Results

Blog

VoxDev:

Is quality upgrading in agriculture a path to poverty reduction?

Under standard conditions in the Colombian coffee sector, the benefits of producing better coffee are not passed on to farmers, weakening their incentives to invest in higher-quality production. However, when a large int...Read more...

Journal article

Nature Communications:

Social status and the relationship between income rank and well-being in 109 nations

Well-being is linked to income. However, lower well-being among lower-income individuals may reflect either economic relative deprivation or the lower social status associated with a lower income rank. Here, using Gallup...Read more...

Journal article

Children and Youth Services Review:

Supplemental nutrition assistance program and parents? time investments in children

An emerging literature explores whether social policy programs have benefits to families and their children, above and beyond economic and human capital outcomes. We investigate whether the Supplemental Nutrition Assista...Read more...

External report

Strengthening Monitoring and Evaluation of Innovation Programs in the EU : Creating Ecosystems for Innovation in a Post-Coal Region Evidence from an RCT in the Czech Republic (English)

The Usti nad Labem and Karlovy Vary regions face persistent structural challenges as they transition away from coal-based industries. In response to these challenges, national and EU institutions have launched a coordina...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Inequality:

Equivalence scales revisited: evidence from subjective data

Equivalence scales (ES) are widely used to compare income levels across different households. Yet the commonly used OECD and square-root scales rely on assumptions about household economies of scale that lack robust empi...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Income, wealth, and environmental inequality in the US

Economic disparities have long been suspected to be a root cause of environmental inequality. But is this really the case? This column links data on income and wealth with data on air pollution exposure over 40 years to ...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

The price of power: Why rising markups hurt innovation and widen inequality

Over the past four decades, the US has seen rising market power, slowing productivity growth, and deepening wealth inequality. This column explores how declining competition may be the common culprit. Weak competition le...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

Oxford Open Economics:

Labour market inequality

Wage and earnings inequality has been on the rise in the United Kingdom (UK) since the late 1970s/early 1980s, and with faster increases than comparator countries, it is now one of the countries with the highest levels o...Read more...

Blog

The Conversation:

Minimum wage for South African farm workers: study shows 2013 hike helped reduce poverty even though compliance was poor

Minimum wage policies are typically aimed at reducing poverty. Yet there is little direct evidence of this effect, especially in developing countries. And none for South Africa, write Ihsaan Bassier and Vimal Ranchhod....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...

Journal article

Journal of Labor Economics:

The employment and distributional impacts of Nationwide Minimum Wage changes

We estimate the effect of the introduction of the UK?s National Living Wage in 2016, and increases in it up to 2019, using a new empirical method. We apply a bunching approach to a setting with no geographical variation ...Read more...

Chapter

Inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems

in Entrepreneurial ecosystems in cities and regions: emergence, evolution, and future

Cities and regions with the strongest entrepreneurial ecosystems are often marked by high levels of inequality. These inequalities have, however, often been overlooked in policy and academic circles. Seeking to remedy th...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...

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

Urban Studies:

Progressive cities: urban-rural polarisation of social values and economic development around the world

In contrast to the conservative values of rural populations, cities are often seen as bulwarks of more tolerant, liberal and progressive values. This urban-rural divide in values has become one of the major fault lines i...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Unequal education and the 'Great Gatsby Curve'

In modern economies, people's livelihoods are based in large part on skills acquired through education. Unequal education therefore drives both inequality in the labour market and low social mobility across generations. ...Read more...

Blog

World Bank Blogs:

Relationship between poverty and violence against civilians. Evidence from Somalia

Many countries around the world continue to experience episodes of violence and conflict. In these fragile settings, authorities are often unable to provide basic services and social safety nets to their citizens, result...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Development and Cultural Change :

Learning from unincentivized and incentivized communication: a randomized controlled trial in India

Interactions among peers of the same social network play significant roles in facilitating the adoption and diffusion of modern technologies in poor communities. We conduct a large-scale randomized controlled trial in ru...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

Minimum wages and living wages: what happens in times of inflation?

It is widely accepted that minimum wages are an effective way to help workers at the lower end of the income distribution without damaging their job opportunities. But while the UK's minimum wage has risen faster than th...Read more...

Blog

VoxTalks Economics:

Levelling up Europe's left-behind places (podcast)

Recorded live at CEPR Paris Symposium 2022: Inequality isn't just between individuals, but between regions too. Henry Overman explains to Tim Phillips why these disparities exist, why they are so persistent, and whether ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Will the US child tax credit reduce poverty and improve outcomes for children and parents?

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 temporarily increased the value of the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,000 for children aged 6-16 and to $3,600 for younger children. To date, the Biden administration has been una...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

Measuring urban economic density

At the heart of urban economics are agglomeration economies, which drive the existence and extent of cities. This paper estimates urban agglomeration effects, exploring simple and very nuanced measures of economic densit...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Childhood circumstances and young adult outcomes: the role of parental financial problems

Is there a relationship between childhood circumstances and outcomes later on in life? Andrew E. Clark, Conchita D?Ambrosio, and Marta Barazzetta consider the cognitive and non-cognitive consequences on young adults who ...Read more...

Journal article

International Review of Economics:

Happiness, income and poverty

There is considerable evidence from a variety of sources to suggest that well-being is a function of relative income. These findings have been used to explain the Easterlin Paradox, whereby a rise in income for all does ...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics:

Adaptation to poverty in long-run panel data

We consider the link between poverty and subjective wellbeing and focus in particular on potential adaptation to poverty. We use panel data on almost 54,000 individuals living in Germany from 1985 to 2012 to show, first,...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...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy:

Do cash transfers improve birth outcomes? Evidence from matched vital statistics, and program and social security data

There is limited empirical evidence on whether cash transfers to poor pregnant women improve children's birth outcomes and potentially help weaken the cycle of intergenerational poverty. Using a unique array of program a...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Misery and mental health

Mental illness is a far bigger source of human misery than poverty or unemployment, according to research by Sarah Fleche and Richard Layard. They argue that we need to move beyond a purely materialistic conception of mi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do more of those in misery suffer from poverty, unemployment or mental illness?

Studies of deprivation usually ignore mental illness. This paper uses household panel data from the USA, Australia, Britain and Germany to broaden the analysis. We ask first how many of those in the lowest levels of life...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Adaptation to poverty in long-run panel data

We consider the link between poverty and subjective well-being, and focus in particular on potential adaptation to poverty. We use panel data on almost 54,000 individuals living in Germany from 1985 to 2012 to show first...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The political economy of inclusive rural growth

Abstract Commentators on the `East Asian Miracle' of inclusive growth have often pointed toward shared rural growth policies. But why were these policies not chosen elsewhere? This paper models voters who invest in eithe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do Cash Transfers Improve Birth Outcomes? Evidence from Matched Vital Statistics, Social Security and Program Data

There is limited empirical evidence on whether unrestricted cash social assistance to poor pregnant women improves children?s birth outcomes. Using program administrative micro-data matched to longitudinal vital statisti...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...

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

Does Urbanisation Affect Rural Poverty? Evidence from Indian Districts

Although the high rate of urbanization and the high incidence of rural poverty are two distinct features of many developing countries, we still do not know the effects of the former on the latter. We address this issue b...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Urbanisation and Structural Transformation

This paper presents new evidence on urbanization using sub-county data for the United States from 1880-2000 and municipality data for Brazil from 1970-2000. We show that the two central stylized features of population gr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Effect of Marital Breakup on the Income Distribution of Women with Children

Having a female firstborn child significantly increases the probability that a woman?s first marriage breaks up. Recent work has exploited this exogenous variation to measure the effect of marital breakup on economic out...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Poverty and Worklessness in Britain

Relative poverty in the UK has risen massively since 1979 mainly because of increasing worklessness, rising earnings dispersion and benefits indexed to prices, not wages. So poverty is now at a very high level. The econo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

One Third of the World's Growth and Inequality

This paper studies growth and inequality in China and India u two economies that account for a third of the world's population. By modelling growth and inequality as components in a joint stochastic process, the paper c...Read more...