Results

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Employer screening and optimal unemployment insurance

Field experiments show that employers are less likely to consider long-term unemployed job-seekers for interviews. We study the implications for optimal unemployment insurance (UI). Based on a structural model of job sea...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Location choice when the number of jobs matters: matching in spatial equilibrium

The idea that people want to go to where the jobs are is intuitive yet is absent from the standard quantitative spatial modelling approach in which location choices are guided by prices, without reference to quantities (...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Roads to development? Urbanization without growth in Zambia

This study explores the impacts of road improvements in a country characterized by "urbanization without growth". Our analysis reveals that, although road upgrades increase population growth, they do not significantly ad...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...

CEP discussion paper

Trade and the end of antiquity

What caused the end of antiquity, the shift of economic activity away from the Mediterranean towards northern Europe? We assemble a large database of coin flows between the 4th and 10th century and use it to document the...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

All aboard: the effects of port development

Seaports facilitate the fast flow of goods across space, but ports also entail local costs borne by host cities. We use the introduction of containerized shipping to explore the effects of port development. At the local ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Putting quantitative models to the test: an application to Trump's trade war

The primary motivation behind quantitative modeling in international trade and many other fields is to shed light on the economic consequences of policy changes. To help assess and potentially strengthen the credibility ...Read more...

Journal article

AEA Papers and Proceedings :

Negative weights are no concern in design-based specifications

Recent work shows that popular partially linear regression specifications can put negative weights on some treatment effects, potentially producing incorrectly signed estimands. We show that this is not an issue in desig...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Fantastic beasts and where to find them

Fantastic beasts are magical creatures that cannot be seen unless one looks for them with the eye of the wizard, but that still play a significant role in the world. The fantastic beasts we hunt and find in the present p...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economic Studies:

Using disasters to estimate the impact of uncertainty

Uncertainty rises in recessions and falls in booms. But what is the causal relationship? We construct cross-country panel data on stock market returns to proxy for first- and second-moment shocks and instrument these wit...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The social footprint of globalization: towards the introduction of strategic industries in quantitative trade models

We argue that our understanding of industrial policy in the presence of 'strategic' industries that exert positive externalities on the national economy may benefit from an extension of quantitative general equilibrium t...Read more...

Journal article

Spatial Economic Analysis:

The social footprint of globalisation: towards the introduction of strategic industries in quantitative trade models

We argue that our understanding of industrial policy in the presence of `strategic? industries that exert positive externalities on the national economy may benefit from an extension of quantitative general equilibrium t...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

Quantitative urban models: from theory to data

Economic activity is highly unevenly distributed within cities, as reflected in the concentration of economic functions in specific locations, such as finance in the Square Mile in London. The extent to which this concen...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Robot adoption, worker-firm sorting and wage inequality: evidence from administrative panel data

Leveraging the geographic dimension of a large administrative panel on employer-employee contracts, we study the impact of robot adoption on wage inequality through changes in worker-firm assortativity. Using recently de...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do role models matter in large classes? New evidence on gender match effects in higher education

We study whether female students benefit from being taught by female professors, and whether such gender match effects differ by class size. We use administrative records of a German public university, covering all progr...Read more...

CEP Brexit analysis

Disunited Kingdom? Brexit, trade and Scottish independence

Scotland is a small, open economy that mostly trades with the rest of the UK. There is around six times more trade between Scotland and the rest of the UK than predicted by a standard gravity trade model. Scottish indepe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

All aboard: the effects of port development

Seaports facilitate the fast flow of goods across space, but ports also entail local costs borne by host cities. We use the introduction of containerized shipping to explore the effects of port development. At the local ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

Land tenure and land-use in a developing city: a quantitative spatial model applied to Kampala, Uganda

Land rights and tenure systems are an important factor behind poor housing and inefficient land-use in developing country cities. In Kampala, Uganda, four systems of land tenure coexist, allowing a detailed study of the ...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Merger policy in a quantitative model of international trade

In a two-country international trade model with oligopolistic competition, we study the conditions on market structure and trade costs under which a merger policy designed to benefit domestic consumers is either too toug...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics:

Incidence of surrogacy in the USA and Israel and implications on women?s health: a quantitative comparison

Purpose: Gestational surrogacy (GS) has been researched in multiple qualitative studies. In contrast, quantitative aspects of the practice are conspicuously understudied. The present article assesses and compares the inc...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

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

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

CentrePiece article

Brexit: the economics of international disintegration

Pro-Brexit rhetoric mixes up two distinct interpretations of what made people vote to Leave the European Union ? and they have very different policy implications. As Thomas Sampson explains, those voters wanting to recla...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

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

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

Journal article

National Institute Economic Review:

Local economic effects of Brexit

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

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

Brexit: the economics of international disintegration

On June 23, 2016, the United Kingdom held a referendum on its membership in the European Union. Although most of Britain's establishment backed remaining in the European Union, 52 percent of voters disagreed and handed a...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

How local are labor markets? Evidence from a spatial job search model

This paper models the optimal search strategies of the unemployed across space to characterize local labor markets. Our methodology allows for linkages between numerous areas, while preserving tractability. We estimate t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Brexit: the economics of international disintegration

This paper reviews the literature on the likely economic consequences of Brexit and considers the lessons of the Brexit vote for the future of European and global integration. Brexit will make the United Kingdom poorer b...Read more...

Journal article

Annual Review of Economics:

Quantitative spatial economics

The observed uneven distribution of economic activity across space is influenced by variation in exogenous geographical characteristics and endogenous interactions between agents in goods and factor markets. Until the pa...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Is modern technology responsible for jobless recoveries?

Since the early 1990s, recoveries from recessions in the US have been plagued by weak employment growth. We investigate whether a similar problem afflicts other developed economies, and whether technology is a culprit. W...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

A structural model of the retail market for illicit drugs

We estimate a model of illicit drugs markets using data on purchases of crack cocaine. Buyers are searching for high-quality drugs, but they determine drugs' quality (i.e., their purity) only after consuming them. Hence,...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Quantitative spatial economics

The observed uneven distribution of economic activity across space is influenced by variation in exogenous geographical characteristics and endogenous interactions between agents in goods and factor markets. Until recent...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Investing in roads

Between 1990 and 2010, China constructed an extensive modern road network, including a national system of limited access highways. Vernon Henderson and colleagues investigate the impact on the growth of Chinese cities an...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Tariffs, trade and productivity: a quantitative evaluation of heterogeneous firm models

We examine the quantitative predictions of heterogeneous firm in the context of the Canada?US Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) of 1989. We compute predicted increases in trade flows and measured productivity and compare the...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Highways, Market Access and Urban Growth in China

We investigate the effects of the construction of the national highway system in China on local economic outcomes. The analysis employs three main approaches. The first is based on a structural model of Ricardian trade t...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 occasional paper

Mapping information economy businesses with big data: findings for the UK

Governments around the world want to develop their ICT and digital industries. Policymakers thus need a clear sense of the size and characteristics of digital businesses, but this is hard to do with conventional datasets...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

European integration and the gains from trade

This chapter discusses whether and how .new quantitative trade models.(NQTMs) can be fruitfully applied to quantify the welfare effects of trade liberalization, thus shedding light on the trade-related effects of further...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Heterogeneous firm-level responses to trade liberalization: a test using stock price reactions

This paper presents novel empirical evidence on key predictions of heterogeneous firm models by examining stock market reactions to the Canada?United States Free Trade Agreement of 1989 (CUSFTA). I derive testable predic...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Market Size, Competition, and the Product Mix of Exporters

We build a theoretical model of multi-product firms that highlights how competition across market destinations affects both a firm's exported product range and product mix. We show how tougher competition in an export ma...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Heterogeneous Firm-Level Responses to Trade Liberalisation: A Test Using Stock Price Reactions

This paper presents novel empirical evidence on key predictions of heterogeneous firm models by examining stock market reactions to the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement of 1989 (CUSFTA). Using the uncertainty su...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Where is the Economics in Spatial Econometrics?

Spatial econometrics has been criticized by some economists because some model specifications have been driven by data-analytic considerations rather than having a firm foundation in economic theory. In particular this a...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

Trade Liberalization and Heterogeneous Firm Models: An Evaluation Using the Canada - US Free Trade Agreement

We examine the qualitative and quantitative predictions of a heterogeneous firm model a la Melitz (2003) in the context of the Canada - US Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) of 1989. We calibrate our model to the pre-trade li...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

In Search of 'W'

This paper provides a survey and critique of how spatial links are taken into account in empirical analysis by applied economists/regional scientists. Spatial spillovers and spatial interrelationships between economic va...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Mapping Prices into Productivity in Multisector Growth Models

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

CEP discussion paper

Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Presence of Informal Labour Markets

Recessions and policy interventions in labour markets in developing countries are characterized not only by changes in the unemployment rate, but also by changes in the proportion of formal or protected jobs. This reallo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Impact of the Labour Market on the Timing of Marriage and Births in Spain.

The main purpose of this paper is to show how the labour market affects Spanish individual fertility decisions. Spain is an interesting case due to its huge fertility decline. Our hypothesis is that precarious Spanish la...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

City Size Distributions As A Consequence of the Growth Process

The size distribution of cities in many countries follows some broadly regular patterns. Any good theory of city size distributions should (i) be able to account for this regularity, but also (ii) rely on a plausible eco...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Spanish Unemployment Persistence and the Ladder Effect

This paper aims to examine unemployment persistence in Spain by the soucalled 'ladder' effect. This arises when highly-skilled workers who do not find a job matching their skills accept jobs which previously were occup...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Explaining Currency Crises: A Duration Model Approach

This paper is an empirical investigation into the duration of exchange rate episodes characterized by the absence of speculative attacks. We estimate a duration model for OECD countries during the 1970-1997 period. Speci...Read more...