Results

CEP discussion paper

Why have house prices risen so much more than rents in superstar cities?

In most countries – particularly in supply constrained superstar cities – house prices have risen much more strongly than rents over the last two decades. We provide an explanation that does not rely on falling interest ...Read more...

Journal article

Economica:

'Trophy architects' and design as rent-seeking: quantifying deadweight losses in a tightly regulated office market

Britain tightly restricts the supply of office space, creating substantial economic rents, but its development restrictions are politically administered and therefore gameable, inducing rent-seeking activity. We find tha...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Workers' falling share of firms' profits

To what extent do UK companies share their profits with employees? Brian Bell, Pawel Bukowski and Stephen Machin find that rent-sharing is on a much smaller scale today than during the 1980s and 1990s – and that the decl...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Rent sharing and inclusive growth

The long-run evolution of rent sharing is empirically studied. Based upon a comprehensive and harmonized panel of the top 300 publicly quoted British companies over thirty five years, the paper reports evidence of a sign...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Politics in the family: nepotism and the hiring decisions of Italian firms

In this paper we investigate the effect of family connections to politicians on individuals’ labor market outcomes. We combine data for Italy over almost three decades from longitudinal social security records on a rando...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Trophy architects and the ‘dark matter' of London’s planning system

A quarter of London’s skyscrapers are designed by architects who have already won a lifetime achievement award and whose work thus has the imprimatur of ‘iconic design’; this compares with just 3% in Chicago. According t...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

'Iconic Design' as Deadweight Loss: Rent Acquisition by Design in the Constrained London Office Market

Britain’s land use regulation (planning) system imposes very tight restrictions on the supply of office space so creating substantial rents. An unmeasured part of the costs associated with these restrictions likely comes...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Debt and Incomplete Financial Markets: A Case for Nominal GDP Targeting

Financial markets are incomplete, thus for many agents borrowing is possible only by accepting a financial contract that specifies a fixed repayment. However, the future income that will repay this debt is uncertain, so ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Free Trade Aggreements and the Consolidation of Democracy

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

CEP discussion paper

Does High Involvement Management Improve Worker Wellbeing?

Employees exposed to high involvement management (HIM) practices have higher subjective wellbeing, fewer accidents but more short absence spells than “like” employees not exposed to HIM. These results are robust to exten...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Portfolio Allocation and International Risk Sharing

Recent contributions have shown that it is possible to account for the so-called consumption-real exchange anomaly in models with goods market frictions where international asset trade is limited to a riskless bond. In t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does High Involvement Management Lead to Higher Pay?

Using nationally representative survey data for Finnish employees linked to register data on their wages and work histories we find wage effects of high involvement management (HIM) practices are generally positive and s...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Institutions and the Management of Human Resources: Incentive Pay Systems in France and Great Britain

Using data from large-scale establishment surveys in Britain and France, we show that incentive pay for non-managers is more widespread in France than in Britain. We explain this finding in terms of the ‘beneficial const...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

When Workers Share in Profits: Effort and Responses to Shirking

This paper summarizes new evidence from the “Shared Capitalism” Project on the extent to which workers’ earnings depend on the performance of their firm or work group in the US and advanced European countries and on the ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Incentive Pay Systems and the Management of Human Resources in France and Great Britain

Incentive pay systems have undergone major changes in recent decades. This paper investigates use of incentive pay systems in British and French private sector establishments in 2004, focusing on payment-by-results, meri...Read more...