Results

Blog

Academy of Social Sciences:

Policies to promote productivity and wage growth for less educated workers

In this piece, Professor Richard Blundell FAcSS, Professor Rachel Griffith FAcSS and Professor Sally McNally explore how improving educational outcomes for children growing up in deprivation, including social skills in t...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Education Review:

De-tracking at the margin: How alternative secondary education pathways affect student attainment

This paper estimates how marginal increases in the flexibility of between-school tracking affect student attainment by exploiting the addition of non-selective ‘comprehensive schools’ and hybrid ‘vocational high schools’...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

A Practical Guide to Shift-Share Instruments

A recent econometric literature shows two distinct paths for identification with shift-share instruments, leveraging either many exogenous shifts or exogenous shares. We present the core logic of both paths and practical...Read more...

Journal article

Canadian Journal of Economics:

Regional Specialization: From the Geography of Industries to the Geography of Jobs

Our analysis begins with an empirical investigation of how employment concentration in industries and occupations across United States regions has changed over time, and how regional specialization has changed. Results ...Read more...

Journal article

PloS ONE:

Agglomeration costs limit sustainable innovation in cities in developing economies

Theory and evidence from developed economies suggests that innovation activities benefit from agglomeration economies associated with urban economic density. However, despite the fact that eighteen of the world’s top twe...Read more...

Blog

LSE Inequalities:

Sliding down the Great Gatsby curve in search of the Scandinavian dream

The new UK government has separate missions to break down the barriers to opportunity and to boost growth - together, the "Scandinavian dream". The problem, write Steve Machin and Lee Elliot Major, is Britain's high leve...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Open Economics:

Innovation and inequalities

Innovation is a key source of sustainable growth, but it can affect inequalities in many ways—increasing some inequalities and decreasing others. The impact of any particular innovation on inequalities will depend import...Read more...

Journal article

Critical Sociology: Forthcoming

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...

Journal article

AEA Papers and Proceedings:

The Linear Algebra of Economic Geography Models

We provide sufficient statistics for nominal and real wage exposure to productivity shocks in a constant elasticity economic geography model. These exposure measures summarize the first-order general equilibrium elastici...Read more...

CEP Insights

Insights: condensed

The Insights series is an introduction to the work of the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP). Each Insight highlights the contribution of CEP researchers to both academic understanding and policymaking in one area of ...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...

CEP discussion paper

Regional productivity differences in the UK and France: From the micro to the macro

We propose a new data resource that attempts to overcome limitations of standard firm-level datasets for the UK (like the ARD/ABS) by building on administrative data covering the population of UK firms with at least one ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

What Claudia Goldin taught economics about women, labour markets and pay gaps

When Claudia Goldin's research on women's work became influential in the 1980s, the study of gender was far from mainstream in economics. Four decades later, that is no longer the case, in large part thanks to her influe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Spatial wage inequality in North America and Western Europe: changes between and within local labour markets 1975-2019

The rise of economic inequalities in advanced economies has been often linked with the growth of spatial inequalities within countries, yet there is limited comparative research that studies the relationship between nati...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

Journal of the European Economic Association:

City of dreams

Bigger cities offer more valuable experiences and opportunities in exchange for higher housing costs. While higher-ability workers benefit more from bigger cities, they are not more likely to move to one. Our model of ur...Read more...

External publication

Education Inequalities

Education is one of the most important predictors of people's life chances. Better-educated people are more likely to be in work and tend to earn more, and the influence of education does not stop there. Education shapes...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Residential mobility and unemployment in the UK

The UK has suffered from persistent spatial differences in unemployment rates for many decades. A low responsiveness of internal migration to unemployment is often argued to be an important cause of this problem. This pa...Read more...

Journal article

Urban Studies: Forthcoming

The city and the virus

Cities around the world are the epicentres of the coronavirus pandemic: both in the first wave, as the disease spread from East Asia, and now, as many countries enter a third wave of infections. These spatial patterns ar...Read more...

Journal article

Economics Letters:

Gravity model estimates of the spatial determinants of trade, migration, and trade-and-migration policies

Using a gravity model, we explore the effects of distance and borders on trade, migration, and trade-and-migration policies and document three key differences between trade and migration patterns in otherwise equivalent ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Losses in lockdown: jobs, income, education and mental health

During the pandemic, many parents have had to cope with losing their jobs or part of their income at the same time as they are obliged to manage home schooling. Claudia Hupkau, Ingo Isphording, Stephen Machin and Jenifer...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...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Labour market shocks during the Covid-19 pandemic: inequalities and child outcomes

We study the effect of negative labour market shocks borne by parents during the Covid-19 crisis on resource and time investments in children and the channels through which negative labour market shocks experienced by pa...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Generation COVID: emerging work and education inequalities

The purpose of this brief paper is to present initial findings from the recently collected LSE-CEP Social Mobility survey, which was undertaken as part of our UKRI project ‘Generation COVID and Social Mobility: Evidence ...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Education Review:

Boys lag behind: How teachers’ gender biases affect student achievement

I use a combination of blind and non-blind test scores to show that middle school teachers favor girls in their evaluations. This favoritism, estimated as individual teacher effects, has long-term consequences: as measur...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

Place-based policies and spatial disparities across European cities

Spatial disparities in income and worklessness across areas of the European Union are profound and persistent. Concerns about these disparities and the appropriate policy response are longstanding. Two trends have re-ene...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Development Economics:

The Belt and Road Initiative: Reshaping economic geography in Central Asia?

This paper develops a computable spatial equilibrium model of Central Asia and uses it to analyze the possible effects of the Belt and Road Initiative on the economy of the region. The model captures international and su...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Residential mobility in the UK: how distance and local economic conditions drive residential choices

Monica Langella and Alan Manning find that high unemployment in an area induces people to move away, and has an even stronger effect on the attractiveness of that area to potential movers. They also find that younger and...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Residential mobility and unemployment in the UK

The UK has suffered from persistent spatial differences in unemployment rates for many decades. A low responsiveness of internal migration to unemployment is often argued to be an important cause of this problem. This pa...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

Relocation of public sector workers: Evaluating a place-based policy ,

This paper investigates the local labor market impact of a UK relocation initiative – the 2004 Lyons Review. The review resulted in the dispersal of about 25,000 civil service jobs out of London and the South East toward...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Some causal effects of an industrial policy

We exploit changes in the area-specific eligibility criteria for a program to support jobs through investment subsidies. European rules determine whether an area is eligible for subsidies, and we construct instrumental v...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

The persistence of local joblessness

Differences in employment-population ratios across US commuting zones have persisted for many decades. We claim these disparities represent real gaps in economic opportunity for individuals of fixed characteristics. Thes...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Interaction of Public and Private Employment: Evidence from a German Government Move

We use the German government move from Bonn to Berlin in 1999 to test competing views about the impact of public employment on private sector activity in a local labor market. A relocated public sector job might create n...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Regional Science:

A review of volume 5 of the Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics

[No abstract available]...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Industry in Britain: an atlas

The UK’s financial services industry is not nearly as London-centric as the creative industries. Rather than the South East of England being the country’s productivity engine, it is a band stretching west from the capita...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 report

Industry in Britain - an atlas

Living near a productive company can have considerable economic benefits. It means the chance of well-paid jobs, creates opportunities for suppliers of goods and services, and can be a boost to local retailers. This comm...Read more...

CEP election analysis

#GE2017Economists: The Research Evidence on Key Issues for Voters in the 2017 UK General Election

The unexpected UK general election of 2017 was intended to be all about Brexit, one that will give the incoming government a mandate to negotiate the terms of the UK’s exit from the European Union (EU). But many other pu...Read more...

CEP election analysis

The UK's Regional Divide: Can Policy Make a Difference

There are large variations in economic performance across the cities and regions of the UK. There is a broad North-South pattern to these disparities. But there is also substantial variation within those broad areas: som...Read more...

Journal article

Regional Studies:

Global investments and regional development trajectories: the missing links

Global investments and regional development trajectories: the missing links. Regional Studies. Regional economic development has been long conceptualized as a non-linear, interactive and socially embedded process: these ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Powerhouse of cards?

It is not yet clear whether the UK government’s commitment to a ‘Northern Powerhouse’ will survive the change of personnel at the top. But as Neil Lee explains, the idea of seeking to reduce regional disparities via spat...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Austerity States, Institutional Dismantling and the Governance of Sub-National Economic Development: The Demise of the Regional Development Agencies in England

Contributing to interpretations of the governance geographies of austerity, the paper explains how, why and in what forms austerity states are constructed by actors in particular political-economic contexts and geographi...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Impact of Structural Reforms on Regional Growth: Distance to the Frontier Matters

This paper aims to understand the impact of nation-wide structural policies on the productivity growth of OECD regions. In particular we explore how this impact varies with the productivity gap of regions with their coun...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Quantitative Easing of an International Financial Centre: How Central London Came So Well Out of the Post-2007 Crisis

This paper documents and seeks to explain the remarkably positive employment trends of a central area of London in the years since the onset of the financial crisis. The volatility of this economy since the 1980s had sug...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Moving People with Ideas - Innovation, Inter-regional Mobility and Firm Heterogeneity

This paper looks at the link between inter-regional mobility, innovation and firms’ behavioural heterogeneity in their reliance on localised external sources of knowledge. By linking patent data (capturing inventors’ int...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Exploring the Geography of China's Airport Networks: A Hybrid Complex-Network Approach

Air networks are normal examples of transportation systems among ubiquitous big data networks in the dynamic nature. This is particularly the case in developing countries with rapid airport network expansions. This paper...Read more...

CEP election analysis

The Economic Performance of UK Cities: Can Urban and Regional Policy Make a Difference to the North-South Divide

There are large variations in economic performance across UK cities and on some measures, they have widened since the global financial crisis. All main parties promise action to reduce them, but there is little differenc...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Relocation of Public Sector Workers: Evaluating a Place-based Policy

This paper investigates the local labor market impact of a UK relocation initiative, the 2014 Lyons Review. The review resulted in the dispersal of about 25,000 civil service jobs out of London and the South East towards...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Immigrant Diversity and Economic Development in Cities: A Critical Review

This paper reviews a growing literature investigating how ‘immigrant’ diversity relates to urban economic performance. As distinct from the labor-supply focus of much of the economics of immigration, this paper reviews w...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Regional growth and regional decline

Since the early 1990s, there has been a renaissance in the study of regional growth, spurred by new models, methods and data. We survey a range of modelling traditions, and some formal approaches to the ’hard problem’ of...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Total Factor Productivity Growth in Local Economic Partnership Regions in Britain, 1997-2008

This paper decomposes aggregate TFP growth in Britain for 1997-2008 to show the contribution of different LEPs and the role played by manufacturing and services and UK- and foreign-owned plants within these LEPs. These c...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Can industrial policy boost jobs?

Business support policies designed to raise productivity and employment are common worldwide, but rigorous micro-econometric evaluation of their causal effects is rare. We exploit multiple changes in the area-specific el...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Accounting for Big City Growth in Low Paid Occupations: Immigration and/or Service Class Consumption

Growth of 'global cities' in the 1980s was supposed to have involved an occupational polarisation, including growth of low paid service jobs. Though held to be untrue for European cities, at the time, some such growth di...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Flexible Employment and Cross-Regional Adjustment

Employment flexibility is commonly associated to greater labour mobility and thus faster cross-regional adjustments. The literature however offers very little hard evidence on this and quite limited theoretical guidance....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Some Causal Effects of an Industrial Policy

Business support policies designed to raise employment and productivity are ubiquitous around the world. We exploit changes in the area-specific eligibility criteria for a major program to support manufacturing jobs thro...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Causal Effects of an Industrial Policy

Business support policies designed to raise productivity and employment are common worldwide, but rigorous micro-econometric evaluation of their causal effects is rare. We exploit multiple changes in the area-specific el...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Bright Side of Social Capital: How 'Bridging' Makes Italian Provinces More Innovative

Social capital has remained relatively underexplored in innovation literature. Existing studies have failed to reach a consensus on its impact on local innovative performance: some empirical analyses emphasize a positive...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Geography or Economics? A Micro-Level Analysis of the Determinants of Degree Choice in the Context of Regional Economic Disparities in the UK

The importance of human capital to the economic performance of a national, regional or local economy is now well established. Labour markets are thought to reward individuals in proportion to their marginal productivity ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Regional trade agreements: blessing or burden?

There has been a proliferation of regional trade agreements around the world since the early 1990s. In a survey of the latest theoretical and empirical research on regionalism, Caroline Freund and Emanuel Ornelas ask whe...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Making the UK's aid budget work better

All the UK's major parties agree on ring-fencing foreign aid spending at current levels, even while the country's dire financial situation requires sharp cuts to other budgets. Peter Boone draws on the evidence on aid ef...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Dynamics of FDI Location: A Markov Analysis for British Regions

The paper uses the framework of Markov chains to examine convergence in the location of inward foreign direct investment across the regions of Great Britain over 1985-2005. An analysis is undertaken by industry group tha...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...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Why Do Some Firms Undertake R&D Whereas Others Do Not?

Data for the UK show Northern Ireland remains at the bottom of the productivity league table, and that its R&D performance is consistently amongst the lowest across the UK regions. This paper analyses the data from a sur...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The UK Intranational Trade Cycle

The paper uses annual data on real GDP for the UK regions and 12 manufacturing sectors to derive regional and regional/sectoral business cycles using an H-P filter. The cohesion of the cycles is examined via cross-correl...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Long-Term Effects of Forced Migration

We study the long-term effects of human displacement using individual level panel data on forced migrants and comparable non-migrants. After World War II, Finland ceded a tenth of its territory to the Soviet Union and re...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Survival of the Fittest in Cities: Agglomeration, Selection and Polarisation

Empirical studies consistently report that labour productivity and TFP rise with city size. The reason is that cities attract the most productive agents, select the best of them, and make the selected ones even more prod...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Survival of the Fittest in Cities: Agglomeration, Selection, and Polarisation

Empirical studies consistently report that labour productivity and TFP rise with city size. The reason is that cities attract the most productive agents, select the best of them, and make the selected ones even more prod...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Economic Linkages Across Space

We develop a diagrammatic framework that can be used to study the economic linkages between regions or cities. Hitherto, such linkages have not been the primary focus of either the theoretical or empirical literatures. W...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Factor Price Equality and the Economies of the United States

We develop a methodology for identifying departures from relative factor price equality across regions that is valid under general assumptions about production, markets and factors. Application of this methodology to the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Agglomeration and the Adjustment of the Spatial Economy

We consider the literatures on urban systems and New Economic Geography to examine questions concerning agglomeration and how areas respond to shocks to the economic environment. We first propose a diagrammatic framework...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Spatial Determinants of Productivity: Analysis for the Regions of Great Britain

This paper uses NUTS3 sub-regional data for Great Britain to analyse the determinants of spatial variations in income and productivity. We decompose the spatial variation of earnings into a productivity effect and an occ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Can We Learn Anything from Economic Geography Proper?

Abstract This paper considers the ways geographers (proper) and (geographical) economists approach the study of economic geography. It argues that there are two areas where the approach of the latter is more robust than ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade and Industrial Location with Heterogeneous Labor

We show in the framework of a new economic geography model that when labor is heterogenous and productivity depends on the quality of the match between job and worker, trade liberalization may lead to industrial agglomer...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Education and Italian Regional Development

Given recent emphasis on externality to education, macroeconomic studies have a role to play in the analysis of return to schooling. In this paper we study the connection between growth and human capital in a convergence...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Mind the Gaps: the Evolution of Regional Inequalities in the UK, 1982-1997

In this paper we apply earnings equations for UK regions over 1982-1997. We find strong evidence of rapid convergence across regions regarding the determinants of individual wages (ie regional fixed-effects, gender gaps ...Read more...