Results

Blog

LSE British Politics:

Without radical planning reform, Burnham cannot build the houses he's promising

Governments keep promising to build more houses, and keep failing to do so. Now, Andy Burnham has upped the challenge by promising not just more houses, but specifically more council houses since World War II. Paul Chesh...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Take-away findings from food delivery apps

Do delivery apps reduce or enhance the attraction of cities?...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Working from home in the public sector

Study finds workers work faster when they work from home...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Leaders in social movements: evidence from unions in Myanmar

Social movements are catalysts for crucial institutional changes. To succeed, they must coordinate members' views (consensus building) and actions (mobilization). We study union leaders within Myanmar's burgeoning labor ...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...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Train to opportunity: the effect of infrastructure on intergenerational mobility

Can transport infrastructure expand long-term labour opportunities and weaken the occupational link between parents and children? We estimate the causal effect of railway access on occupational attainment and intergenera...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Regeneration and Renewal:

Green belts and the inefficient allocation of land

Land is an economic resource, so the efficiency with which it is used is essentially an economic problem. This paper, therefore, approaches the issue from an economic perspective. Having surveyed the economic definitions...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unpacking the restaurant experience: how food delivery technology favors the affluent urban core

We study how technological innovation has transformed the valuation of consumption services, using the sudden national expansion of food delivery services (FDS) in China as a natural experiment. Using a Bartik-style inst...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Restructuring a police force

This paper studies how consolidating organisational boundaries affects public service outcomes when resources do not adjust. We examine the Metropolitan Police Service's 2017-2018 reform that merged 32 Borough Operationa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gangs of London and public housing

Novel spatial data on London street gangs between 1990 and 2015 are combined with local housing characteristics to produce a newly constructed data source that shows how social housing and its architectural design relate...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

What the price-to-rent ratio reveals about Britain's housing crisis

The consensus that Britain's housing crisis stems from the lack of enough houses being built has received intense criticism lately. Christian Hilber and Andreas Mense analyse the price-to-rent ratio of UK homes and argue...Read more...

Journal article

Regional studies:

Can more housing supply improve affordability? A subnational perspective from Portugal

We investigate the impact of housing supply on affordability in rapidly appreciating subnational markets in Portugal. Our spatial econometric model confirms a negative relation between housing stock and prices, yet predi...Read more...

Blog

The Conversation:

Could new tenants' rights usher in rent controls? Here's why that wouldn't necessarily be a positive

The new Renters' Rights Act introduces provisions to protect tenants in England against rent increases. While the UK government says it "does not support the introduction of rent controls", the act does allow tenants to ...Read more...

Blog

The Conversation:

How new renters' rights could drive landlords out of the market

Many elements of the renters' rights bill are likely to improve the lives of renters without harming landlords. But some of the improvements for tenants will make being a landlord more difficult or even, for some, undesi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Personnel policy in public sector organizations: evidence from England's academy schools

Many governments are increasingly decentralizing the governance of public sector organizations, by granting more autonomy to their managers. At the same time, public sector managers often cannot use key personnel practic...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Manipulation and selection in unemployment insurance

In this paper, we study the selection patterns of individuals who manage to have their lay-off delayed around an age at lay-off threshold entitling them to four additional months of unemployment insurance, that is, manip...Read more...

External report

Policy Landscape 2025:

Housing (chapter)

As Parliament returns from its summer recess, the Resolution Foundation and UK in a Changing Europe have partnered to produce the Policy Landscape 2025 report - a series of evidence-led, research-based assessments of the...Read more...

Blog

The Conversation:

Housebuyers hate stamp duty. Why hasn't it been reformed before now?

For years, academic economists have argued that council tax and stamp duty are deeply flawed. But now the UK government is said to be considering a change to stamp duty so that it is only paid on houses selling for more ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Inequalities:

How does housing affect educational outcomes? Evidence from the UK's Right to Buy scheme

Right-to-Buy gave tenants of local authority owned 'council' houses the chance to own their home. The policy, which began in 1980, has been criticised for increasing inequality in the housing market, but Richard Disney 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...

Blog

Centre for Cities:

A review of the Green Book review

While correctly rejecting criticisms that existing guidance is biased, the latest Green Book review suggests changes that should improve appraisal and decision making....Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Rethinking public investment in Greater Manchester's regeneration

Manchester United's proposed new stadium comes with a hefty price tag, and uncertainty over who will pay for it. Aadya Bahl argues that public funding for such projects might compete with Greater Manchester's broader eco...Read more...

Government consultation

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Written evidence submitted by Paul Cheshire to the planning and infrastructure bill committee...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Geography:

Don?t shoot the pianist: creative firms, workers, and neighbourhood gentrification

We examine links between creative activity and gentrification at the neighbourhood level. These dynamics are both complex and important to understand. Artists may help `upgrade? inexpensive neighbourhoods before being di...Read more...

Blog

Bruegel:

Pitfalls to avoid as the EU ramps up defence investment

The European Union's push to rearm in the face of growing external threats and the increasing disengagement of the United States has, so far, been primarily a push to spend more on defence and to find ways to facilitate ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

in brief... Successful caps on fees disprove the idea that it?s unwise to meddle with free markets

Jan David Bakker and Nikhil Datta show how the success of a reform of letting agents? fees was partly due to their hidden nature....Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Judge dread: Court severity, repossession risk and demand in mortgage and housing markets

We study the impact of borrower protection on mortgage and housing demand using variation in the likelihood that houses are repossessed coming from heterogeneity in preferences of local judges. We develop a framework tha...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Human capital from childhood exposure to homeownership: evidence from Right-to-Buy

"Right to Buy" (RTB) was a large-scale UK housing policy whereby incumbent tenants in public housing could buy their properties at heavily subsidised prices. The policy increased the national homeownership rate by over 1...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Measuring quality of life under spatial frictions

Using a quantitative spatial model as a data-generating process, we explore how spatial frictions affect the measurement of quality of life. We find that under a canonical parameterization, mobility frictions - generated...Read more...

Blog

The Conversation:

Successful caps on English letting agents' fees disprove the idea that it's unwise to meddle with free markets

Five years ago, the UK government enacted the first legislation regulating prices in the English rental market since the 1960s. The Tenant Fees Act 2019 didn't interfere with what landlords can charge tenants in rent, bu...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...

Government consultation

Scottish parliament: Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee

Christian Hilber gives evidence to the Housing inquiry....Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Budgeting for evaluation

In the budget last week, the government set out increased funding for public services and investment. The gamble is that increased public spending can successfully spur the growth needed to pay for it down the line. Impa...Read more...

Blog

VOX EU:

The housing consumption channel of mortgage demand

Many housing markets have experienced a dramatic rise in house prices and mortgage debt over recent decades that has outpaced average income growth. Increased wealth and increased collateral values have been cited as pos...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Spending public money to create happier lives

Choosing policies that most improve wellbeing would radically change government priorities. David Frayman, Christian Krekel, Richard Layard, Sara MacLennan and Isaac Parkes explain the science behind the new approach....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...

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

Why higher house prices lead to higher borrowing

In the past three decades, house prices and mortgage debt in the UK have risen much faster than income. In other words, people end up borrowing more money when house prices go up. This finding goes against many canonical...Read more...

Blog

The Conversation:

Why building new towns isn't the answer to the UK's housing crisis

The UK's new government is intent on building 1.5 million homes over the next five years. It's all part of the plan to address the housing supply and affordability crisis. Many of these homes are to be built in the form...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Not incentivized yet efficient: working from home in the public sector

This paper studies whether working from home (WFH) affects workers' performance in public sector jobs. Studying public sector initiatives allows us to establish baseline estimates on the impact of WFH net of incentives. ...Read more...

CEP report

Value for money: How to improve wellbeing and reduce misery

The government spends billions on our behalf. How do we want this money to be spent? This report reviews a range of policies and asks the fundamental question which should be asked of every policy: Does it deliver value ...Read more...

Journal article

Research in Transportation Economics:

Housing prices, buses and trams in Medellin (Colombia)

This paper aims to establish the impact of two medium-capacity transportation systems (MCTS) on housing prices in Medellin (Colombia): Metroplus, a bus rapid transit (BRT) system, and Tranvia, a tramway system. Using rep...Read more...

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

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

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

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

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

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

CEP discussion paper

Housing-consumption channel of mortgage demand

We quantify the housing-consumption channel in mortgage demand according to which households borrow more following house-price increases since housing and non-housing consumption are imperfect substitutes. To identify th...Read more...

Blog

Jam Tomorrow (Podcast):

The Green Belt: Fields forever? (podcast)

Ros Taylor talks to LSE professor Paul Cheshire and journalist Jonn Elledge about the problems facing Labour as it tries to persuade Britons of the need for more housing and infrastructure. And Paul Cheshire sets out a p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Avenging the tenants: regulating the middle man's rents

We explore the role of intermediaries in the rental market. Using novel UK data on fees letting agencies charged to both tenants and landlords, combined with a matched property-agency listings dataset, we study the effec...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Housing and planning

The housing affordability crisis not only restricts access to decent housing, or housing at all, but it has adverse effects on equality, social cohesion, retirement planning, productivity and economic growth....Read more...

CentrePiece article

The economic costs of the failing planning system

Paul Cheshire began to investigate the economic effects of the UK?s planning system 40 years ago. Here he draws on a recent public lecture ? and panel discussion with Stephen Aldridge, Kate Barker and Simon Wolfson ? to ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Land use regulation, homeownership and wealth inequality

We examine the role that housing market regulatory restrictiveness plays in differentially affecting the net wealth of owners and renters over time, and its contribution to wealth inequality. In tightly regulated desirab...Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Using evidence for making sense of policy debates in this election

The UK's general election campaign is now in full swing, with the policy announcements, promises, claims and counterclaims that come with it. Very soon we will see the publication of manifestos, and with them some idea o...Read more...

Journal article

Town Planning Review:

Pushing water uphill: containment policies doomed to fail

London has had a green belt for seventy years making it the `canary in the coal mine? for `zero land take?. Because of strong demand for housing space, rising prosperity underlies rising urban land demand so rigid physic...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Taking back control? Quasi-experimental evidence on the impact of retirement on locus of control

We use Australian panel data to examine the impact of retirement on individual locus of control, a socio-emotional skill with substantial explanatory power for a broad range of life outcomes. Exploiting the eligibility a...Read more...

External report

Labour Economics: Thinking through Labour's economic agenda

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

CEP discussion paper

Why delay? Understanding the construction lag, aka the build out rate

We explore the determinants of the speed of residential development after dwelling construction starts. Using a sample of over 140,000 residential developments in England from 1996 to 2015 and employing an instrumental v...Read more...

Journal article

Annals of Economics and Statistics:

Proximity of firms to scientific production

Following Bergeaud et al. (2022), we construct a new measure of proximity between industrial sectors and public research laboratories. Using this measure, we explore the underlying network of knowledge linkages between s...Read more...

Journal article

LSE Public Policy Review:

Spatial labour market inequality and social protection in the UK

Spatial inequality in economic outcomes is increasingly seen as a problem for national economies. This paper considers spatial inequality in the UK labour market, its causes, and potential policy solutions. Relative to o...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Claudia Goldin: the economics of women and the labour market

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

Journal article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization:

House price expectations

This study examines short-, medium-, and long-run price expectations in housing markets. At the heart of our analysis is the combination of data from a tailored in-person household survey, past sale offerings, satellite ...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy :

Local retail prices, product variety, and neighborhood change

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

External report

The state of the UK economy 2024

The state of the UK economy is always an important matter, but it is all the more so in what looks likely to be an election year. This UK in a Changing Europe report takes stock of the UK economy in order to assess how i...Read more...

Blog

LSE Impact:

Dashboards have the power to make complex research accessible to the public and policymakers

While researchers often point to the relevance of their research, economic models and econometric methods are typically inaccessible to a wider audience. Gabriel Ahlfeldt explains how interactive dashboards represent a u...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

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

We take advantage of two spatial discontinuities in Britain's Help to Buy (HtB) scheme to explore the effectiveness and distributional implications of mortgage credit expansion policies. Employing a Difference-in-Discont...Read more...

Blog

LSE USAPP:

Corporate landlords are eroding the American dream of homeownership, especially in black neighborhoods

There has been a growing trend for institutional investors to purchase single-family homes and convert them to permanent rental properties. At the same time, homeownership rates for black households have declined on par ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Proximity of firms to scientific production

Following Bergeaud et al. (2022), we construct a new measure of proximity between industrial sectors and public research laboratories. Using this measure, we explore the underlying network of knowledge linkages between s...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Planning may be a political hot potato but radical reform cannot wait

Planning - largely because of the cruel growth in the unaffordability of housing - has risen up the political agenda. Reforms are urgently needed to allow more homes to be built, but change is notoriously difficult. Ahea...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The skyscraper revolution: global economic development and land savings

Tall buildings are central to facilitating sustainable urbanization and growth in cities worldwide. We estimate average elasticities of city population and built area to aggregate city building heights of 0.12 and -0.17,...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

How can UK policy-makers make homes more affordable?

Housing in the UK has become seriously unaffordable; the problem is likely to get worse and younger people are being hit the hardest. Reforms that could be effective in solving the crisis are considered politically infea...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Does homeownership reduce crime? A radical housing reform from the UK

"Right to Buy" (RTB), a large-scale natural experiment whereby incumbent tenants in public housing could buy properties at heavily-subsidised prices, increased the UK homeownership rate by over 10 percentage points betwe...Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Public sector relocation: how to think about local impacts

Will Brett-Harding investigates the effects of public sector relocation on local areas that are destinations for the relocated or new public sector activity....Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

A true housing crisis needs more than post-truth politicians

The UK's housing crisis is particularly acute by international standards. Instead of identifying real solutions, argues Paul Cheshire, policy-makers have offered only rhetorical devices, ineffective local mechanisms, and...Read more...

Chapter

Housing

in Policy Landscape 2023

What are the public policy challenges confronting the UK? What plans do the parties have for addressing them? To what extent are these plans fit for purpose? As Parliament returns from its summer recess, Full Fact and U...Read more...

CEP Insights

Social mobility

How much of an individual's success depends on their own hard work and how much on what their parents do for a living? A country where children from poor families are likely to be poor as adults and elite positions in so...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Public disclosure and tax compliance: evidence from Uganda

Public disclosure policies have potential to raise tax compliance where alternative enforcement capacity is limited. We study the effects of reporting delinquents and recognizing compliers and provide evidence on the soc...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

LSE British Politics and Policy:

How can we make homes more affordable?

Housing has become unaffordable, the problem is likely to get worse, and the young are hit the hardest. Christian Hilber argues that we face a conundrum: reforms that would be effective are considered politically infeasi...Read more...

Journal article

The Journal of Economic Inequality:

Intergenerational home ownership

This paper studies intergenerational links in home ownership, an increasingly important wealth marker and a measure of economic status in itself. Repeated cross sectional UK data show that home ownership rates have falle...Read more...

Blog

LSE IQ:

How can we make homes more affordable? (Podcast)

In this LSE IQ episode on how we can make homes more affordable, Christian Hilber shares the reasons behind the UK's current housing affordability crisis, explaining the obstacles to building more houses as a way of over...Read more...

Journal article

Regional Science and Urban Economics :

Micro-geographic property price and rent indices

We develop a programming algorithm that predicts a balanced-panel mix-adjusted house price index for arbitrary spatial units from repeated cross-sections of geocoded micro data. The algorithm combines parametric and non-...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...

Blog

Vox EU:

Knowledge flows from public labs to private firms

How knowledge spillovers operate between academia and private firms remains an open question. Antonin Bergeaud, Arthur Guillouzouic, Emeric Henry and Clement Malgouyres find strong spillovers through the contracting, mob...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Charity in the time of austerity: in search of the 'Big Society'

The years after the election of the UK's coalition government in 2010 saw a decline in central funding to local government and a fall in expenditure on a range of local services, including social services. These cuts wer...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...

CEP discussion paper

The impact of public transportation and commuting on urban labour markets: evidence from the new survey of London life and labour, 1929-32

This paper examines the consequences of the commuter transport revolution on working-class labour markets in London, circa 1930. Using GIS-based data constructed from the New Survey of London Life and Labour, we examine ...Read more...

Blog

UCLA Housing Voice:

Skyscrapers with Gabriel Ahlfeldt (podcast)

Skyscrapers! We can't help but find them fascinating. Some cities are full of skyscrapers, and others have none. Developers built a 70-story tower on that parcel, but the proposed building just down the street is only 30...Read more...

Journal article

Nature Communications:

The effect of Covid certificates on vaccine uptake, health outcomes, and the economy

In the COVID-19 pandemic many countries required COVID certificates, proving vaccination, recovery, or a recent negative test, to access public and private venues. We estimate their effect on vaccine uptake for France, G...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Why is it so difficult to tackle the lack of affordable housing?

Boris Johnson has pledged that more people will be helped onto the property ladder and that the supply of housing will be improved. Christian Hilber and Olivier Schoni consider the history of housing policy and the chall...Read more...

Blog

The Sutton Trust:

Gloomy prospects for social mobility in the pandemic era

Lee Elliot Major and Andrew Eyles explain how a gap in missed education between richer and poorer children was exacerbated by stark home learning divides and the likely consequences for social mobility....Read more...

External report

Social mobility: past, present and future

Andrew Eyles, Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin forecast that relative income mobility levels in the UK could fall by as much as 12%, driven by learning loss in schools....Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economics of the Household:

Do individuals adapt to all types of housing transitions?

This paper provides one of the first tests of adaptation to the complete set of residential transitions. We use long-run SOEP panel data and consider the impact of all housing transitions, whether or not they involve a c...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

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...

CEP Insights

Jobs and wages

Most working-age adults depend on earnings from jobs as their main source of income. Understanding the labour market has always been a central part of research at CEP and its predecessor the Centre for Labour Economics....Read more...

CEP Insights

Wellbeing

As societies become richer, they do not become happier. This paradox has led to a growing interest in the science of wellbeing, and how policymakers can evaluate policies in terms of what will improve wellbeing. Economis...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

House price expectations

This study examines short-, medium-, and long-run price expectations in housing markets. We derive and test six hypothesis about the incidence, formation, and relevance of price expectations. To do so, we use data from a...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy:

How do households value the future? Evidence from property taxes

Despite the near ubiquity of intertemporal choice, there is little consensus on the rate at which individuals trade present and future costs and benefits. We contribute to this debate by estimating discount rates from ex...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Local retail prices, product varieties and neighborhood change

We study how local grocery prices within a city are affected by changes in housing markets. Our empirical strategy is based on an exogenous shift in the spatial distribution of construction activity induced by a large-sc...Read more...

Journal article

Health and Place:

Income-related health inequality in urban China (1991-2015): the role of homeownership and housing conditions

Unprecedented economic growth has been experienced over the several decades worldwide, but such rapid economic growth wasn't accompanied by equally-substantial improvement in health, especially health inequalities betwee...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

JUE insight: How much does Covid-19 increase with mobility? Evidence from New York and four other US cities

How effective are restrictions on mobility in limiting COVID-19 spread? Using zip code data across five U.S. cities, we estimate that total cases per capita decrease by 19% for every ten percentage point fall in mobility...Read more...