Results

CEP discussion paper

Mind the break-up: when policy disrupts firms' supply chains

This paper examines how policy-induced supply-chain shocks affect firms? performances, using the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) as a source of exogenous variation. Using UK microdata on firm-level goods and ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

The US-China trade war creates jobs (elsewhere)

We examine the indirect effects of the 2018-2019 US-China trade war on Brazil?s labor market. We construct a measure of regional exposure to the trade conflict using industry-specific tariff changes and the sectoral empl...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Everything you thought you knew about local markets is wrong

In retail markets, competition among firms happens "locally". But what is the right way to define the local geographic market? Using a natural experiment involving petrol stations on Greek islands and in Athens, Christos...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Cultural exception?

Why book publishing contradicts conventional wisdom about competition....Read more...

Blog

What works centre for local economic growth:

Multiplying the benefits of Local Growth Plans

Last month the government published new guidance for Mayoral Strategic Authorities on Local Growth Plans. These are a key foundation of the new Industrial Strategy and the government's ambitions for devolution, as well a...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Public sector relocation: lessons from the BBC?s move to Salford

Moving public agencies out of London was a major plank of the levelling-up agenda. Max Nathan, Henry Overman, Capucine Riom and Maria Sanchez-Vidal show how the BBC?s move to Salford had a positive effect on the local ec...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Why people like living in cities: a new measure of the quality of life

People like to live in certain places, even when higher wages are on offer elsewhere. Gabriel Ahlfeldt, Fabian Bald, Duncan Roth and Tobias Seidel show that once people?s preferences are considered, big cities offer a hi...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance:

Returns to adult learning

A common starting point in understanding investments in learning is that people participate in education when the life-cycle returns to education outweigh its costs. Since people will reap the higher wages associated wit...Read more...

Blog

LSE Europp:

Cultural exception? Why regulating the book market contradicts conventional wisdom about competition

Fixing retail book prices is a common policy in Europe, but how does preventing competition affect booksellers and buyers? Christos Genakos, Lorien Sabatino and Tommaso Valletti find that when the ability to offer custom...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The US-China trade war creates jobs (elsewhere)

We examine the indirect effects of the US-China trade war on Brazil's labor market. Using industry-specific tariff changes and the sectoral employment distribution across local labor markets, we construct a measure of re...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Cultural exception? The impact of price regulation on prices and variety in the market for books

Fixed book price (FBP) agreements are a form of resale price maintenance applied to books in various countries. FBP restricts retail price competition with the aim of promoting book production variety. Yet, despite its p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Easterlin paradox at 50

We use Gallup World Poll data from over 150 countries from 2009-2019 at both the individual and country levels to revisit the relationship between income and subjective wellbeing. Our inspiration is the paradox first pro...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Multipliers from a major public sector relocation: the BBC moves to Salford

This paper considers the impact of a major public sector relocation: the British Broadcasting Corporation's partial move from London to Salford, Greater Manchester starting in 2011. We identify effects of the move, using...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Immigration, female labour supply and local cultural norms

We study the local evolution of female labour supply and cultural norms in West Germany in reaction to the sudden presence of East Germans who migrated to the West after reunification. These migrants grew up with high ra...Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Making sense of services

Will Brett-Harding outlines a two-step approach for thinking about what high growth potential services look like at the local level....Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Fair employment policies: thinking through local impacts

Will Brett-Harding explains why we should assess the local economic impacts of fair employment policies and why it is important to think carefully about the economic logic and the evidence before pursuing them as a polic...Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Blog series: Understanding core economic concepts in economic growth

This blog series, aimed primarily at those working in local and central government, provides deep-dives into various components of economic growth, and some key concepts that affect the impact of economic growth policies...Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

What are spatial disparities?

Henry Overman explains what spatial disparities are, why we need to consider them when thinking about local economic growth policies and whether we should try to reduce them....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...

Journal article

Management Science:

Information spillovers in experience goods competition

Trialing an experience good allows consumers to learn their value for the sampled good and also informs beliefs about their value for similar products. These demand-side information spillovers across products create a re...Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Public spaces: key points to keep in mind

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino discusses the local economic benefits and costs of possible schemes regarding the public realm and green spaces....Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Stepping up evaluation of active travel

Will Brett Harding discusses increasing active travel and what this means for locally delivered projects, and more generally about plans for determining the benefits of active travel investments....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Local and national concentration trends in jobs and sales: the role of structural transformation

National U.S. industrial concentration rose between 1992-2017. Simultaneously, the Herfindhahl Index of local (six-digit-NAICS by county) employment concentration fell. This divergence between national and local employme...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...

Journal article

European Journal of Political Economy:

Voting under threat: evidence from the 2020 French local elections

We study how COVID-related risk affected participation across the French territory in the March 2020 local elections. We document that participation went down disproportionately in towns exposed to higher COVID-19 risk. ...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economics and Statistics :

Ask a local: improving the public pricing of land titles in urban Tanzania

Information on willingness-to-pay is key for public pricing and allocation of services but not easily collected. Studying land titles in Dar-es-Salaam, we ask whether local leaders know and will reveal plot owners' willi...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Geography:

Creative clusters and creative multipliers: evidence from UK cities

Economic geographers have paid much attention to the cultural and creative industries, both for their propensity to cluster in urban settings, and their potential to drive urban economic development. However, evidence on...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Ask a local: improving the public pricing of land titles in urban Tanzania

Information on willingness-to-pay is key for public pricing and allocation of services but not easily collected. Studying land titles in Dar-es-Salaam, we ask whether local leaders know and will reveal plot owners' willi...Read more...

Blog

LSE Covid-19:

Covid and voting: how turnout in the 2020 French local elections fell

How did the pandemic affect turnout in French elections in March 2020? Elsa Leromain (LSE) and Gonzague Vannoorenberghe (Universite Catholique de Louvain) find that participation fell, especially in towns more exposed to...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Voting under threat: evidence from the 2020 French local elections

We study how Covid-related risk affected participation across the French territory in the March 2020 local elections. We document that participation went down disproportionately in towns exposed to higher Covid-19 risk. ...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

VoxEU:

The trade and welfare benefits of deep trade agreements

Deep trade agreements are widespread and have taken the world beyond tariff liberalisation in goods trade. As the importance of global supply chains and the services sector increased across the world, shallow tariff redu...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Colonial legacies: shaping African cities

Institutions persisting from colonial rule affect the spatial structure and conditions under which 100s of millions of people live in Sub-saharan African cities. In a sample of 318 cities, Francophone cities have more co...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The social determinants of choice quality: evidence from health insurance in the Netherlands

Market provision of impure public goods such as insurance, retirement savings and education is common and growing as policy makers seek to offer more choice and gain efficiencies. This approach induces an important trade...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Policy:

School choice during a period of radical school reform. Evidence from academy conversion in England

We study how demand responds to the rebranding of existing state schools as autonomous 'academies' in the context of a radical and large-scale reform to the English education system. The academy programme encouraged scho...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade and geography

This paper reviews recent research on geography and trade. One of the key empirical findings over the last decade has been the role of geography in shaping the distributional consequences of trade. One of the major theor...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Airports, access and local economic performance: evidence from China

In this article, we study the effect of airports on local economic performance that arises from better access to domestic markets in the context of China?s recent airport network expansion. We measure access through the ...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Industrial Organization:

The gravity of intermediate goods

One of the puzzles of the gravity literature is the persistent effect of distance on trade flows, despite the dramatic fall in trade costs during the last few decades (Disdier and Head in Rev Econ Stat 90(1):37?48, 2008)...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Gender gaps and the structure of local labor markets

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

CEP discussion paper

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

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

Journal article

World Trade Review:

Reopening Pandora's box in search of a WTO-compatible industrial policy? The Brazil-taxation dispute

We critically assess the Appellate Body (AB) report on the Brazil-Taxation dispute, taken to the World Trade Organisation by the European Union and Japan, and encompassing seven different Brazilian industrial programmes ...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economic Studies:

Public goods institutions, human capital, and growth: evidence from German history

What are the origins and consequences of the state as a provider of public goods? We study public goods provision established through new laws in German cities during the 1500s. Cities that adopted the laws subsequently ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The contribution of immigration to local labor market adjustment

The US suffers from persistent local disparities in employment rates, which should in principle be eliminated by population mobility. Can immigration accelerate this process? Remarkably, on average since 1960, new immigr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Immigration, local crowd-out and undercoverage bias

Using decadal census data since 1960, I cannot reject the hypothesis that new immigrants crowd out existing residents from US commuting zones and states one-for-one. My estimate accounts explicitly for dynamic local adju...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Education Review:

Oil discoveries and education provision in the postbellum South

This paper studies the effect of oil wealth on the provision of education in the early 20th century United States. Using information on the location and discovery of major oil fields, I find that oil wealth increased loc...Read more...

Journal article

Fiscal Studies:

Financing local police spending in England and Wales: fiscal federalism in practice

Since 1995, police forces in England and Wales have been able to raise revenues locally to supplement grants from central government. We analyse the variation across police force areas in locally raised police revenues o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Reopening Pandora's box in search of a WTO-compatible industrial policy? The Brazil-taxation dispute

The Brazil-Taxation dispute concerns the complaints taken to the World Trade Organisation by the European Union and Japan against seven different Brazilian industrial subsidy programmes. One concerned the automotive sect...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Income and Wealth:

Neighbors' income, public goods, and well-Being

How does neighbors' income affect individual well-being? Our analysis is based on rich U.S. local data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, which contains information on where respondents live and their s...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Spatial imaginaries and tech cities: place-branding East London's digital economy

We explore place branding as an economic development strategy for technology clusters, using London?s `Tech City? initiative as a case study. We site place branding in a larger family of policies that develop spatial ima...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

The interconnections between services and goods trade at the firm-level

In this paper we study how international trade in goods and services interact at the firm level. Using a rich dataset on Belgian firms for the period 1995?2005, we show that: i) firms are much more likely to source servi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The contribution of foreign migration to local labor market adjustment

The US suffers from large regional disparities in employment rates which have persisted for many decades. It has been argued that foreign migration offers a remedy: it ?greases the wheels? of the labor market by accelera...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Second home investments

Investment in second homes has been surging around the world. Christian Hilber explores the underlying causes of this boom and the political backlash against wealthy investors. His analysis explains how one increasingly ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Developing an effective local industrial strategy

Local governments in the UK have been writing economic development plans for decades, mostly with limited success. So can the latest drive to boost national productivity through local efforts show that this time is diffe...Read more...

CEP industrial strategy paper

Local Economic Effects of Brexit: Factsheet

Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Intended versus unintended consequences of migration restriction policies: evidence from a natural experiment in Indonesia

This article studies the consequences of restrictions to migration at the origin on labor market outcomes and school enrolment in origin communities. Our difference-indifferences specification exploits the differential i...Read more...

CentrePiece article

How 'local' are local labour markets?

If we want to create jobs in disadvantaged local areas, the idea of `local? needs to be revisited. Alan Manning and Barbara Petrongolo explain the problem of thinking of geographical space as non-overlapping single labou...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Oil discoveries and education spending in the Postbellum South

This paper studies the effect of oil wealth on the provision of education in the early 20th century United States. Using information on the location and discovery of major oil fields, I find that oil wealth increased loc...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Big plant closures and local employment

This paper estimates the impact of large plant closures on the local employment in the affected industry. Specifically, we examine the closure of 45 large manufacturing plants in Spain which relocated abroad between 2001...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The interconnections between services and goods trade at the firm-level

In this paper we study how international trade in goods and services interact at the firm level. Using a rich dataset on Belgian firms during the period 1995-2005, we show that: i) firms are much more likely to source se...Read more...

Journal article

National Institute Economic Review:

Local economic effects of Brexit

This paper studies local economic impacts of the increases in trade barriers associated with Brexit. Predictions of the local impact of Brexit are presented under two different scenarios, soft and hard Brexit, which are ...Read more...

CEP Brexit analysis

The local economic effects of Brexit

This paper studies the local impacts of the increases in trade barriers associated with Brexit. Predictions of the local impact of Brexit are presented under two different scenarios, soft and hard Brexit. Average effects...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

Sorting and agglomeration economies in French economics departments

Are agglomeration and peer effects at stake in academic research? To tackle this question, we study how departments? characteristics affect the quantity and quality of academics? publications in economics in France, cont...Read more...

Journal article

Regional Studies:

Global investments and regional development trajectories: the missing links

Global investments and regional development trajectories: the missing links. Regional Studies. Regional economic development has been long conceptualized as a non-linear, interactive and socially embedded process: these ...Read more...

Journal article

Review of International Economics:

The geometry of the distance coefficient in gravity equations in international trade

Gravity equations in trade imply that trade flows are proportional to the size of a country and inversely proportional to distance. This paper develops the analogy of gravity in physics with gravity in trade and provides...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A unified approach to estimating demand and welfare

The measurement of price changes, economic welfare, and demand parameters is currently based on three disjoint approaches: macroeconomic models derived from time-invariant utility functions, microeconomic estimation base...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...

CEP discussion paper

Commuting, migration and local employment elasticities

Many changes in the economic environment are local, including policy changes and infrastructure investments. The effect of these changes depends crucially on the ability of factors to move in response. Therefore a key ob...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Offshoring and the Geography of Jobs in Great Britain

This paper investigates the impact of the offshoring of production activities on domestic jobs in Great Britain. The paper considers both the spatial heterogeneity across local labour markets and variations in the intens...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Role of Education for Amenity Based Sorting in British Cities

This paper investigates the relation between amenities and skills by looking at the sorting behavior of skilled individuals across neighbourhoods within British cities. Using a detailed micro dataset on housing transacti...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Big Plant Closures and Agglomeration Economies

This paper analyses the effects of large manufacturing plant closures on local employment. Specifically, we estimate the net employment effects of the closure of 45 large manufacturing plants in Spain, which relocated ab...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The persistence of local joblessness

Local differences in US employment-population ratios and unemployment rates have persisted over many decades. Using decennial census data from 1950-2010, we investigate the reasons for this. The persistence cannot be exp...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The changing returns to crime: do criminals respond to prices?

In economic models of crime individuals respond to changes in the potential value of criminal opportunities. We analyse this issue by estimating crime-price elasticities from detailed data on criminal incidents in London...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Universal pre-school education: the case of public funding with private provision

This paper studies the effect of free pre-school education on child outcomes in primary school. We exploit the staggered implementation of free part-time pre-school for three-year-olds across Local Education Authorities ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Employment and Technological Change: On the Geography of Labour Market Adjustments

This paper investigates the impact of technological change on local labour market outcomes in Britain. Using a newly assembled panel database for the period 2000-2007 and a directly observed measure of technological chan...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...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Local Institutions and Local Economic Growth: The State of the Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) in England - A National Survey

This study seeks to take stock of where the LEPs are at and where they are heading by analysing their strategies and priorities, organisation and governance, resources, effectiveness and working relations, innovations, l...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...

CEP discussion paper

Pushing on a string: US monetary policy is less powerful in recessions

We estimate the impulse response of key US macro series to the monetary policy shocks identified by Romer and Romer (2004), allowing the response to depend flexibly on the state of the business cycle. We find strong evid...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Effect of Public Sector Employment on Local Labour Markets

This paper considers the impact of public sector employment on local labour markets. Using English data at the Local Authority level for 2003 to 2007 we find that public sector employment has no identifiable effect on to...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Politics in Coalition Formation of Local Governments

We analyze empirically the coalition formation of local governments using a novel reduced form econometric procedure that allows for multi-partner mergers. Using Finnish municipal merger data where mergers were decided i...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How Local Are Labour Markets? Evidence from a Spatial Job Search Model

This paper uses data on very small UK geographies to investigate the effective size of local labour markets. Our approach treats geographic space as continuous, as opposed to a collection of nonoverlapping administrative...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Cotton and cars: the huge gains from process innovation

New inventions are good for economic growth, but equally important are improvements in the way we make things - what's known as process innovation. Tim Leunig and Joachim Voth measure the impact of two such innovations -...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...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

On the Relative Importance of Agglomeration Economies in the Location of FDI Across British Regions

The paper examines the relative importance for industrial location of production linkages and knowledge spillovers, distinguishing between intermediate and non-intermediate goods that are backwards or forwards in nature....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A Step towards Valuing Utility the Marginal and Cardinal Way

Income has a direct impact on our utility as well as an indirect impact through the goods, services and life events it allows us to purchase. The indirect effect of income is not properly accounted for in existing resear...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Spinning Welfare: the Gains from Process Innovation in Cotton and Car Production

Economists and economic historians want to know how much better life is today than in the past. Fifty years ago economic historians found surprisingly small gains from 19th century US railroads, while more recently econo...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Capitalization of Central Government Grants into Local House Prices: Panel Data Evidence from England

We explore the impact of central government grants on local house prices in England using a panel data set of local authorities (LAs) from 2001 to 2008. Electoral targeting of grants to LAs by the incumbent national gove...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Local Human Capital and Its Impact on Local Employment Chances in Britain

This paper examines how high human capital in a locality is associated with the employment outcomes of individuals. A probit model is used to examine how the employment probability of otherwise similar working age males ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Wage Effects from Changes in Local Human Capital in Britain

This paper examines the wage effects arising from changing local human capital in the labour market areas of Britain. Employing wage regressions, it is found that individuals? wages are positively associated with changes...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Urban Growth Drivers in a Europe of Sticky People and Implicit Boundaries

We investigate urban GDP pc growth across the EU12 using data for functionally defined cities - rather than administrative regions. We test hypotheses on the role of human capital, EU integration and fragmentation of urb...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Comparing Willingness-to-Pay and Subjective Well-Being in the Context of Non-Market Goods

In order to value non-market goods, economists estimate individuals? willingness to pay (WTP) for these goods using revealed or stated preference methods. We compare these conventional approaches with subjective well-bei...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Mapping Prices into Productivity in Multisector Growth Models

Two issues related to mapping a multi-sector model into a reduced-form value-added model are often neglected: the composition of intermediate goods, and the distinction between value added productivity and gross output p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Impact of Private Ownership, Incentives and Local Development Objectives on University Technology Transfer Performance

We study the impact of private ownership, incentive pay and local development objectives on university licensing performance. We develop and test a simple contracting model of technology licensing offices, using new surv...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Consumption and Real Exchange Rates with Incomplete Markets and Non-Traded Goods

This paper addresses the consumption-real exchange rate anomaly. International real business cycle models based on complete financial markets predict a unitary correlation between the real exchange rate and the ratio of ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Assessing the Effects of Local Taxation Using Microgeographic Data

We study the impact of local taxation on the location and growth of firms. Our empirical methodology pairs establishments across jurisdictional boundaries to estimate the impact of taxation. Our approach improves on exis...Read more...