Results

CEP discussion paper

Adoption, incidence and welfare impacts of interest-free loans: evidence from solar PV

Steep declines in solar PV costs raises questions about whether, and how, to continue support. We leverage administrative microdata on the near-universe of UK domestic PV and a matched difference-in-differences design ex...Read more...

Chapter

Happiness and spatial inequality: past, present, and future

in Encyclopedia of Happiness, Quality of Life and Subjective Wellbeing

Why are people happier in certain places as opposed to others? Understanding why people choose to live in a certain area, the elements they take into account when making this decision, and the value that they place on ea...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

(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

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

Journal of Housing Economics:

Do long-distance moves discourage homeownership? Evidence from England

We hypothesize that as the distance of a residential move increases, the amount and quality of information collected on the destination housing market fall. This in turn increases the chances of making an ill-informed ho...Read more...

Journal article

Economica:

Suburbanization in the USA, 1970-2010

The second half of the 20th century saw large-scale suburbanization in the USA, with the median share of residents who work in the county where they live falling from 87% to 71% between 1970 and 2000. We introduce a new ...Read more...

Journal article

The Journal of Human Resources:

Speech and wages

Although language has been widely studied, relatively little is known about how a worker's speech, in his/her native tongue, is related to wages, or what explains the observed relationship. To address these questions, I ...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 the European Economic Association:

War, migration and the origins of the Thai sex industry

This paper analyzes the determinants behind the spatial distribution of the sex industry in Thailand. We relate the development of the sex industry to an early temporary demand shock, that is, US military presence during...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of World Business:

Emerging economy MNEs: how does home country munificence matter?

Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) from emerging economies (EEs) are establishing operations in advanced economies (AEs), apparently departing from traditional models of internationalization. We explore an under-explored d...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Empty homes, longer commutes

In areas of Britain where there are empty houses, planners typically allocate less land for development and make it more difficult to build or adapt houses. Research by Paul Cheshire, Christian Hilber and Hans Koster exp...Read more...

CentrePiece article

How 'local' are local labour markets?

If we want to create jobs in disadvantaged local areas, the idea of `local? needs to be revisited. Alan Manning and Barbara Petrongolo explain the problem of thinking of geographical space as non-overlapping single labou...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Empty homes, longer commutes: the unintended consequences of more restrictive local planning

We investigate the impact of land use regulation on housing vacancy rates. Using a 30-year panel dataset on land use regulation for 350 English Local Authorities (LAs) and addressing potential reverse causation and other...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Where top science gets done

Large-scale facilities like the Diamond Light Source synchrotron in Oxfordshire have the power to create concentrated geographical clusters of scientific research. According to new research scientists? proximity to Diamo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

War, migration and the origins of the Thai sex industry

This paper analyzes the determinants behind the spatial distribution of the sex industry in Thailand. We relate the development of the sex industry to an early temporary demand shock, i.e., U.S. military presence during ...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

Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Journal of Economic and Human Geography:

The geography of foreign investments in the EU neighbourhood

This paper aims at investigating the drivers of Multinational Enterprise (MNE) investment in countries linked to the `core? of the European Union (EU 15) by different degrees of functional, economic and political integra...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Regulating Housing Vacancies Away? The Paradoxical Effects of Mismatch

Policy makers agree that vacant houses are undesirable. Moreover the existence of empty houses is used as an argument for allocating less land for new construction. So higher vacancy rates tend to trigger tighter restric...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Culturally Clustered or in the Cloud? Location of Internet Start-ups in Berlin

Knowledge based firms like IT companies do neither have a capital- nor a land intensive production. They predominantly rely on qualified labour and increasingly depend on the location of its (potential) employees. This i...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Do Long Distance Moves Discourage Homeownership? Evidence from England

We hypothesize that as the distance of a residential move increases, the cost of collecting information on the destination housing market rises, the amount and quality of information collected fall, and the chances of ma...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Concentration versus re-matching? Evidence about the locational effects of commuting costs

Using administrative employer-employee data from Germany, I exploit two reductions of tax breaks for commuting in 2003/4 and 2006/7 to estimate commuting costs? effect on the decision to switch job and move house. Standa...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

My Precious! The Location and Diffusion of Scientific Research: Evidence from the Synchrotron Diamond Light Source

We analyze the impact of the establishment of a GBP 380 million basic scientific research facility in the UK on the geographical distribution of related research. We investigate whether the siting of the Diamond Light So...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Productivity As If Space Mattered: An Application to Factor Markets Across China

Optimal production decisions depend on local market characteristics. This paper develops a model to explain firm labor demand and firm density across regions. Firms vary in their technology to combine imperfectly substit...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How Local Are Labour Markets? Evidence from a Spatial Job Search Model

This paper uses data on very small UK geographies to investigate the effective size of local labour markets. Our approach treats geographic space as continuous, as opposed to a collection of nonoverlapping administrative...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Geographic Concentration and the Temporal Scope of Agglomeration Economics: An Index Decomposition

The paper decomposes a geographical concentration index to examine the temporal scope of a spillover, which is the period of time over which one firm?s activity directly affects the location of other firms? activities. N...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

On the Relative Importance of Agglomeration Economies in the Location of FDI Across British Regions

The paper examines the relative importance for industrial location of production linkages and knowledge spillovers, distinguishing between intermediate and non-intermediate goods that are backwards or forwards in nature....Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economics and Statistics:

History and industry location: evidence from German airports

A central prediction of a large class of theoretical models is that industry location is not uniquely determined by fundamentals. Despite the theoretical prominence of this idea, there is little systematic evidence in su...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Industry and the Urge to Cluster: A Study of the Informal Sector in India

This paper studies the determinants of firm location choice at the district-level in India to gauge the relative importance of agglomeration economies vis-a-vis good business environment. A peculiar characteristic of the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Spatial Organization of Multinational Firms

Using six years of firm-level data covering 224 regions of the enlarged European Union, we evaluate the importance to a firm of locating its activities (production, headquarters, R&D, logistics and sales) close together....Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Bank Location and Financial Liberalization Reforms: Evidence from Microgeographic Data

We examine the effects of bank deregulation on the spatial dynamics of retail-bank branching, exploiting, much like a quasi-natural experiment, the context of intense liberalization reforms in Belgium in the late ninetie...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

When do Better Schools Raise Housing Prices? Evidence from Paris Public and Private Schools

In this paper, we investigate how housing prices react to the quality of education offered by neighbouring public and private schools. The organization of secondary schooling in the city of Paris, which combines residenc...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...

CEP discussion paper

The Empirics of New Economic Geography

Although a rich and extensive body of theoretical research on new economic geography has emerged, empirical research remains comparatively less well developed. This paper reviews the existing empirical literature on the ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does Planning Regulation Protect Independent Retailers?

Entry regulations against big-box retailers have been introduced in many countries to protect smaller independent stores. Using a new dataset from the UK, I show that in fact these entry regulations have been associated ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

History and Industry Location: Evidence from German Airports

A central prediction of a large class of theoretical models is that industry location is not necessarily uniquely determined by fundamentals. In these models, historical accident or expectations determine which of severa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Exploring the Detailed Location Patterns of UK Manufacturing Industries Using Microgeographic Data

We use a point-pattern methodology to explore the detailed location patterns of UK manufacturing industries. In particular, we consider the location of entrants and exiters vs. continuing establishments, domestic- vs. fo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Timeliness, Trade and Agglomeration

An important element of the cost of distance is time taken in delivering final and intermediate goods. We argue that time costs are qualitatively different from direct monetary costs such as freight charges. The differen...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Endowments, Market Potential, and Industrial Location: Evidence from Interwar Poland (1918-1939)

The paper explores the determinants of industry location across interwar Poland. After more than 120 years of political and economic separation, Poland was reunified at the end of 1918. In consequence, its industry faced...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Spatial Distribution of Economic Activities in the European Union

Abstract This paper considers the spatial distribution of economic activities in the European Union. It has three main aims. (i) To describe the data that is available in the EU and give some idea of the rich spatial dat...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Internet Cluster Emergence

Internet development holds the promise of transmitting economic value across physical space at zero marginal cost. In such a 'weightless economy', what factors matter for the location of economic activity and thus for ...Read more...