Results

Blog

VoxEU:

When trust in official statistics declines

Trust in official economic statistics has become an increasingly salient policy issue, including in the US where the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics was dismissed in August 2025 amid allegations that agenc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The civil war reduced slave owners' economic power but increased their political influence

Did Southern elites? economic losses from abolition translate into diminished political influence? Using novel census-linked data on state lawmakers across four slave owning and two Northern states (1850?1880), we docume...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

When and why political leaders polarise rhetoric: Evidence from Twitter/X

Standard theories of electoral competition predict that politicians should converge toward the centre as elections approach. This column challenges this prediction, using 3.4 million tweets from 367 political leaders acr...Read more...

Chapter

Fostering green and inclusive productivity growth

in The London Consensus

This chapter explains the main ideas underpinning the Schumpeterian growth paradigm and how it provides a new lens to look at the determinants and effects of the growth process. Schumpeter was pessimistic about the futur...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Labor unions and the electoral consequences of trade liberalization

We show that the Brazilian trade liberalization in the early 1990s led to a permanent relative decline in the vote share of left-wing presidential candidates in the regions more affected by the tariff cuts. This happened...Read more...

Journal article

Review of International Economics:

Political competition and the strategic adoption of free trade agreements

I study how political competition affects the feasibility of free trade agreements (FTAs). I show that the possibility of political turnover creates strategic motivations for the formation of FTAs. Specifically, a govern...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Has work from home shifted the US electoral map?

Since 2020, the dramatic rise in remote work has coincided with increased geographic mobility in the United States. We examine the relationship between these trends and their effects on the electoral landscape. Using IRS...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Political competition and the strategic adoption of free trade agreements

I study how political competition affects the feasibility of free trade agreements (FTAs). I show that the possibility of political turnover creates strategic motivations for the formation of FTAs. Specifically, a govern...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Learning about women's competence: the dynamic response of political parties to gender quotas in South Korea

We study the dynamic responses of political parties to gender quotas in South Korean municipal councils, a setting with nearly zero women pre-quota. We exploit two unique institutional features: the quota intensity is di...Read more...

Journal article

Critical Sociology:

A popular backlash against globalization?

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

Blog

Vox EU:

Mafias and Firms (Podcast)

Which firms are infiltrated by organised crime, and why? We know that organised crime has links to some firms in the legal economy. But how big is this infiltration, and what do they gain from it? Rocco Macchiavello tell...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

When tariffs disrupt global supply chains

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

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association :

Formation of college plans: expected returns, preferences and adjustment process

We exploit a large exogenous shock to study the formation, and updating, of educational plans, and to examine how these plans ultimately impact later educational attainment. Using novel, longitudinal, microdata on cohort...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Immigration and political realignment

This paper examines how immigration reshapes political landscapes, centring on the influx of immigrants from the EU's 2004 enlargement and its implications for the UK. I use a new variation in exposure to immigration bas...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

How polarised are citizens? Measuring ideology from the ground-up

We investigate whether the ideological polarisation of citizens has increased in Western democracies. We propose a novel methodology to identify individual ideologies by applying Latent Dirichlet Allocation to political ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Powers that be? Political alignment, government formation, and government stability

We study how partisan alignment across levels of government affects coalition formation and government stability using a regression discontinuity design and a large dataset of Spanish municipal elections. We document a p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Political ideology and innovation

We study the role of political ideology for a critical group of economic agents: inventors. We document that, in "politically polarizing" fields, inventors patent innovations aligned with their political beliefs. We cons...Read more...

Journal article

Fiscal Studies:

Financing UK democracy: a stocktake of 20 years of political donations disclosure

Political donations in the UK have been subject to comprehensive disclosure since 2001. We study the data produced as part of this disclosure policy to evaluate the role of private and public political finance over time....Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Business Studies:

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

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

Journal article

Journal of Comparative Economics:

Historical roots of political extremism: the effects of Nazi occupation of Italy

We study the impact of the Italian Civil War and Nazi occupation of Italy in 1943?45 on postwar political outcomes. The Communist Party, which was more active in the resistance movement, gained votes in areas where the N...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Management Studies:

Business groups and export performance: the role of coordination failures and institutional configurations

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

Journal article

Oxford Economic Papers:

Economic insecurity and political preferences

Economic insecurity has attracted growing attention, but there is no consensus as to its definition. We characterize a class of individual economic-insecurity measures based on the time profile of economic resources. We ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

The long shadow of local decline: birthplace economic adversity and long-term individual outcomes in the UK

Does growing up in a high-economic adversity area matter for individual economic, cultural, and political views? Despite a significant focus upon the effect of birthplace on economic outcomes, there is less evidence on h...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Sanctions and misallocation. How sanctioned firms won and Russia lost

Using a unique natural experiment of staggered firm-level sanctions against Russia in 2014-2020 and the data on over 600,000 Russian firms, I estimate the effect of "smart" sanctions on targeted firms and on the aggregat...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Young people's university plans: evidence from German reunification

Around a decade after Germany's reunification, a long-standing educational gap between the east and west of the country - completion of the certificate needed to enter university - had closed. Ghazala Azmat and Katja Kau...Read more...

Chapter

The backlash of globalization

in Handbook of International Economics

We review the literature on the globalization backlash, seen as the political shift of voters and parties in a protectionist and isolationist direction, with substantive implications on governments' leaning and enacted p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

AI-tocracy

Can frontier innovation be sustained under autocracy? We argue that innovation and autocracy can be mutually reinforcing when: (i) the new technology bolsters the autocrat's power; and (ii) the autocrat's demand for the ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Pandemic shock and economic divergence: political economy before and after the black death

We document how the Black Death activated politics and led to economic divergence within Europe. Before the pandemic, economic development was similar in Eastern and Western German cities despite greater political fragme...Read more...

Journal article

Economica:

Populism and civil society

Since Tocqueville (1835), civil society has been recognized as a cornerstone of liberal democracy. But populists claim to be the only legitimate representatives of the people, leaving no space for civil society. Are popu...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics:

The welfare consequences of centralization: evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in Switzerland

Many countries are reallocating tasks and powers to more central levels of government. To identify centralization's welfare effects, I use a difference-in-differences design that relies on time and cross-cantonal variati...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Formation of college plans: expected returns, preferences and adjustment process

We exploit a large exogenous shock to study the determinants of college attendance and the role played by one's environment. We analyze whether, and how quickly, adolescents' college plans are adapted, explore factors le...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...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Productivity growth in one country affects the relative income and welfare of its trade partners

One of the most dramatic changes in the world economy over the past half century has been the emergence of China as a major force in world trade. A central question in international economics is the implications of such ...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Industrial Organization:

Critically important: the heterogeneous effect of diplomatic tensions on trade

With global value chains interlocking todaya??s economies, what is the impact of diplomatic tensions on international trade? We exploit variation in monthly data on imports, a measure of imported input use in the domesti...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

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...

Journal article

Behavioural Public Policy:

A happy choice: wellbeing as the goal of government

In this article, we lay out the basic case for wellbeing as the goal of government. We briefly review the history of this idea, which goes back to the ancient Greeks and was the acknowledged ideal of the Enlightenment. W...Read more...

Journal article

Behavioural Public Policy:

A happy choice: a response to the responses

We are very happy to see the engagement of so many eminent scholars in our field with our modest proposal for how to proceed with wellbeing policy formation in the UK. We are also heartened by the apparent endorsement of...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...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Economic insecurity breeds support for the right

Economic insecurity breeds support for the right Economic insecurity is attracting growing attention in social, academic, and policy circles. It has arguably risen for a number of reasons in recent years: the Great Rece...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Economic insecurity and the rise of the right

Economic insecurity has attracted growing attention in social, academic and policy circles. However, there is no consensus as to its precise definition. Intuitively, economic insecurity is multi-faceted, making any compr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A happy choice: wellbeing as the goal of government

In this article, we lay out the basic case for wellbeing as the goal of government. We briefly review the history of this idea, which goes back to the ancient Greeks and was the acknowledged ideal of the Enlightenment. W...Read more...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

The price ain't right? hospital prices and health spending on the privately insured

We use insurance claims data covering 28% of individuals with employersponsored health insurance in the United States to study the variation in health spending on the privately insured, examine the structure of insurer-h...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

The limits of political compromise: debt ceilings and political turnover

We study the desirability of limits on the public debt and of political turnover in an economy where incumbents have an incentive to set public expenditures above the socially optimal level due to rent-seeking motives. P...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic History:

Voting behavior and public employment in Nazi Germany

This article analyzes whether the German National Socialists used economic policies to reward their voters after coming to power in 1933. Using newly-collected data on public employment from the German censuses in 1925, ...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Guarding the guardians

Good government requires some restraints on the powerful but how can those be imposed if there is no-one above them? This article studies the equilibrium allocation of power and resources established by self-interested i...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Game of zones: the political economy of conservation areas

We develop a simple theory of the conservation area designation process in which we postulate that the level of designation is chosen to comply with interests of local homeowners. Conservation areas provide benefits to l...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...

CEP discussion paper

Who voted for Brexit? A comprehensive district-level analysis

On 23 June 2016, the British electorate voted to leave the European Union. We analyse vote and turnout shares across 380 local authority areas in the United Kingdom. We find that exposure to the EU in terms of immigratio...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

Political favoritism in China's capital markets and its effect on city sizes

This paper examines political favoritism of cites in national capital markets and the effect of that favoritism on city sizes. The paper estimates the city-by-city variation in the prices of capital across cities in Chin...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Distributive Politics Inside the City? The Political Economy of Spain's Plan E

We study the allocation of investment projects by municipal governments across groups of voters using data from a fiscal stimulus program carried out in Spain between 2009 and 2011. This program provided municipalities w...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...

CEP discussion paper

One Mandarin benefits the whole clan: hometown favoritism in an authoritarian regime

We study patronage politics in authoritarian Vietnam, using an exhaustive panel of 603 ranking officials from 2000 to 2010 to estimate their promotions? impact on infrastructure in their hometowns of patrilineal ancestry...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Is happiness a predictor of election results?

Is it in politicians? interest to focus policy on subjective well-being (SWB)? Many governments and international organisations have recently begun to measure progress at least partly in terms of the population?s SWB or ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Voting behaviour and public employment in Nazi Germany

This paper analyses whether the German National Socialists used economic policies to reward their voters after their rise to power in 1933. Using data on public employment in the armed forces, public administrations and ...Read more...

Journal article

The World Bank Economic Review:

The political economy of trade policy: gone for good? Subsidies with export share requirements in China: 2002-13

This paper presents a simple model of subsidies with export share requirements (ESR) in a heterogeneous firm environment. A two-country general equilibrium version of the model with a single 100% ESR is calibrated using ...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

Political competition and the limits of political compromise

We consider an economy where competing political parties alternate in office. Due to rent-seeking motives, incumbents have an incentive to set public expenditures above the socially optimum level. Parties cannot commit t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The political economy of inclusive rural growth

Abstract Commentators on the `East Asian Miracle' of inclusive growth have often pointed toward shared rural growth policies. But why were these policies not chosen elsewhere? This paper models voters who invest in eithe...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...

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

Free Trade Aggreements and the Consolidation of Democracy

We study the relationship between participation in free trade agreements (FTAs) and the sustainability of democracy. Our model shows that FTAs can critically reduce the incentive of authoritarian groups to seek power by ...Read more...

CEP report

The political economy of the Greek debt crisis: a tale of two bailouts

We review the events that led to the May 2010 and July 2011 bailout agreements. We interpret the bailouts as outcomes of political-economy equilibria. We argue that the second bailout was not on the Pareto frontier and s...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A Model of Equilibrium Institutions

Institutions that serve the interests of an elite are often cited as an important reason for poor economic performance. This paper builds a model of institutions that allocate resources and power to maximize the payoff o...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

Political Competition, Policy and Growth: Theory and Evidence from the United States

This paper develops a simple model to analyze how a lack of political competition may lead to policies that hinder economic growth. We test the predictions of the model on panel data for the US states. In these data, we ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Revolving Door Lobbyists

Washington's 'revolving door' - the movement from government service into the lobbying industry- is regarded as a major concern for policy-making. We study how ex-government staffers benefit from the personal connections...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Is Fiscal Decentralization Harmful for Economic Growth? Evidence from the OECD Countries

The global drive towards decentralization has been increasingly justified on the basis that greater transfers of resources to subnational governments are expected to deliver greater efficiency in the provision of public ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Does Decentralization Matter for Regional Disparities? A Cross-Country Analysis

This paper looks at the relationship between fiscal and political decentralization and the evolution of regional inequalities in a panel of 26 countries ? 19 developed and 7 developing ? for the period between 1990 and 2...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

A Swing-State Theory of Trade Protection in the Electoral College

This paper develops an infinite-horizon, political agency model with a continuum of political districts, in which incumbent politicians can improve their re-election probability by attracting swing voters in key states t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Monetary Policy Committees and Interest Rate Smoothing

We extend the New Keynesian Monetary Policy literature relaxing the assumption that the decisions are taken by a single policymaker, considering instead that monetary policy decisions are taken collectively in a committe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Term Limits and Electoral Accountability

Periodic elections are the main instrument through which voters can hold politicians accountable. From this perspective term limits, which restrict voters? ability to reward politicians with re-election, appear counterpr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Product Standards, Trade Disputes and Protectionism

Trade disputes over national product standards are a growing source of tension in the international trading system. The usual pattern is that a country introduces a new product standard for all sales of a good in its loc...Read more...