Results

CEP occasional paper

CEP wellbeing coefficient database

Wellbeing cost-benefit analysis requires credible estimates of how much specific life circumstances change subjective wellbeing. This paper documents and contextualises a compendium of 123 such estimates, drawn from 19 d...Read more...

Blog

Bloomberg Trumponomics (podcast):

Are We Being Priced Out of Happiness?

Americans are spending less time with friends, nights out are getting more expensive and even major sporting events are becoming harder to afford. Stephanie Flanders speaks with Bloomberg reporter Ben Steverman and econo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

What is the public?s social welfare function?

Optimal public policy requires a social welfare function defined over individual utilities. While there is substantial research on income-based social welfare functions, no published study has directly elicited public pr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Should we stay or should we go? Firms? decision on services mode of supply

Services account for one-third of global trade, yet little is known about the impact of trade restrictions on services trade. To make progress in this area, it is crucial to understand through which modes services are tr...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Is it possible to raise national happiness?

We revisit the famous Easterlin paradox by considering that life evaluation scales refer to a changing context, hence they are regularly reinterpreted. We propose a simple model of rescaling based on both retrospective a...Read more...

Blog

Transform work:

Transform work with Raffaella Sadun, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (podcast)

Raffaella's work sits at the intersection of economics, leadership, and the future of work. Drawing on large-scale data and real-world field experiments inside major companies, she explores how hybrid work is reshaping l...Read more...

Journal article

Review of World Economics:

The changing structure of global value chains and technological change: evidence from the firm-level patent data

This paper explores how changes in the relative position in the Global Value Chains (GVCs) affect firms? innovation activities. The analysis combines matched patent-firm data with information on GVC networks from the OEC...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Tall buildings lead to more compact and productive cities

Land-use regulations, including height limits, affect housing affordability and urban productivity. This column analyses over 11,000 urban agglomerations and 300,000 tall buildings to explore the effect of height restric...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization:

Business groups as knowledge-based hierarchies of firms

We provide the first worldwide overview of the patterns of hierarchical differentiation across Business Groups (BGs), highlighting the coexistence of different hierarchical shapes. We show how the different shapes can ar...Read more...

Journal article

Nature Human Behaviour:

Why single-item measures of wellbeing are best

We argue that individual wellbeing is best captured by single self-reports of one's overall quality of life. This approach is direct, efficient, globally comparable and distinguishes wellbeing from what might explain it....Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy:

Sweeping up gangs: the effects of tough-on-crime policies from a network approach

Globally, gang proliferation is fought primarily through sweeps. This paper uses a difference-in-differences strategy to examine their causal impact on crime for arrested individuals and their peers. Analysis focuses on ...Read more...

CEP report

Road to recovery: Self-employed on the mend?

The eighth LSE-CEP survey of the self-employed shows weekly hours of the self-employed are now seeing some signs of recovery, compared with the last data collection in June 2023. The positive increase in work hours is tr...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

The impact of subjective school ratings on principal compensation and turnover

Prior research has established that objective, test-score-based school accountability measures impact school leaders. Subjective evaluations, on the other hand, can provide a more nuanced assessment of school quality. Th...Read more...

Journal article

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers:

Finding stars: mapping the geography of the world's scientific elites

This paper presents the first systematic city-level mapping of global scientific talent, analysing the top 200,000 star scientists across 3635 cities worldwide annually between 2019 and 2023. We use a novel Knowledge Gen...Read more...

Journal article

The Energy Journal:

Natural gas vehicles: consequences for fuel markets and the environment

Policies to adopt cleaner fuels have become increasingly important, but their impacts on incumbent fuel prices and resulting greenhouse gas emissions remain unclear. We use a panel dataset on weekly prices at the gas sta...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economic Studies:

Temporal-difference estimation of dynamic discrete choice models

We study the use of Temporal-Difference learning for estimating the structural parameters in dynamic discrete choice models. Our algorithms are based on the conditional choice probability approach but use functional appr...Read more...

Chapter

Immigration, diversity and innovation in cities and regions

in A Research Agenda for Migration and Innovation

This chapter investigates the interplay between immigrant diversity and innovation, emphasizing the urban and regional dimensions where these effects are most pronounced. Cities and urban areas are pivotal to the generat...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Return innovation: how migration shapes diffusion of new technologies

Novel products, processes and technologies are important drivers of economic growth. Davide Coluccia and Gaia Dossi show how migrants from Britain to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century not only too...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Hiroshima: Resilience of city structure after the atomic bombing

Cities have faced a host of shocks throughout history, including earthquakes, hurricanes, coastal flooding, and storm surges, as well as wartime destruction, such as in the current Russia-Ukraine conflict. This column lo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Public sector performance disclosure: salary and career outcomes for top managers and employees

Public sector organizations around the world are held to account on the basis of objective measures of performance. This paper investigates, for the first time, the impact of subjective school inspection ratings on labor...Read more...

Blog

Financial Times:

How should central banks respond to US tariffs? (Podcast)

US tariffs have sent financial markets into a frenzy in recent weeks, but how much should central bankers be taking trade into account when setting monetary policy? To find out, Soumaya Keynes sits down with Bank of Engl...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Willingness to pay for workplace amenities

We develop a revealed preference approach to measure the value of workplace amenities by analyzing how variation in non-wage job attributes affects excess mass in the earnings distribution at budget discontinuities. The ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Firm-level technology adoption in times of crisis

We investigate the diffusion of frontier technologies across German firms before and during the Covid-19 crisis. Our analysis tracks the nature, timing, and pandemic-related motivations behind technology investments, usi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Teaching happiness (economics) in your dismal-science courses

This paper discusses ideas for incorporating the study of happiness and other measures of self-reported or subjective well-being (SWB) into undergraduate economics courses. We begin by motivating why students of economic...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Fighting climate change: international attitudes toward climate policies

This paper explores global perceptions and understanding of climate change and policies, examining factors that influence support for climate action and the impact of different types of information. We conduct large-scal...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Income and Wealth :

What makes a satisfying life? Prediction and interpretation with machine-learning algorithms

Machine Learning (ML) methods are increasingly being used across a variety of fields and have led to the discovery of intricate relationships between variables. We here apply ML methods to predict and interpret life sati...Read more...

Journal article

LSE Public Policy Review:

Explaining variation in child penalties: the role of gender norms and policies

This paper contributes to understanding global variation in child and marriage penalties by focusing on the role of patriarchal control, gender norms, and public policies. We introduce a new measure of gender norms, the ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management:

Air pollution and innovation

If air pollution harms innovation - and therefore future productivity - existing assessments of its economic cost are incomplete. We estimate the effect of fine particulate matter concentration on inventive output in 977...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...

Blog

LSE Euro PP:

A new measure of quality of life explains why people like living in bigger cities

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 you take into account people's preferences, large cities o...Read more...

Chapter

WELLBY

in Elgar Encyclopedia of Behavioural and Experimental Economics

The WELLBY is a measure of individual subjective wellbeing, as judged by individuals themselves, capturing both the quality of life and the length of life. We outline its use for measuring social progress and for social ...Read more...

Blog

Lives well lived:

Richard Layard: the science of wellbeing (podcast)

Richard Layard is a British Labour Economist, a member of the House of Lords, and co-editor of the World Happiness Report. Layard highlights the role of life satisfaction and wellbeing in government policy, and the impo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Paper tiger? Chinese science and home bias in citations

We investigate the phenomenon of home bias in scientific citations, where researchers disproportionately cite work from their own country. We develop a benchmark for expected citations based on the relative size of count...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Return innovation: the knowledge spillovers of the British migration to the United States, 1870-1940

This paper documents that out-migration promotes the diffusion of innovation from the country of destination to the country of origin of migrants. Between 1870 and 1940, nearly four million British immigrants settled in ...Read more...

Journal article

Industrial and Corporate Change:

More or the same? Radical, disruptive, discontinuous, and breakthrough innovation

This paper addresses the conceptual ambiguity in the literature on exceptional innovations, labeled ?radical,? ?disruptive,? ?breakthrough,? or ?discontinuous.? A bibliometric analysis of 4407 articles shows that differe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Is it possible to raise national happiness?

We revisit the famous Easterlin paradox by considering that life evaluation scales refer to a changing context, hence they are regularly reinterpreted. We propose a simple model of rescaling based on both retrospective a...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Five facts about MPCs: evidence from a randomized experiment

We present five facts from an experiment on the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) out of transitory transfers: (1) the one-month MPC on a cash-like transfer is 23 percent; (2) it is substantially higher (61 percent) o...Read more...

Journal article

Research Policy:

Who stands on the shoulders of Chinese (scientific) giants? Evidence from chemistry

China?s rise in science has the potential to push forward the knowledge frontier, but mere production of knowledge does not guarantee that others are able to build on it. We ask whether chemistry research originating fro...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Leveraging AI to navigate 'deglobalisation'

Trade wars, industrial policy, and myriad other supply chain disruptions have fast become the 'new normal'. Yet, given the highly opaque and complex nature of production processes, knowing how to navigate this rise of de...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...

Chapter

Crime and the labor market

in Handbook of Labor Economics

The economics of crime has emerged as a critical field over the past 30 years, with economists increasingly exploring the causes and consequences of criminal behavior. This chapter surveys key contributions and developme...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy:

Ethnic minority and migrant pay gaps over the life-cycle

It is well-known that ethnic minority and migrant workers have lower average pay than the White UK-born workforce. However, we know much less about how these gaps vary over the life-cycle because of data limitations. We ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Transitional costs and the decline in coal: worker-level evidence

Workers' outside options play a central role in determining the transitional costs of labor demand shocks. Using comprehensive administrative data, we examine the worker-level effects of the decline of coal - a regionall...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Crime and the labor market

The economics of crime has emerged as a critical field over the past 30 years, with economists increasingly exploring the causes and consequences of criminal behavior. This chapter surveys key contributions and developme...Read more...

Blog

Promarket:

Does Domestic Competition Help EU Firms Compete Abroad?

In a survey of nearly 400 European firms that export abroad, Elena Argentesi, Livia De Simone, Stephan Paetz, Vincenzo Scrutinio find that most firms believe that competition forces them to produce cheaper and higher qua...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics:

International friends and enemies

We examine whether, as countries become more economically dependent on a trade partner, they realign politically toward that trade partner. We use network measures of economic exposure to foreign productivity growth deri...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Valuing consumption services as technology transforms accessibility: Evidence from Beijing

Home delivery reduced the value of cities as locations to access variety in durable consumption goods. Food delivery services (FDS) are doing the same for restaurants. Home-streaming of sports or home-delivered restauran...Read more...

Blog

Vox Talks (podcast):

The economics of strategy (podcast)

Organisations don't just provide employment: they solve, or attempt to solve, important problems in our society. Organizational economics has made some impressive strides in recent years to show what choices organisation...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

On the productivity advantage of cities

Agglomeration externalities are the key factor explaining the existence of cities and their size. However, while the various micro foundations of agglomeration externalities stress the importance of total factor producti...Read more...

Chapter

Individual wellbeing and cortisol

in Encyclopedia of Happiness, Quality of Life and Subjective Wellbeing

The variety and the number of ways of measuring individual wellbeing has increased over the past two decades. In addition to all self-reported measures, researchers also consider a wide variety of objectively-measured in...Read more...

Journal article

Review of World Economics:

Curse or blessing? multinational corporations and labor market outcomes in Africa

Do multinational enterprises create local job opportunities in developing countries? We address this question in the context of Sub-Saharan Africa by combining information on domestic and foreign multinationals? affiliat...Read more...

Blog

The Rest is Money (podcast):

Bank of England Economist: Interest rates must be cut (podcast)

Economist and external member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, Swati Dhingra talks to Robert and Steph about why she thinks the time has come to lower Bank Rate, the interest rate set by the Bank of En...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Personnel management and school productivity: evidence from India

This paper uses new data to study school management and productivity in India. We report five main results. First, management quality in public schools is low, and -2 standard deviations below high-income countries with ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Accounting for trade patterns

We develop a quantitative framework for decomposing trade patterns. We derive price indexes that determine comparative advantage and the aggregate cost of living. If firms and products are imperfect substitutes, we show ...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...

CEP discussion paper

Trade, skills and productivity

We examine how firms adjust their production and technology in response to exogenous trade shocks. We develop a model in which revenue TFP can be distinguished from quantity TFP, and where skill upgrading is explicitly e...Read more...

Journal article

Child Indicators Research:

Economic development and adolescent wellbeing in 139 countries

There is a positive association between the level of economic development and national levels of overall life satisfaction (OLS) in the adult population, with decreasing marginal returns. However, research shows no assoc...Read more...

Journal article

AEA Papers and Proceedings:

The changing nature of pollution, income, and environmental inequality in the United States

This paper uses tax records linked to administrative Census data and high-resolution measures of air pollution exposure (PM2.5) to study the evolution of the Black-White pollution exposure gap since 1984. We decompose ch...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics:

Technology transfer in global value chains

Global value chains create opportunities for North-South technology diffusion. This paper studies technology transfer in value chains when contracts are incomplete and input production technologies are imperfectly exclud...Read more...

Journal article

Annual Review of Economics:

Industrial policy and the great divergence

We discuss recent work evaluating the role of the government in shaping the economy during the long nineteenth century, a practice we refer to as industrial policy. States deployed a vast variety of different policies ai...Read more...

Journal article

Economica:

Do wages underestimate the inequality in workers' rewards? The joint distribution of job quality and wages across occupations

Information on both wages and job quality is needed in order to understand the occupational dispersion of wellbeing. We analyse subjective wellbeing in a large UK sample to construct a measure of `overall reward?, the su...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Social restrictions, leisure and well-being

A wide-ranging public debate surrounds how pandemic lockdown measures differentially impacted individuals and which precise mechanisms ? whether financial-, health-, or policy-driven ? predominate in determining these ef...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...

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...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Commuting for crime

People care about crime, with the spatial distribution of both actual and perceived crime affecting the amenities from living in different areas and residential decisions. The literature finds that crime tends to happen ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

How much is your time worth?

Wages indicate how much people want for their time at work, but how can we find out what value they place on time spent doing other things? Christian Krekel and George MacKerron analyse over two million responses to a sm...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Population Economics:

Teleworking and life satisfaction during Covid-19: the importance of family structure

We carry out a difference-in-differences analysis of a real-time survey conducted as part of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) survey and show that teleworking had a negative average effect on life satisfaction over...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Environmental Psychology:

Working memory and fluid intelligence are differentially related to categories of urban fabric in older adults: Results from the Berlin aging study

Urbanization is Globally increasing at a rapid rate but its consequences for mental health, including cognitive functioning, are not well understood. In particular, little is known about the effects of different morpholo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Estimating the longevity of electric vehicles: what do 300 million MOT test results tell us?

Knowing how long the average vehicle remains roadworthy before being scrapped is a crucial input into life cycle assessment (LCA) and total cost of ownership (TCO) studies of different vehicle powertrains. This study lev...Read more...

Journal article

PLoS ONE :

Access to digital finance: Equity crowdfunding across countries and platforms

Financing entrepreneurship spurs innovation and economic growth. Digital financial platforms that crowdfund equity for entrepreneurs have emerged globally, yet they remain poorly understood. We model equity crowdfunding ...Read more...

Journal article

AEA Papers and Proceedings:

Parenthood and academic career trajectories

Women continue to be underrepresented in the field of economics, especially among permanent faculty. As parenthood is an important driver of gender inequality in the labor market, we study the impact of children on the a...Read more...

Journal article

Research Policy:

A new dataset to study a century of innovation in Europe and in the US

Innovation is an important driver of potential growth but quantitative evidence on the dynamics of innovative activities in the long-run are hardly documented due to the lack of data, especially in Europe. In this paper,...Read more...

Journal article

Research in Labor Economics:

Effort at work and worker well-being

This chapter analyzes detailed 24-hour diary data from the United States to provide evidence on the relationship between workers? effort and well-being while at work. In doing so, we first measure workers? effort in term...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economic Studies:

A theory of falling growth and rising rents

Growth has fallen in the U.S. amid a rise in firm concentration. Market share has shifted to low labour share firms, while within-firm labour shares have actually risen. We propose a theory linking these trends in which ...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review :

The impact of regulation on innovation

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

CEP discussion paper

Has financial fair play changed European football?

In 2011 UEFA, the governing body of European football, introduced the Financial Fair Play Regulation (FFPR), consisting of a set of financial restraints to be met by clubs as a prerequisite for participation to its compe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Industrial policy and the great divergence

We discuss recent work evaluating the role of the government in shaping the economy during the long 19th century, a practice we refer to as industrial policy. We show that states deployed a vast variety of different poli...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

The self-employment trap?

The seventh LSE-CEP survey of the self-employed was undertaken in June 2023. The results revealed that the self-employed are still in the doldrums and their incomes and activity have not resumed to pre-pandemic levels. T...Read more...

Government consultation

Bank of England Monetary Policy Reports

The Bank of England publishes a Monetary Policy Report four times a year. After publication, the Treasury Committee holds sessions with the Governor of the Bank of England and members of the Monetary Policy Committee to ...Read more...

Journal article

Sports Economics Review:

Has financial fair play changed European football?

In 2011 UEFA, the governing body of European football, introduced the Financial Fair Play Regulation (FFPR), consisting of a set of financial restraints to be met by clubs as a prerequisite for participation to its compe...Read more...

Journal article

Fiscal Studies:

New approaches to measuring welfare

Economics has traditionally understood 'welfare' (what makes a life go well) as the satisfaction of preference. This conceptualisation of welfare is typically measured using revealed preferences, proxied through income a...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Estimating students' valuation for college experiences

Quantifying the consumption value of college - the utility students derive from in-person instruction and on-campus social activities - has been challenging. We leverage the COVID-19 shock to elicit students' intended li...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Unraveling firms: demand, productivity and markups heterogeneity

We develop a novel framework that simultaneously allows recovering heterogeneity in demand, quantity TFP and markups across firms while leaving the correlation between the three dimensions unrestricted. We accomplish thi...Read more...

Journal article

Information Technology & People:

Well-being and working from home during Covid-19

The authors track the well-being of individuals across five European countries during the course of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and relate their well-being to working from home. The authors also cons...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Back to Edgeworth? Estimating the value of time using hedonic experiences

Following early economist Francis Y. Edgeworth's proposal to measure people's hedonic experiences as they go about their daily lives, we use a smartphone app that surveyed a panel of 30; 928 individuals UK-wide over seve...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...

Journal article

Journal of Human Resources:

Parental education and the responses to higher SAT scores

Using discontinuities within the Swedish SAT system, we study the causal impact of additional admission opportunities on participation in higher education among high-ability students. Students with low-educated parents w...Read more...

Journal article

Scientific Reports:

Happiness predicts compliance with preventive health behaviours during Covid-19 lockdowns

To combat the public health crisis of Covid-19, governments and public health officials have been asking individuals to substantially change their behaviours for prolonged periods of time. Are happier people more willing...Read more...

Journal article

AEA Papers and Proceedings:

The local labor market effects of modern manufacturing capital: evidence from France

Using an event study methodology and comprehensive micro data from the French manufacturing sector, we analyze the local labor market effects of investments in modern manufacturing capital, including modern automation te...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Globalization and pandemics

We provide theory and evidence on the relationship between globalization and pandemics. Business travel facilitates trade and travel leads to human interactions that transmit disease. Trade-motivated travel generates an ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Who stands on the shoulders of Chinese (scientific) giants? Evidence from chemistry

China's rise in science has the potential to push forward the knowledge frontier, but mere production of knowledge does not guarantee that others are able to build on it. We ask whether chemistry research originating fro...Read more...

Journal article

International Review of Economics and Finance :

Bank default risk propagation along supply chains: evidence from the UK

How does banks' default risk affect the probability of default of non-financial businesses? The literature has focused on the banks' direct corporate customers. It fails to consider the role of supply chain relationships...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Why have energy bills been rising?

The UK has been particularly exposed to the global energy crisis - partly due to the country's dependence on gas for heating and electricity generation, and partly its poorly insulated housing stock. After predictions th...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

From Covid-19 to collapse? The self-employed and the cost of living crisis

The sixth LSE-CEP survey of the self-employed was undertaken in November 2022 and found that the downward trend in income levels of the self-employed reported in May 2022 has continued. The cost of living crisis is hitti...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Income and Wealth :

The well-being cost of inflation inequalities

In terms of well-being, how costly is inflation? To answer this question, empirical evaluations have typically studied average inflation rates at the national level, thus disregarding the role of inflation inequalities w...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization :

Should bads be inflicted all at once, like Machiavelli said? Evidence from life-satisfaction data

Is wellbeing, measured by life satisfaction, higher if the same number of negative events is spread out rather than bunched in time? Is it better if positive events are spread out or bunched? We answer these questions em...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics:

Gender, loneliness and happiness during Covid-19

We analyse a measure of loneliness from a representative sample of German individuals interviewed in both 2017 and at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Both men and women felt lonelier during the COVID-19 p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

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

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

Journal article

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization :

Occupational status and life satisfaction in the UK: the miserable middle?

We use British panel data to explore the link between occupational status and life satisfaction. We find puzzling evidence for men of a U-shaped relationship in cross-section data: employees in medium-status occupations ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

The comparative advantage of firms

Resource-based theories propose that firms grow by diversifying into products that use common capabilities. We provide evidence for common-input capabilities, using a policy that removed entry barriers in input markets t...Read more...