Results

Journal article

Journal of Health Economics:

The value of a park in crises: quantifying the health and wellbeing benefits of green spaces using exogenous variations in use values

Most people consider parks important for their quality of life, yet systematic causal evidence is missing. We exploit exogenous variations in their use values to estimate causal effects. Using a representative household ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

An Olympic opportunity

We use a unique natural experiment in which families were randomly selected to live in the Olympic Village, constructed for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, to assess the impact of improved neighbourhood conditions on acad...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does happiness spread within organizations? Evidence from a field experiment in Norway

We report the results from a large field experiment that tests if happiness spreads within an organizational setting, as predicted by the emotional contagion hypothesis. Although some studies have supported this hypothes...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The value of green spaces

Using wellbeing data to assess benefits for residents....Read more...

Journal article

Experimental Economics:

Is motivated memory (just) a matter of mood?

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in motivated memory as a psychological determinant of economic outcomes. According to motivated memory, people tend to better recall pleasant information because it ...Read more...

Journal article

Social Science & Medicine:

Passing on the flame: Do mega sports events promote health behaviours?

To justify billion-dollar public expenditures on mega sports events, proponents often suggest lasting improvements in health behaviours among the general public. To estimate the returns to health behaviours from hosting ...Read more...

Blog

Nature:

We need to predict the people disasters will hit, not just the places

Local authorities can deal with natural hazards more effectively if they know ahead of time who will be affected, writes Jonathan Colmer....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The value of a park in crises: quantifying the health and wellbeing benefits of green spaces using exogenous variations in use values

Most people consider parks important for their quality of life, yet systematic causal evidence is missing. We exploit exogenous variations in their use values to estimate causal effects. Using a representative household ...Read more...

Blog

Bank Underground:

Forbearance lending as a crisis management tool

The Bank of England Agenda for Research (BEAR) sets the key areas for new research at the Bank over the coming years. This post is an example of issues considered under the Prudential Architecture Theme which focuses on ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Human Resources :

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

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

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics:

Do carbon offsets offset carbon?

We develop and implement a new method for identifying wasted subsidies and use it to provide systematic evidence of the misallocation of carbon offsets in the Clean Development Mechanism - the world's largest carbon offs...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics:

Happy to help: welfare effects of a nationwide volunteering programme

We study the wellbeing returns from volunteering in England's National Health Service (NHS) Volunteer Responders, set up in response to Covid-19. Using linked survey and administrative data, we exploit the oversubscripti...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

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

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

Blog

Vox EU:

Managing to cope with natural disasters

Human-induced climate change is making disasters more frequent and more intense. Policy could help reduce the economic costs of climate change by helping firms withstand extreme weather events. This column explores how m...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Disaster management

Climate change is making natural disasters more frequent, yet little is known about the capacity of firms to withstand such disasters and adapt to their increased frequency. We examine this issue using the latest wave of...Read more...

Journal article

Behavioural Public Policy:

Affective paternalism

Many decisions are curated, incentivised or nudged by a third party. Despite this, only a handful of studies have looked at paternalistic decision-makers and the psychological processes by which they arrive at their deci...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economic Studies:

Does pricing carbon mitigate climate change? Firm-level evidence from the European Union Emissions Trading System

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 European Union Emissi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

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

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

Journal article

Management Science:

Does employee happiness have an impact on productivity?

This paper provides evidence from a natural experiment on the relationship between positive affect and productivity. We link highly detailed administrative data on the behaviors and performance of all telesales workers a...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Health Economics:

The causal effect of a health treatment on beliefs, stated preferences and memories

The paper estimates the causal effect of a health treatment on patients? beliefs, preferences and memories about the treatment. It exploits a natural experiment which occurred in the United Kingdom during the COVID-19 va...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Talking therapy: Impacts of a nationwide mental health service in England

Mental health problems impose significant costs, yet healthcare systems of-ten overlook them. We provide the first causal evidence on the effectiveness of a nationwide-scaled mental health service in England for treating...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Pay-as-they-get-in: attitudes toward migrants and pension systems

We study whether a better knowledge of the functioning of pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pension systems and recent demographic trends affects natives? attitudes toward immigration. In two online experiments conducted in Italy and...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Pay-as-they-get-in: attitudes towards migrants and pension systems

We study whether a better knowledge of the functioning of pay-as-you-go pension systems and recent demographic trends in the hosting country affects natives' attitudes towards immigration. In two online experiments in It...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists:

Climate-related natural disasters and voting behavior: evidence from environmental legislation in the US Senate

This study investigates whether US senators are more likely to vote in favor of environmentally friendly legislation following damages caused by climate-related natural disasters. We combine senatorial scores of roll cal...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Can grit be taught? Lessons from a nationwide field experiment with middle-school students

We study whether a particular socio-emotional skill - grit (the ability to sustain effort and interest towards long-term goals) - can be cultivated through a large-scale program, and how this affects student learning. Us...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

VoxEU:

Why natural experiments won the Nobel

Josh Angrist, David Card, and Guido Imbens shared the Nobel in 2021 for their pioneering work on natural experiments that, in the words of the committee, "revolutionised empirical research". Steve Pischke tells Tim Phill...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Learning from praise: evidence from a field experiment with teachers

Financial incentive programs for teachers are increasingly common, but little is known about the effectiveness of non-monetary incentives in improving educational outcomes. This field experiment measures how repeated pub...Read more...

Journal article

PNAS:

Covid-19 within families amplifies the prosociality gap between adolescents of high and low socioeconomic status

COVID-19 has had worse health, education, and labor market effects on groups with low socioeconomic status (SES) than on those with high SES. Little is known, however, about whether COVID-19 has also had differential eff...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Happy to help: NHS volunteering in Covid-19 times

The Covid-19 crisis prompted thousands to register as NHS Volunteer Responders, helping vulnerable people with small daily tasks like shopping. Christian Krekel and colleagues find big increases in wellbeing among those ...Read more...

Journal article

The Journal of Human Resources:

STEM graduates and secondary school curriculum: does early exposure to science matter?

This paper explores the effect of strengthening the science curriculum in secondary school on STEM university education. By exploiting the staggered implementation of a reform that encouraged secondary schools in England...Read more...

Blog

LSE Covid-19:

Happy to help: how a UK micro-volunteering programme increased people's wellbeing

Levels of wellbeing increased significantly for individuals who participated in the NHS Volunteer Responders (NHSVR) programme, with effects lasting months after the volunteering period had ended, write Paul Dolan, Chris...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Happy to help: welfare effects of a nationwide volunteering programme

We study the wellbeing benefits from volunteering in England's National Health Service (NHS) Volunteer Responders programme, which was set up in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Using combined survey and administrative...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

How to improve tax compliance? Evidence from population-wide experiments in Belgium

We study the impact of simplification, deterrence, and tax morale on tax compliance. We ran four natural field experiments varying the communication of the tax administration with the universe of income taxpayers in Belg...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...

CVER Research Paper

Where versus What: College Value-Added and Returns to Field of Study in Further Education

Enrolling in vocational education and training programs constitutes a natural response to the current dynamics of the labour market, which is being reshaped by routinisation, automation, and outsourcing. We estimate the ...Read more...

Journal article

World Bank Economic Review:

Migration and urbanization in post-apartheid South Africa

Although Africa has experienced rapid urbanization in recent decades, little is known about the process of urbanization across the continent. This paper exploits a natural experiment, the abolition of South African pass ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The gig economy and workers' preferences for steady jobs

Is the rise of gig work, freelancing, zero hours contracts and self-employment a result of people wanting such work or because they have no other choice? Nikhil Datta finds that while workers in the gig economy may like ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Quantifying the intangible impact of the Olympics using subjective well-being data

Hosting the Olympic Games costs billions of taxpayer dollars. Following a quasi-experimental setting, this paper assesses the intangible impact of the London 2012 Olympics, using a novel panel of 26,000 residents in Lond...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Quantifying the intangible impact of the Olympics using subjective well-being data

Hosting the Olympic Games costs billions of taxpayer dollars. Following a quasi-experimental setting, this paper assesses the intangible impact of the London 2012 Olympics, using a novel panel of 26,000 residents in Lond...Read more...

Journal article

Management Science:

What you don't know. . .can't hurt you? A natural field experiment on relative performance feedback in higher education

This paper studies the effect of providing feedback to college students on their position in the grade distribution by using a natural field experiment. This information was updated every six months during a three-year p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Willing to pay for security: a discrete choice experiment to analyse labour supply preferences

This paper investigates the extent to which labour supply preferences are responsible for the marked rise in atypical work arrangements in the UK and US. By employing vignettes in a discrete job choice experiment in a re...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How to improve tax compliance? Evidence from population-wide experiments in Belgium

We study the impact of deterrence, tax morale, and simplifying information on tax compliance. We ran _ve experiments spanning the tax process which varied the communication of the tax administration with all income taxpa...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Matching Firms and Workers in a Field Experiment in Ethiopia

Do matching frictions affect youth employment in developing countries? We organise job fairs in Addis Ababa, to match firms with a representative sample of young, educated job-seekers. We create very few jobs: one for ap...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization:

The back-scratching game

We develop a new experiment to study the emergence of welfare-reducing bilateral alliances within larger groups, and the effectiveness of institutional interventions to curtail `back-scratching?. In each of the 25 rounds...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Can raising instructional time crowd out student pro-social behaviour? Unintended consequences of a German high school reform

We study whether raising instructional time can crowd out student pro-social behaviour. To this end, we exploit a large educational reform in Germany that has raised weekly instructional hours for high school students by...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Urban renewal after the Berlin wall: a place-based policy evaluation

We use a quasi-experimental research design to study the effects of a spatially targeted renewal policy implemented in Berlin, Germany, in the aftermath of the city's division during the Cold War period. Our results sugg...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The host with the most? The effects of the Olympic Games on happiness

We show that hosting the Olympic Games in 2012 had a positive impact on the life satisfaction and happiness of Londoners during the Games, compared to residents of Paris and Berlin. Notwithstanding issues of causal infer...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics:

Resource windfalls, political regimes, and political stability

We study theoretically and empirically whether natural resource windfalls affect political regimes. We show that windfalls have no effect on democracies, while they have heterogeneous political consequences in autocracie...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The path from cause to effect: mastering 'metrics

How should researchers interested in social and economic policy untangle cause and effect? A new book by Joshua Angrist and Jorn Steffen Pischke shows how the five core econometric tools -randomised trials, regression, ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Vertical transmission of overweight: evidence from English adoptees

We examine the vertical transmission of overweight drawing upon a sample of English children, both adopted and non-adopted, and their families. Our results suggest strong evidence of an intergenerational association of o...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Video killed the radio star? Evidence from YouTube and iTunes

Making video clips of a song unavailable on YouTube has no effect on its sales on iTunes; but album sales suffer when video clips of a song from it are made unavailable on YouTube. These findings of a study by Tobias Kre...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Gender and the labor market: What have we learned from field and lab experiments?

We discuss the contribution of the experimental literature to the understanding of both traditional and previously unexplored dimensions of gender differences and discuss their bearings on labor market outcomes. Experime...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Industry compensation under relocation risk: a firm-level analysis of the EU emissions trading scheme

When regulated firms are offered compensation to prevent them from relocating, efficiency requires that payments be distributed across firms so as to equalize marginal relocation probabilities, weighted by the damage cau...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Fracking growth

This paper estimates the effect of the shale oil and gas boom in the United States on local economic outcomes. The main source of exogenous variation to be explored is the location of previously unexplored shale deposits...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Gender and the labour market: evidence from experiments

Lab experiments are an increasingly valuable tool for understanding differences in how men and women are treated in the labour market. Dr Ghazala Azmat and Professor Barbara Petrongolo explore what has been learned about...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Video killed the radio star? Online music videos and digital music sales

Sampling poses an interesting problem in markets with experience goods. Free samples reveal product quality and help consumers to make informed purchase decisions (promotional effect). However, sampling may also induce c...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Gender and the labor market: What have we learned from field and lab experiments?

We discuss the contribution of the experimental literature to the understanding of both traditional and previously unexplored dimensions of gender differences and discuss their bearings on labor market outcomes. Experime...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Urban Renewal after the Berlin Wall

Urban renewal areas are popular but empirically understudied spatial planning instruments designed to prevent urban decline and induce renewal. We use a quasi-experimental research design to study the effects of 22 renew...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does uncertainty reduce growth? Using disasters as natural experiments

A growing body of evidence suggests that uncertainty is counter cyclical, rising sharply in recessions and falling in booms. But what is the causal relationship between uncertainty and growth? To identify this we constru...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Risk and evidence of bias in randomized controlled trials in economics

The randomized controlled trial (RCT) has been a heavily utilized research tool in medicine for over 60 years. Since the early 2000?s, large-scale RCTs have been used in increasingly large numbers in the social sciences ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Neighbors, Knowledge, and Nuggets: Two Natural Field Experiments on the Role of Incentives on Energy Conservation

There is increasing research on the exogenous impact of descriptive social norms on economic behavior. The research to date has a number of limitations: 1) it has not de-coupled the impact of the norm and the knowledge r...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The geography of inter-state resource wars

We establish a theoretical as well as empirical framework to assess the role of resource endowments and their geographic location for inter-State conflict. The main predictions of the theory are that conflict tends to be...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does Working from Home Work? Evidence from a Chinese Experiment

About 10% of US employees now regularly work from home (WFH), but there are concerns this can lead to ?shirking from home.? We report the results of a WFH experiment at CTrip, a 16,000-employee, NASDAQ-listed Chinese tra...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Science: why the gender gap?

Stereotypes, role models played by teachers and social norms influence girls? academic self-concept and push girls to choose humanities rather than science. Do recruiters reinforce this strong selection by discriminating...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Working or shirking?

Over 10% of US employees now regularly work from home (WFH), but there is widespread skepticism over its impact highlighted by phrases like ?shirking from home?. We report the results of a WFH experiment at Ctrip, a 13,0...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Do Professors Really Perpetuate the Gender Gap in Science? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in a French Higher Education Institution

Stereotypes, role models played by teachers and social norms influence girls? academic self-concept and push girls to choose humanities rather than science. Do recruiters reinforce this strong selection by discriminating...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Giant oilfields and civil conflict

We use new data to examine the effects of giant oilfield discoveries around the world since 1946. On average, these discoveries increase per capita oil production and oil exports by up to 50 percent. But these giant oilf...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Resource Windfalls, Political Regimes, and Political Stability

We study theoretically and empirically whether natural resource windfalls affect political regimes. We document the following regularities. Natural resource windfalls have no effect on the political system when they occu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do Giant Oilfield Discoveries Fuel Internal Armed Conflicts?

We use new data to examine the effects of giant oilfield discoveries around the world since 1946. On average, these discoveries increase per capita oil production and oil exports by up to 50 percent. But these giant oilf...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Whether to Hire Local Contract Teachers? Trade-off Between Skills and Preferences in India

Whether to hire teachers locally on a contract basis, or via competitive examinations as government officials, is a major policy question in developing countries. We use a Discrete Choice Experiment to assess the job pre...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Agglomeration in the Periphery

i. This discussion paper is a completely revised version of SERCDP0047, published April 2010....Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Minimum Wages and Schooling: Evidence from the UK's Introduction of a National Minimum Wage

This paper uses the introduction of the national minimum wage in the UK in April 1999 as a `natural experiment? to analyse the impact of minimum wages on enrolment in schooling. At the time of its introduction, only work...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Credibility Revolution in Empirical Economics: How Better Research Design is taking the Con out of Econometrics

This essay reviews progress in empirical economics since Leamer?s (1983) critique. Leamer highlighted the benefits of sensitivity analysis, a procedure in which researchers show how their results change with changes in s...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do Oil Windfalls Improve Living Standards? Evidence from Brazil

We use variation in oil output among Brazilian municipalities to investigate the effects of resource windfalls. We find muted effects of oil through market channels: offshore oil has no effect on municipal non-oil GDP or...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Importance of Relative Performance Feedback Information: Evidence from a Natural Experiment using High School Students

We study the effect of providing relative performance feedback information on performance under piece-rate incentives. A natural experiment that took place in a high school offers an unusual opportunity to test this effe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Leader Behavior and the Natural Resource Curse

We discuss political economy mechanisms which can explain the resource curse, in which an increase in the size of resource rents causes a decrease in the economy?s total value added. We identify a number of channels thro...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

UK Philips Curves and Monetary Policy

This paper documents some stylized facts on evolving UK Phillips curves, and shows how these differ from their US versions. We interpret UK Phillips curve dynamics in a positive theory of monetary policy u how policy-mak...Read more...