type of regulation. We analyze the repeal of maximum wholesale and retail markup regulation in an oligopolistic and vertically non-integrated market. By comparing the prices...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Trophy architects and the ‘dark matter' of London’s planning system

A quarter of London’s skyscrapers are designed by architects who have already won a lifetime achievement award and whose work thus has the imprimatur of ‘iconic design’; this compares with just 3% in Chicago. According t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Patents and the global diffusion of new drugs

This paper studies how patent rights and price regulation affect how fast new drugs are launched in different countries, using newly constructed data on launches of 642 new drugs in 76 countries for the period 1983-2002,...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

The impact of a carbon tax on manufacturing: Evidence from microdata

We estimate the impact of a carbon tax on manufacturing plants using panel data from the UK production census. Our identification strategy builds on the comparison of outcomes between plants subject to the full tax and p...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Local Economic Conditions and the Nature of New Housing Supply

We present a modified open monocentric city model that assumes that land is available for conversion into new housing throughout the city. The model predicts that positive local income shocks (i) increase the city’s shar...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Turning houses into gold: the failure of British planning

Britain’s crisis of housing affordability is nothing to do with foreign speculators, according to Paul Cheshire. Rather, it is a result of decades of misguided planning policies that constrain the supply of land and turn...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Chicken or Egg? The PVAR Econometrics of Transportation

To analyze the mutually dependent relationship between local economic performance and the demand for and supply of transport services, we employ the structural panel VAR method that is popular in the macroeconomic litera...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The impact of mandatory entitlement to paid leave on employment in the UK

I evaluate the impact of the UK Working Time Regulations 1998, which introduced mandatory paid holiday entitlement. The regulation gave (nearly) all workers the right to a minimum of 4 weeks of paid holiday per a year. W...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

'Iconic Design' as Deadweight Loss: Rent Acquisition by Design in the Constrained London Office Market

Britain’s land use regulation (planning) system imposes very tight restrictions on the supply of office space so creating substantial rents. An unmeasured part of the costs associated with these restrictions likely comes...Read more...

Blog

LSE European Politics and Policy Blog:

The state of the UK economy: Diagnosis, prognosis and recommended treatment

The UK economy has experienced a prolonged period of weakness over the last five years. John Van Reenen writes that the real problems for the UK are inadequate long-run investment in infrastructure, innovation and human ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Land Use Regulation and Productivity - Land Matters: Evidence from a UK Supermarket Chain

We use store-specific data for a UK supermarket chain to estimate the impact of planning on store output. Exploiting the variation in policies between England and other UK countries, we isolate the impact of Town Centre ...Read more...

Blog

LSE European Politics and Policy Blog:

UK Spending Review 2013: A triumph of politics over reason?

The UK’s Spending Review has been forced on the British Chancellor because weak economic growth has blown a hole in the deficit reduction programme. John Van Reenen welcomes the partial reversal of the hugely damaging cu...Read more...

Blog

LSE European Politics and Policy Blog:

Small isn’t always beautiful: The cost of regulation on French firms

France has a raft of labour-market regulations that kick in for firms with 50 workers or more. Luis Garicano and John Van Reenen use this threshold to identify the economic effects of size-contingent regulations. Such po...Read more...

Blog

LSE European Politics and Policy Blog:

No Triple Dip does not mean a good recovery for the UK

John Van Reenen reacts to the news this week that the UK has avoided economic contraction in the last quarter. Whilst Osborne may see this as cause to celebrate, there is nothing commendable about an economy that continu...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Importance of Time Zone Assignment: Evidence from Residential Electricity Consumption

This paper presents the first nationwide empirical assessment of residential electricity use in response to the timing of daylight. Employing Geographical Information Systems (GIS) solar times of sunrise and sunset are c...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Impact of Supply Constraints on House Prices in England

i) This discussion paper, originally published September 2012, is a completely revised version from April 2014. ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Does Public Investment Spur the Land Market?: Evidence from Transport Improvement in Beijing

Over 140 billion CNY (1GBP=10CNY) has been spent between 2000 and 2012 in Beijing on the construction of new rail transit lines. This massive public investment allows me to examine the consequences of transport improveme...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Spatial Variations in Amenity Values: New Evidence from Beijing, China

Using parks as an example, this paper explores the robustness and sources of spatial variation in the estimated amenity values using an extended geographically weighted regression (GWR) technique. This analysis, illustra...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

What Do CEOs Do?

We develop a methodology to collect and analyze data on CEOs’ time use. The idea - sketched out in a simple theoretical set-up - is that CEO time is a scarce resource and its allocation can help us identify the firm’s pr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Firm Size Distortions and the Productivity Distribution: Evidence from France

We show how size-contingent laws can be used to identify the equilibrium and welfare effects of labor regulation. Our framework incorporates such regulations into the Lucas (1978) model and applies it to France where man...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

External Benefits of Brownfield Redevelopment: An Applied Urban General Equilbirum Analysis

Does brownfield redevelopment warrant government support? We explore several external benefits in an urban general equilibrium framework. Preferences are modelled such that demand for housing units in the city is downwar...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Economics Implications of House Price Capitalization: A Synthesis

In this article I argue that the extent to which fiscal variables are capitalized into house prices has important economic implications. I synthesize an emerging literature that explores the conditions under which public...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Racial Discrimination and Competition

We provide the first assessment of whether an intensification of product market competition reduces the racial wage gap exactly where taste-based theories predict that competition will reduce labor market discrimination....Read more...

CentrePiece article

Land use planning: the impact on retail productivity

The restrictions that planning policies impose on retail development have significantly reduced the productivity of supermarkets, according to Paul Cheshire and colleagues....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Seesaw in the Air: Interconnection Regulation and the Structure of Mobile Tariffs

Interconnection rates are a key variable in telecommunications markets. Every call that is placed must be terminated by the network of the receiving party, thus the termination end has the characteristic of an economic b...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Evaluating the Effects of Planning Policies on the Retail Sector: Or do Town Centre First Policies Deliver the Goods?

Few studies conceive of land as a productive factor but British land use policies may lower total factor productivity (TFP) in the retailing industry by (i) restricting the total availability of land for retail, thereby ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Mortgage Interest Deduction and its Impact on Homeownership Decisions

This paper examines the impact of the combined U.S. state and federal mortgage interest deduction (MID) on homeownership attainment, using data from 1984 to 2007 and exploiting variation in the subsidy across states, ove...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

Can pay regulation kill? Panel data evidence on the effect of labor markets on hospital performance

In many sectors, pay is regulated to be equal across heterogeneous geographical labor markets. When the competitive outside wage is higher than the regulated wage, there are likely to be falls in quality. We exploit pane...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Financial Regulation: Can We Avoid Another Great Recession?

Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

New Housing Supply and the Dilution of Social Capital

This paper examines the role of local housing supply conditions for social capital investment. Using an instrumental variables approach and data from the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, it is documented that t...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

On the Origins of Land Use Regulations: Theory and Evidence from US Metro Areas

We model residential land use constraints as the outcome of a political economy game between owners of developed and owners of undeveloped land. Land use constraints benefit the former group (via increasing property pric...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

On the Origins of Land Use Regulations: Theory and Evidence from US Metro Areas

We model residential land use constraints as the outcome of a political economy game between owners of developed and owners of undeveloped land. Land use constraints benefit the former group (via increasing property pric...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does Planning Regulation Protect Independent Retailers?

Entry regulations against big-box retailers have been introduced in many countries to protect smaller independent stores. Using a new dataset from the UK, I show that in fact these entry regulations have been associated ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Can Pay Regulation Kill? Panel Data Evidence on the Effect of Labor Markets on Hospital Performance

Labor market regulation can have harmful unintended consequences. In many markets, especially for public sector workers, pay is regulated to be the same for individuals across heterogeneous geographical labor markets. We...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Testing the 'Waterbed' Effect in Mobile Telephony

This paper examines the impact of regulatory intervention to cut termination rates of calls from fixed lines to mobile phones. Under quite general conditions of competition, theory suggests that lower termination charges...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Privatization, Entry Regulation and the Decline of Labor's Share of GDP: A Cross-Country Analysis of the Network Industries

Labor’s share of GDP in most OECD countries has declined over the last two decades. Some authors have suggested that these changes are linked to deregulation of product and labor markets. To examine this we focus on a la...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Decomposing the Growth in Residential Land in the United States

This paper decomposes the growth in land occupied by residences in the United States to give the relative contributions of changing demographics versus increases in the land area used by individual households. Between 19...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Owners of Developed Land versus Owners of Undeveloped Land: Why Land Use is More Constrained in the Bay Area than in Pittsburgh

We model residential land use constraints as the outcome of a political economy game between owners of developed and owners of undeveloped land. Land use constraints are interpreted as shadow taxes that increase the land...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Unequal Effects of Liberalization: Evidence from Dismantling the License Raj in India

This paper investigates whether the effects, on registered manufacturing out- put, employment, entry and investment, of dismantling the .license raja system of central controls regulating entry and production activity in...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

What Do Unions Do to Executive Compensation?

We estimate the relation between union presence and executive compensation using a unique panel of executives in publicly listed US firms during the period 1992-2001. We find evidence that union presence is associated wi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Agricultural Returns and Conflict: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from a Policy Intervention Programme in Rwanda

In 1997 Rwanda introduced a re-settlement policy for refugees displaced during previous conflicts. We exploit geographic variation in the speed of implementation of this policy to investigate the impact of conflict-induc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Company Start-Up Costs and Employment

I study the role of company start-up costs for employment performance. The model is search equilibrium with a new concept for firms. Agents have an innate managerial ability and make a career choice to become either mana...Read more...