Results

Blog

Centre for Cities:

A review of the Green Book review

While correctly rejecting criticisms that existing guidance is biased, the latest Green Book review suggests changes that should improve appraisal and decision making....Read more...

Journal article

PNAS:

How working from home reshapes cities

In recent decades, economic activity has become increasingly concentrated in major global metropolises. Yet, the rise of working from home threatens this dominance of cities. Using multiple high-frequency datasets on spe...Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Budgeting for evaluation

In the budget last week, the government set out increased funding for public services and investment. The gamble is that increased public spending can successfully spur the growth needed to pay for it down the line. Impa...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...

CEP occasional paper

A wellbeing cost-benefit analysis of raising the state pension age

Governments of developed countries are facing growing pressures from the fiscal demands of an ageing population. To cope with this, they have tried to get individuals to work longer, primarily by raising the ages at whic...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 Urban Economics:

The spatial impacts of a massive rail disinvestment program: The Beeching Axe

This paper investigates the reversibility of the effects of transport infrastructure investments, based on a programme that removed much of the rail network in Britain during the mid-20th century. We find that a 10% loss...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Charity in the time of austerity: in search of the 'Big Society'

The years after the election of the UK's coalition government in 2010 saw a decline in central funding to local government and a fall in expenditure on a range of local services, including social services. These cuts wer...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Policing and crime

A long period of austerity and budget cuts in policing that started when Theresa May became Home Secretary may be coming to an end. As austerity bit and budget cuts were implemented, this considerably reduced the size of...Read more...

Journal article

Health Affairs:

Hospital prices grew substantially faster than physician prices for hospital-based care in 2007-14

Evidence suggests that growth in providers' prices drives growth in health care spending on the privately insured. However, existing work has not systematically differentiated between the growth rate of hospital prices a...Read more...

Journal article

Health Affairs:

Variation in health spending growth for the privately insured from 2007 to 2014

We examined the growth in health spending on people with employer-sponsored private insurance in the period 2007-14. Our analysis relied on information from the Health Care Cost Institute data set, which includes insuran...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Does additional spending help urban schools? An evaluation using boundary discontinuities

This study exploits spatial anomalies in school funding policy in England to provide new evidence on the impact of resources on student achievement in urban areas. Anomalies arise because the funding allocated to Local E...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The price ain't right? Hospital prices and health spending on the privately insured

We use insurance claims data covering 28 percent of individuals with employer-sponsored health insurance in the US to study the variation in health spending on the privately insured, examine the structure of insurer-hosp...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Distaste for centralization: evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in Switzerland

Do people care about the degree of centralization? This paper examines the effects of local centralization reforms on individuals' well-being using a quasi-natural experiment in Switzerland. The results reveal that centr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Eliciting taxpayer preferences increases tax compliance

Two experiments show that eliciting taxpayer preferences on government spending?providing taxpayer agency--increases tax compliance. We first create an income and taxation environment in a laboratory setting to test for ...Read more...

Blog

LSE European Politics and Policy Blog:

UK Spending Review 2013: A triumph of politics over reason?

The UK?s Spending Review has been forced on the British Chancellor because weak economic growth has blown a hole in the deficit reduction programme. John Van Reenen welcomes the partial reversal of the hugely damaging cu...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

From `Plan B? to `Plan V?: what the UK economy needs to reboot and rebalance growth

With the threat of stagflation and interest rate rises, the current economic climate shows little sign of improvement in the near future. John Van Reenen finds that the government?s severe austerity programme, with its v...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unions, Job Reductions and Job Security Guarantees: the Experience of British Employees

A national survey makes it possible to examine employees? awareness of net overall reductions in the size of the workforce along with their awareness of employer policies that promise `no compulsory redundancies?. Differ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unions, Within-Workplace Job Cuts and Job Security Guarantees

Using data from the Workplace Employment Relations Survey 1998, this paper shows that unionisation increased the probability of within-workplace job cuts and the incidence of job security guarantees. As theory predicts, ...Read more...