Results

CEP discussion paper

From pilot to policy: experimental evidence from scaling online tutoring

Can effective tutoring programs survive the transition from pilot to scale, and from researcher to government implementers? We address this question using a randomized controlled trial of an online mathematics tutoring p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Marshall at the times of Marshall

In the late nineteenth century, Alfred Marshall identified three micro-foundations of agglomeration economies: labour pooling (LP), input sharing (IO), and knowledge spillovers (KS). An extensive literature has tested th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Large-scale land acquisitions: Trees, trade and structural change

Large-scale land acquisitions are a key component of agricultural foreign direct investment. In 2023 alone, nearly 6% of the world's arable land was acquired globally. This paper examines their impact on agricultural pro...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

The comparative advantage of firms

Resource-based theories propose that firms grow by diversifying into products that use common capabilities. We provide evidence for common-input capabilities, using a policy that removed entry barriers in input markets t...Read more...

Blog

The Diplomat:

Asia's Development Model Is Now Jeopardizing Its Future Economic Growth

Asia is facing an economic watershed moment. Turning the corner will require rethinking the role of its dominant, state-supported business groups....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...

CEP report

Are 'green' jobs good jobs?

The transition to net-zero will have far-reaching but unequal effects, as 'dirty' jobs disappear while new jobs aligned with or supportive of the net-zero objective - which we refer to as 'green' - are created. As govern...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Import liberalization as export destruction? Evidence from the United States

How does import protection affect export performance? In trade models with scale economies, import liberalization can reduce an industry's exports by cutting domestic production. We find this export destruction mechanism...Read more...

Journal article

The Lancet Public Health :

Policy stringency and mental health during the Covid-19 pandemic: a longitudinal analysis of data from 15 countries

To date, public health policies implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic have been evaluated on the basis of their ability to reduce transmission and minimise economic harm. We aimed to assess the association between COV...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Data-intensive innovation and the State: evidence from AI firms in China

Artificial intelligence (AI) innovation is data-intensive. States have historically collected large amounts of data, which is now being used by AI firms. Gathering comprehensive information on firms and government procur...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Lessons in resilience from extreme economies

Covid-19 has shifted attention away from day-to-day matters to a question that is more fundamental, yet rarely asked by economists: how can we ensure resilience in the most pressurised times imaginable? Richard Davies dr...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...

CEP discussion paper

The comparative advantage of firms

Resource based theories propose that firms grow by diversifying into products which use common capabilities. We provide evidence for common input capabilities using a policy that removed entry barriers in input markets t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The billion pound drop: the blitz and agglomeration economies in London

This paper exploits locally exogenous variation in the location of bombs dropped during the Blitz to quantify the effect of density restrictions on agglomeration economies in London: an elite global city. Employing micro...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

All in the family? CEO choice and firm organization

Family firms are the most prevalent firm type in the world, particularly in emerging economies. Dynastic family firms tend to have lower productivity, though what explains their underperformance is still an open question...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Big Plant Closures and Agglomeration Economies

This paper analyses the effects of large manufacturing plant closures on local employment. Specifically, we estimate the net employment effects of the closure of 45 large manufacturing plants in Spain, which relocated ab...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

What Makes Cities More Productive? Agglomeration Economies and the Role of Urban Governance: Evidence from 5 OECD Countries

This paper estimates agglomeration benefits across five OECD countries, and represents the first empirical analysis that combines evidence on agglomeration benefits and the productivity impact of metropolitan governance ...Read more...

CEP election analysis

The Economic Performance of UK Cities: Can Urban and Regional Policy Make a Difference to the North-South Divide

There are large variations in economic performance across UK cities and on some measures, they have widened since the global financial crisis. All main parties promise action to reduce them, but there is little differenc...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The economic future of British cities

Henry Overman surveys the evidence on potentially effective responses to the recession and longer-term structural change....Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Rocketing Rents The magnitude and attenuation of agglomeration economies in the commercial property market

Rocketing rents in urban areas are likely explained by agglomeration economies. This paper measures the impact of these external economies on commercial property values using unique micro?]data on commercial rents and em...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Specialization and Regional Economic Development

Debates about urban growth and change often center on specialization.However, arguments linking specialization to metropolitan economic development contain diverse, and sometimes conflicting, claims. Is it better to be h...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...

CEP discussion paper

The Land that Lean Manufacturing Forgot? Management Practices in Transition Countries

We have conducted the first survey on management practices in transition countries. We found that Central Asian transition countries, such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, have on average very poor management practices. The...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...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Economics of Super-Diversity: Findings from British Cities, 2001-2006

British cities have a surprisingly long history of cultural diversity. Recently they have become significantly more multicultural, with `super-diversity? emerging in many urban neighbourhoods. Public interest in these ch...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Spatial Costs in a Monocentric City (And Implications for Agglomeration)

Using water supply as a model for a wider range of infrastructure services, the effect of a negative exponential density gradient on distribution costs is investigated for four monocentric urban development scenarios: (a...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Assessing Agglomeration Economies in a Spatial Framework with Endogenous Regressors

This paper is concerned with the influence of agglomeration economies on economic outcomes across British regions. The concentration of economic activity in one place can foster economic performance due to the reduction ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Job Destruction, Job Creation and Unemployment in Transition Countries: What Can We Learn?

Sixteen years into the transition, the problem of high joblessness has not been solved. Of the three explanations commonly discussed (i.e. ongoing reallocation; finished reallocation with redundant labour; wrong choice o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Scale Effects in Markets with Search

Reduced-form tests of scale effects in markets with search, run when aggregate matching functions are estimated, may miss important scale effects at the micro level, because of the reactions of job searchers. A semi-stru...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

City Size Distributions As A Consequence of the Growth Process

The size distribution of cities in many countries follows some broadly regular patterns. Any good theory of city size distributions should (i) be able to account for this regularity, but also (ii) rely on a plausible eco...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A Simple Model of the Transformational Recession Under a Limited Mobility Constraint

This paper considers the impact on sectoral outputs and employments of rapid and large changes in relative prices, such as those which occurred in transition economies during the 1990s. A simple general equilibrium model...Read more...