Results

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy:

The making of civic virtues: a school-based experiment in three countries

This paper shows that schools can foster the transmission of civic virtues by helping students to develop concrete, democratically chosen, collective projects. We draw on a RCT implemented in 200 middle schools in three ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Return innovation: how migration shapes diffusion of new technologies

Novel products, processes and technologies are important drivers of economic growth. Davide Coluccia and Gaia Dossi show how migrants from Britain to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century not only too...Read more...

Journal article

European Economic Review:

Does the child penalty strike twice?

This paper compares the labor market trajectories of grandparents before and after the arrival of their first grandchild. We find gender gaps in earnings of 4 and 10 percent five and ten years, respectively, after the fi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Return innovation: the knowledge spillovers of the British migration to the United States, 1870-1940

This paper documents that out-migration promotes the diffusion of innovation from the country of destination to the country of origin of migrants. Between 1870 and 1940, nearly four million British immigrants settled in ...Read more...

Journal article

Economics & Human Biology:

Loneliness during the Covid-19 pandemic: evidence from five European countries

We use quarterly panel data from the COME-HERE survey covering five European countries to analyse three facets of the experience of loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, in terms of prevalence, loneliness peake...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Rethinking pension reform: A new CEPR eBook

Population ageing is exerting unprecedented fiscal pressure on social security systems around the world. In response, many governments are implementing or planning pension reforms, often aimed at encouraging later retire...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Taking back control? Quasi-experimental evidence on the impact of retirement on locus of control

We use Australian panel data to examine the impact of retirement on individual locus of control, a socio-emotional skill with substantial explanatory power for a broad range of life outcomes. Exploiting the eligibility a...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The trouble with inactivity

Concerns about a recent rise in economic inactivity have prompted new policies aimed at discouraging early retirement and encouraging the labour force participation of women with young children. Stephen Machin and Jonath...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Working life and human capital investment: causal evidence from a pension reform

In this paper, we analyze if an increase in the working life leads to more human capital investment via on-the-job training. We obtain RDD-estimates from a sharp date-of-birth cut-off, generated by a pension reform that ...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

The trouble with inactivity

Elevated concerns over the consequences of recent rises in the UK economic inactivity rate for growth, wages and prices have prominently featured in recent public debate about the labour market and the economy. This pape...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Population Economics:

In medio stat victus: labor demand effects of an increase in the retirement age

After falling for four decades, statutory retirement ages are increasing in most OECD countries. The labor market adjustment to these reforms has not yet been thoroughly investigated by the literature. We draw on a major...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

The hidden costs of incentivising later retirement

Over the past two decades, many countries have reformed their public pension systems in pursuit of desirable fiscal effects, often by introducing or strengthening incentives for later retirement. However, the welfare eff...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

Why does education reduce crime?

We provide a unifying empirical framework to study why crime reductions occurred due to a sequence of state-level dropout age reforms enacted between 1980 and 2010 in the United States. Because the reforms changed the sh...Read more...

Journal article

European Journal of Political Economy:

The generation gap in direct democracy: age vs. cohort effects

We document a generation gap in direct democracy outcomes across a wide range of topics that is causally related to aging. To this end, we combine different sources of postelection survey data covering more than 300 Swis...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Working life and human capital investment

This paper provides a novel test of a key prediction of human capital theory that educational investment decisions depend on the length of the pay-off period. We obtain causal estimates by leveraging a unique reform of t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

School indiscipline and crime

This paper studies the impact of compulsory schooling on violent behaviour and victimization in school using individual-level administrative data matching education and criminal records from Queensland (Australia). Explo...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Population Economics:

Children, unhappiness and family finances

The common finding of a zero or negative correlation between the presence of children and parental well-being continues to generate research interest. We consider international data, including well over one million obser...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Why does education reduce crime?

Prior research shows reduced criminality to be a beneficial consequence of education policies that raise the school leaving age. This paper studies how crime reductions occurred in a sequence of state-level dropout age r...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The generation gap in direct democracy

We provide the first systematic documentation and analysis of a generation gap in direct democracy outcomes across a wide range of topics using postelection survey data covering more than 300 Swiss referenda and four dec...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Health Economics:

Retirement blues

This paper analyses the short- and longer-term effects of retirement on mental health in ten European countries. It exploits thresholds created by state pension ages in an individual-fixed effects instrumental-variable s...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...

CEP discussion paper

The youngest get the pill: ADHD misdiagnosis and the production of education in Germany

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a leading diagnosed health condition among children in many developed countries but the causes underlying these high levels of ADHD remain highly controversial. Recent r...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Informal care and the great recession

Macroeconomic downturns can have both an important impact on the availability of informal care and the affordability of formal long-term care. This paper investigates how the demand for and provision of informal care cha...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

All-star or benchwarmer? Relative age, cohort size and career success in the NHL

We analyze the performance outcomes of National Hockey League (NHL) players over 18 seasons (1990-1991 to 2007-2008) as a function of the demographic conditions into which they were born. We have three main findings. Fir...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Size Distribution Across All 'Cities': A Unifying Approach

Older cities in the US tend to be larger than younger ones. The distribution of city sizes is, therefore, systematically related to the country's city age distribution. We introduce endogenous city creation into a dynami...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

The crime reducing effect of education

In this article, we study the crime reducing potential of education, presenting causal statistical estimates based upon a law that changed the compulsory school leaving age in England and Wales. We frame the analysis in ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Private Sector Employment Growth, 1998-2004: A Panel Analysis of British Workplaces

Using nationally representative panel data for British private sector workplaces this paper points to the importance of distinguishing between workplace and firm size when analysing employment growth, and finds that the ...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

The Long Term Impacts of Compulsory Schooling: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in School Leaving Dates

This paper investigates a unique feature of the English educational system to estimate the causal effect of compulsory schooling on labour market outcomes. We examine school leaving rules that allow for discrete variatio...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Immigrants at Retirement: Stay/Return or 'Va-et-Vient'

where labour considerations no longer matter, the location decisions are expected to depend not only on a comparison of standard-of-living between the origin and host countries, but should also be affected by the strengt...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Union Decline in Britain

In this paper I consider the rapid decline in the unionization rate that has occurred in Britain since the late 1970s. An establishment based analysis reports that the overwhelming factor in explaining falling unionizati...Read more...