Results

Blog

Vox EU:

Tall buildings lead to more compact and productive cities

Land-use regulations, including height limits, affect housing affordability and urban productivity. This column analyses over 11,000 urban agglomerations and 300,000 tall buildings to explore the effect of height restric...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Mapping technological trajectories: evidence from two centuries of patent data

We introduce a methodology to measure cross-country trends in innovation capability - "technological trajectories" and implement this on a new rich dataset covering patents between 1836 and 2016 across multiple countries...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Human Resources:

Closing the gap between vocational and general education?

Vocational education delivery is widely debated, with ongoing efforts to improve its effectiveness. In 2010, England introduced University Technical Colleges (UTCs), hybrid institutions combining general and vocational e...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Technical change, jobs, and wages in the global economy

This paper presents a compact and intuitive framework that consolidates, simplifies, and extends results on the links between technology, trade, and labour market outcomes. It makes three main contributions. First, it pr...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

The economics of skyscrapers: a synthesis

We document that skyscraper growth since the end of the 19th century has been driven by a reduction in the cost of height, increasing urbanization, and rising incomes. These stylized facts guide us in developing a compet...Read more...

Journal article

Education Economics:

A comparison of earnings related to higher technical and academic education

Not much is known about higher technical education in England, but current education policy looks positively at it to improve labour productivity and social mobility. We provide updated estimates of individual earnings d...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...

CVER Research Paper

Closing the Gap Between Vocational and General Education? Evidence from University Technical Colleges in England

Some countries, notably those which have long had a weak history of vocational education like the UK and the US, have recently seen a rapid expansion of hybrid schools which provide both general and vocational education....Read more...

CentrePiece article

TV superstars: how a new technology disrupted the entertainment industry

The rollout of television to virtually every household in the United States in the mid-twentieth century created a potentially huge audience for people working in the entertainment industry. As Felix Koenig explains, thi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Technical change and superstar effects: evidence from the roll-out of television

Technical change that improves economies of scale can generate fast income growth among top earners at the expense of everyone else. I test this classic ?superstar model? in the labor market for entertainers where the hi...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

A comparison of earnings related to higher level vocational/technical and academic education

Using rich administrative data for a full cohort of English secondary school leavers (2002/03 academic year), we compare earnings of people with higher vocational/technical qualifications to the earnings of degree holder...Read more...

Blog

CVER Blog:

Higher vocational education: An alternative to degrees?

A detailed picture of earnings effects of university degrees is emerging, but not much is known about the benefits of higher vocational education. A recent report by the IFS provides evidence on the extensive earnings b...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The loss of production work: evidence from quasi-experimental identification of labour demand functions

This paper examines changes in the structure of labour demand in plant-level panel data. I exploit variation in wages across local labour markets induced by the collapse of Finland?s Soviet-dependent industry in the earl...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economic Studies:

Trade induced technical change? The impact of Chinese imports on innovation, IT and productivity

We examine the impact of Chinese import competition on broad measures of technical change - patenting, IT, and TFP - using new panel data across twelve European countries from 1996 to 2007. In particular, we establish th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The roles of import competition and export opportunities for technical change

A variety of empirical and theoretical trade papers have suggested and documented a positive impact of trade on the productivity of firms. However, there is less consensus about the underlying mechanism at work. While tr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Rise of the machines: the effects of labor-saving innovations on jobs and wages

How do firms respond to technological advances that facilitate the automation of tasks? Which tasks will they automate, and what types of worker will be replaced as a result? We present a model that distinguishes between...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Carbon taxes, path dependency and directed technical change: evidence from the auto industry

Can directed technical change be used to combat climate change? We construct new firm-level panel data on auto industry innovation distinguishing between ?dirty? (internal combustion engine) and ?clean? (e.g. electric an...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

On the Measurement of Trade Costs: Direct vs. Indirect Approaches to Quantifying Standards and Technical Regulations

In this article, we review the literature on the measurement of trade costs in international trade with a special emphasis on nontariff measures and in particular on standards and technical regulations. We distinguish `d...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade induced technical change? The impact of Chinese imports on innovation, IT and productivity

We examine the impact of Chinese import competition on broad measures of technical change - patenting, IT, R&D, TFP and management practices ? using new panel data across twelve European countries between 1996-2007. We c...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

On the Origins of Land Use Regulations: Theory and Evidence from US Metro Areas

We model residential land use constraints as the outcome of a political economy game between owners of developed and owners of undeveloped land. Land use constraints benefit the former group (via increasing property pric...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

On the Origins of Land Use Regulations: Theory and Evidence from US Metro Areas

We model residential land use constraints as the outcome of a political economy game between owners of developed and owners of undeveloped land. Land use constraints benefit the former group (via increasing property pric...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Mapping Prices into Productivity in Multisector Growth Models

Two issues related to mapping a multi-sector model into a reduced-form value-added model are often neglected: the composition of intermediate goods, and the distinction between value added productivity and gross output p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

An R&D-Based Model of Multi-Sector Growth

We develop a multi-sector general equilibrium model in which productivity growth is driven by the production of sector-specific knowledge. In the model, we find that long run differences in total factor productivity grow...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Presence of Informal Labour Markets

Recessions and policy interventions in labour markets in developing countries are characterized not only by changes in the unemployment rate, but also by changes in the proportion of formal or protected jobs. This reallo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Owners of Developed Land versus Owners of Undeveloped Land: Why Land Use is More Constrained in the Bay Area than in Pittsburgh

We model residential land use constraints as the outcome of a political economy game between owners of developed and owners of undeveloped land. Land use constraints are interpreted as shadow taxes that increase the land...Read more...