Results

Journal article

Management Science:

How do chief executive officers make strategy?

We survey 262 chief executive officer (CEO) alumni of Harvard Business School and gather evidence on three aspects of each executive?s strategy practice: how formalized it is, how it is developed, and how it is implement...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Property Investment and Finance:

Real estate insights: sweetening the dog's breakfast that is British property taxes

Purpose - This study aims to stimulate debate on the long overdue strategic reform of property taxes. Design/methodology/approach - This study adopts an approach combining a systematic literature review with economic ana...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...

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...

Blog

Liberty Street Economics:

How Firms Spread Good Management

What is good management, and how is it transmitted across firms and plants? In a recent paper, we use survey and administrative data, coupled with a structural model of management, to explore these questions. We show tha...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

Management and firm dynamism

We show better-managed firms are more dynamic in plant acquisitions, disposals, openings and closings in U.S. Census and international data. Better-managed firms also birth better-managed plants and improve the performan...Read more...

Journal article

Small Business Economics :

Realizing expectations? High-impact entrepreneurship across countries

Comparative international entrepreneurship research has often used measures of high-growth expectations entrepreneurship to proxy for the construct of high-impact entrepreneurship. We revisit this practice by assessing t...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...

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...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics:

Do carbon offsets offset carbon?

We develop and implement a new method for identifying wasted subsidies and use it to provide systematic evidence of the misallocation of carbon offsets in the Clean Development Mechanism - the world's largest carbon offs...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...

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...

Blog

LSE Impact of Social Sciences:

AI can carry out qualitative research at unprecedented scale

The interactional skill of large language models enables them to carry out qualitative research interviews at speed and scale. Demonstrating the ability of these new techniques in a range of qualitative enquiries, Friedr...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...

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...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Organizational capacity and profit shifting

Good organizational capacity drives productivity and potential taxable profits, but may also enable multinationals (MNEs) to more efficiently re-allocate profits across tax jurisdictions, lowering actual taxable profits....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...

Blog

Vox EU:

Good management practices are great for productivity ... as well as profit shifting

Following the release of the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers, there has been renewed research into profit shifting by multinational firms. This column utilises a novel dataset to show that well-managed subsidiaries...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

Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists,:

Management practices and climate policy in China

We investigate how management quality moderates the impact of carbon pricing on Chinese firms. Based on interviews with managers and lead engineers at manufacturing firms in Hubei and Beijing, we construct a novel index ...Read more...

Journal article

Economica:

Do management practices matter in further education?

Further education and sixth form colleges are key institutions for facilitating skill acquisition among 16-19 year olds in the UK. They enrol half a school cohort after completion of their lower secondary education, and ...Read more...

Journal article

Management Science :

Managerial and financial barriers to the green transition

Using data on 10,776 firms across 22 emerging markets, we show that both credit constraints and weak green management hold back corporate investment in green technologies embodied in new machinery, equipment, and vehicle...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Disaster management

Climate change is making natural disasters more frequent, yet little is known about the capacity of firms to withstand such disasters and adapt to their increased frequency. We examine this issue using the latest wave of...Read more...

Journal article

Nature:

Hybrid working from home improves retention without damaging performance

Working from home has become standard for employees with a university degree. The most common scheme, which has been adopted by around 100 million employees in Europe and North America, is a hybrid schedule, in which ind...Read more...

Journal article

The Journal of Finance:

Tracing the international transmission of a crisis through multinational firms

We show that multinational firms transmit shocks across countries through their internal capital markets. We study a credit supply shock to parent firms in Germany. International affiliates outside Germany supported thei...Read more...

Chapter

Women's representation and the gender pay gap: rank, institutional research intensity and ethnicity in UK business schools

in Research Handbook on Inequalities and Work

We employ a multi-faceted framework to explore the importance of women's representation to the gender pay gap (GPG) in all UK business schools to analyse an authoritative and complete administrative sample from the Highe...Read more...

Journal article

Advances in Health Care Management:

Safe surgery checklist implementation: associations of management practice and safety culture change

Designing and developing safe systems has been a persistent challenge in health care, and in surgical settings in particular. In efforts to promote safety, safety culture, i.e., shared values regarding safety management,...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Labour market power: new evidence on Non-Compete Agreements and the effects of M&A in the UK

Monopsony power is an important feature of modern labour markets. We examine its impact on workers. We report the first representative survey of Non-Compete-Agreements (NCA) in the UK and find that about 26% of workers a...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

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

The evolution of work from home

Full days worked at home account for 28 percent of paid workdays among Americans 20?64 years old, as of mid-2023. That's about four times the 2019 rate and ten times the rate in the mid-1990s. We first explain why the bi...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

The effect of preserving job matches during a crisis

It is generally difficult to measure the importance of preserving worker-firm relationships, particularly for low-wage jobs that involve general skills. The COVID-19 pandemic led to the sudden and seemingly temporary dis...Read more...

Blog

Social Science Space:

Raffaella Sadun On effective management (Podcast)

In this Social Science Bites podcast, Raffaella Sadun discusses her research findings with host David Edmonds, on what exactly we mean by 'management' and what effective management looks like in a workplace....Read more...

Blog

LSE Impact of Social Sciences:

New approaches to economics research are reshaping how we understand and respond to gender stereotypes

New ways of analysing data from images and text are being used by economists to study discrimination in the labour market. A recent workshop, hosted by the Centre for Economic Performance and the Department of Social Pol...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Leaders with courage listen, rather than roar

The meaning of courage in leadership has changed from "command and control" to joining the dots of the available perspectives as a way to innovate. Now, the key task for leaders is to listen actively. Yolanda Blavo and G...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...

Blog

LSE Impact of Social Sciences:

Standing on the shoulders of Chinese (Scientific) Giants - Evidence for a citation discount for Chinese Researchers

Chinese researchers are increasingly leading scientific research, yet their contributions are not fully recognized, notably by US researchers. Shumin Qiu, Claudia Steinwender and Pierre Azoulay discuss the reasons why ar...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

Science:

Support for climate policy researchers

Read more...

Blog

Inter Press Service:

Asia: the Power of Connections and their Consequences

In our recent book, "The Connections World: The Future of Asia", published by Cambridge University Press in October 2022, we argue that mutually beneficial links between dynastic business houses and political elites have...Read more...

Blog

Harvard Business Review:

The Myth of the Brilliant, Charismatic Leader

There's a view out there - call it the "superhero" theory of leadership - in which the individual vision, charisma, and brilliance of a CEO makes or breaks a company. That view is dangerous - not so much because CEOs don...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Nothing is booming in Britain, except uncertainty. This is not the time to cut public investment in research

Britain has suffered from a turbulent policy environment for a while. Following chancellor Jeremy Hunt's reversal of nearly all of the mini-budget tax measures and reigned in energy support, difficult spending cuts are c...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Drivers of bad management: evidence from Mexican firms

The management of firms in developing countries is typically of lower quality than in richer parts of the world. A study of Mexico by Nicholas Bloom, Leonardo Iacovone, Mariana Pereira-Lopez and John Van Reenen indicates...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Acquisitions, management and efficiency in Rwanda's coffee industry

Well-functioning markets allocate assets to owners that improve firms' management and performance. We study the effects of ownership changes on coffee mills in Rwanda - an industry in which managing relationships with fa...Read more...

Journal article

82nd Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management:

Efficient industrial policy for innovation: standing on the shoulders of hidden giants

Knowledge spillovers drive a wedge between private and social returns to R&D. Efficient innovation policy assigns subsidies to fields where spillovers are relatively important. We develop new measures for the private and...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Improving productivity through better management practices

John Van Reenen, Nicholas Bloom, and Raffaella Sadun explain how the World Management Survey provides the evidence needed for designing industrial strategies to tackle low productivity....Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Political systems affect innovation

Innovation drives economic growth, however data indicates innovative capability differs across economies. Simon Commander, Saul Estrin and Thamashi De Silva suggest democracy is associated with more innovation overall, t...Read more...

Journal article

Economica:

Do management practices matter in further education?

Further Education colleges are a key way in which 16-19 year olds acquire skills in the UK (much like US Community Colleges), especially those from low income backgrounds. Yet, little is known about what could improve pe...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Do Management Practices Matter in Further Education?

Further Education colleges are a key way in which 16-19 year olds acquire skills in the UK (much like US Community Colleges), especially those from low income backgrounds. Yet, little is known about what could improve pe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Managerial and financial barriers during the green transition

Using data on 10,769 firms across 22 emerging markets, we show that both credit constraints and weak green management hold back corporate investment in green technologies embodied in new machinery, equipment and vehicles...Read more...

CEP Insights

Productivity

Economics is the study of how to share out scarce resources. But it is also about how to make those resources less scarce by creating a bigger economic pie to share. The key to economic growth is increased productivity -...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Misallocation explains worse management among Mexican firms

The implications of poor management in developing countries are becoming well known, but what drives these differences is less clear. Based on large new surveys in Mexico and the US, this column argues that misallocation...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Management and misallocation in Mexico

Developing countries exhibit a substantial productivity gap with the US. Differences in management practices are often cited as a crucial contributing factor. Through the implementation of the first comprehensive managem...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do well managed firms make better forecasts?

We link a new UK management survey covering 8,000 firms to panel data on productivity in manufacturing and services. There is a large variation in management practices, which are highly correlated with productivity, prof...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

The human side of productivity: uncovering the role of skills and diversity for firm productivity

Rising dispersion in productivity across firms has focused attention on the drivers of superior performances of a minority of firms at the 'productivity frontier' and disappointing performances of the remaining 'producti...Read more...

Journal article

International Journal of Health Planning and Management:

Medical disputes and patient satisfaction in China: how does hospital management matter?

Objective: Satisfaction with healthcare may be captured by surveys of patients and staff, or in extreme cases, the number and severity of medical disputes. This study tries to investigate the relationship between satisfa...Read more...

Journal article

Science and Public Policy:

Systems of innovation, diversification, and the R&D trap: a case study of Kuwait

The relationship between research and development (R&D) investment and economic development is well established. Yet, at a global scale, the resource-rich countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council are consistent outliers...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Efficient industrial policy for innovation: Standing on the shoulders of hidden giants

We quantify the efficiency gains from targeting R&D subsidies to fields with the highest knowledge spillover externalities. By combining new measures of spillovers and private returns with field-specific structural estim...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy:

The World Management Survey at 18: lessons and the way forward

Understanding how differences in management 'best practices' affect organizational outcomes has been a focus of both theoretical and empirical work in the fields of management, sociology, economics, and public policy. Th...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy:

Education and management practices

The empirical management literature has found that the education of both managers and the workforce more generally appears to be an important driver of better management practices. This article sets out how such relation...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Going for growth that's sustainable and equitable

In the second anniversary lecture marking 30 years since CEP began, former director John Van Reenen focused on productivity, an issue that has been at the heart of the Centre's work for three decades. He sets out how tec...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy:

Management practices and public policy: an overview

This paper introduces and summarizes this issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy, on management practices. We outline key concepts in the empirical study of structured management practices, then summarize each of ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Education and management practices

The empirical management literature has found that the education of both managers and the workforce more generally appears to be an important driver of better management practices. This article sets out how such relation...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Multi-task agents and incentives: the case of teaching and research for university professors

This paper exploits a natural experiment to study the effects of providing stronger research incentives to faculty members on universities? average teaching and research performance. The results indicate that professors ...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Barriers to net-zero: How firms can make or break the green transition

Many countries are striving for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, requiring massive investments over the next decades. But many companies, especially smaller ones, will not be able or willing to invest in cleaner techno...Read more...

Journal article

Review of International Economics:

The role of management practices in acquisitions and the FDI location decision

This paper investigates how management practices as intangible transfers are associated with the performance of multinational business groups. Differences in the management level across source countries are predictive fo...Read more...

Journal article

Quarterly Journal of Economics:

Competition and relational contracts in the Rwanda coffee chain

How does competition affect market outcomes when formal contracts are not enforceable and parties resort to relational contracts? Difficulties with measuring relational contracts and dealing with the endogeneity of compe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Heterogeneity in criminal behaviour after child birth: the role of ethnicity

This paper documents behavioral differences in parental criminality between majority and minority ethnic groups after child birth. The particular effect we exploit is that of the gender of the first-born child on fathers...Read more...

Journal article

European Journal of Finance:

Is firm-level clean or dirty innovation valued more?

We examine how Tobin's Q is linked to 'clean' and 'dirty' innovation and innovation efficiency at the firm level. Clean innovation relates to patented technologies in areas such as renewable energy generation and electri...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Skill-biased management: evidence from manufacturing firms

This article investigates the link between management practices and workforce skills in manufacturing firms, exploiting geographical variation in the supply of human capital. Skills measures are constructed using newly c...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Public investment in defence research can increase business innovation

That doesn't mean that defence R&D is the most efficient way to stimulate private sector innovation and productivity, write Enrico Moretti, Claudia Steinwender and John van Reenen....Read more...

CentrePiece article

Business benefits of local universities: more skills and better management

Universities are widely seen as a source of strength for local economies. Research by Andy Feng and Anna Valero confirms their potential contribution to business: firms closer to universities tend to hire better managers...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Structured management: how firms can hire and keep the best people

Firms' decisions about whom to hire and fire have big effects, not only on their own bottom line but also on the functioning of the labour market and the performance of the whole economy. Analysis of Brazilian data by Da...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Measuring and explaining management in schools: new approaches using public data

Why do some students learn more in some schools than others? One consideration receiving growing attention is school management. To study this, researchers need to be able to measure school management accurately and chea...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Building a productive workforce: the role of structured management practices

Firms? hiring and firing decisions affect the entire labor market. Managers often make these decisions, yet the effects of management on labor allocation remains largely unexplored. To study the relationship between a fi...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics:

Healthy business? Managerial education and management in healthcare

We investigate the link between hospital performance and managerial education by collecting a large database of management practices and skills in hospitals across nine countries. We find that hospitals closer to univers...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

What drives differences in management practices?

Partnering with the US Census Bureau, we implement a new survey of "structured" management practices in two waves of 35,000 manufacturing plants in 2010 and 2015. We fnd an enormous dispersion of management practices acr...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

Monopolistic competition and optimum product diversity under firm heterogeneity

Empirical work has drawn attention to the high degree of productivity differences within industries and their role in resource allocation. This paper examines the allocational efficiency of such markets. Productivity dif...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Skill biased management: evidence from manufacturing firms

This paper investigates the link between management practices and workforce skills in manufacturing firms, exploiting geographical variation in the supply of human capital. Skills measures are constructed using newly com...Read more...

Journal article

The Lancet:

Transparency about the outcomes of mental health services (IAPT approach): an analysis of public data

Background: Internationally, the clinical outcomes of routine mental health services are rarely recorded or reported; however, an exception is the English Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) service, which...Read more...

CEP industrial strategy paper

Unlocking SME productivity: review of recent evidence and implications for the UK?s industrial strategy

Improving productivity is one of the main goals of the government's Industrial Strategy. Since the UK is a nation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the question arises whether SMEs have a role to play in indu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Managing trade: evidence from China and the US

We study how management practices shape export performance using matched production-trade-management data for Chinese and American firms and a randomized control trial in India. Better managed firms are more likely to ex...Read more...

Blog

ESRC blog:

Becoming a Research Institute: the Centre for Economic Performance

by Stephen Machin As Director of the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at LSE, I am delighted that the Centre has been named as one of the two inaugural ESRC Research Institutes. This is testament to the achievements...Read more...

Journal article

Social science & medicine:

Ownership and hospital behaviour: employment and local unemployment

In this paper, we address two issues: i) how hospital employment changes with local unemployment, according to the type of hospital ownership, and ii) whether this relationship changed after the implementation of a pro-c...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Family firms: the problem of second-generation bosses

Although family firms are widely praised as the `backbone of the economy?, their productivity is often hampered by weak management. Research by Daniela Scur and Renata Lemos provides new evidence on the performance of `d...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Labor Economics:

Management practices, workforce selection, and productivity

We study the relationship among productivity, management practices, and employee ability using German data combining management practices surveys with employees? longitudinal earnings records. Including human capital red...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Healthy business? Managerial education and management in healthcare

We investigate the link between hospital performance and managerial education by collecting a large database of management practices and skills in hospitals across nine countries. We find that hospitals that are closer t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Are ideas getting harder to find?

In many growth models, economic growth arises from people creating ideas, and the long-run growth rate is the product of two terms: the effective number of researchers and their research productivity. We present a wide r...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... The value of good management

Management quality varies widely, even within a single firm, according to analysis of data collected from over 35,000 manufacturing plants in the United States. In their latest examination of the relationship between man...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

What drives differences in management?

Partnering with the Census we implement a new survey of ?structured? management practices in 32,000 US manufacturing plants. We find an enormous dispersion of management practices across plants, with 40% of this variatio...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

My precious! The location and diffusion of scientific research: evidence from the synchrotron Diamond Light Source

We analyse the impact of the establishment of the Diamond Light Source synchrotron, a large basic scientific research facility in the UK, on the geographic distribution of related research. To account for the potentially...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

Sorting and agglomeration economies in French economics departments

Are agglomeration and peer effects at stake in academic research? To tackle this question, we study how departments? characteristics affect the quantity and quality of academics? publications in economics in France, cont...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Management practices in Pakistan

For more than a decade, CEP economists have been leading efforts to get measures of management incorporated into the statistical infrastructure used by governments and researchers. The authors report on the latest initia...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Management as a technology?

Are some management practices akin to a technology that can explain firm and national productivity, or do they simply reflect contingent management styles? We collect data on core management practices from over 11,000 fi...Read more...

Journal article

Science:

Inequality in mortality decreased among the young while increasing for older adults, 1990-2010

Many recent studies point to increasing inequality in mortality in the United States over the past 20 years. These studies often use mortality rates in middle and old age. We used poverty level rankings of groups of U.S....Read more...

Blog

LSE European Politics and Policy Blog:

Growth multiplier: How university expansion increases national income

What impact do universities have on a country?s economy? Outlining the results of a study of universities across 78 countries, Anna Valero and John Van Reenen find that doubling the number of universities in a region inc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Management practices, workforce selection and productivity

Recent research suggests that much of the cross-firm variation in measured productivity is due to differences in use of advanced management practices. Many of these practices ? including monitoring, goal setting, and the...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

International data on measuring management practices

We examine methods used to survey firms on their management and organizational practices. We contrast the strengths and weaknesses of ?open ended questions? (like the World Management Survey) with ?closed questions? (lik...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Healthcare: how competition can improve management quality and save lives

NHS hospitals in England are rarely closed in constituencies where the governing party has a slender majority. This means that for near random reasons, those parts of the country have more competition in healthcare - whi...Read more...