Results

Journal article

Regional Science and Urban Economics:

Ports, technology and inter-city trade: the economics and geopolitics of evolving maritime transport networks

Maritime transport remains the backbone of global trade, yet the port and ship- ping network that carries it has been transformed by containerization and related technological advances. Drawing on newly available granula...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Ports, technology and inter-city trade: the economics and geopolitics of evolving maritime transport networks

Maritime transport remains the backbone of global trade, yet the port and shipping network that carries it has been transformed by containerization and related technological advances. Drawing on newly available granular ...Read more...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

The economics of spatial mobility: theory and evidence using smartphone data

We develop a tractable quantitative framework for modelling the rich patterns of spatial mobility observed in smartphone data. We show that travel is frequently undertaken as part of a travel itinerary, defined as a jour...Read more...

External report

International Trade: Issue 2

Over the last four decades, many developing countries initiated reforms that have lowered barriers to trade. Yet despite these reforms, developing countries still remain far less open than developed ones, both because of...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Evaluating the local economic impacts of transport projects and programmes (with an application to UK Local Major schemes)

We consider how existing distance-based and accessibility-based evaluation methodologies can be adapted to measure the local economic impact of small additions to the transport network. We use these methodologies to eval...Read more...

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

Using people's feelings to value time

People hate wasting time commuting. But translating that into a monetary value to help government policy isn't that straightforward. Christian Krekel, George MacKerron and Iven Stead present a new method to put a value o...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

The Lower Thames crossing

Being on the move can spiral our mood up or down. There is well-known evidence that walking and cycling can directly improve our mental health as well as our physical health; many of us have experienced feelings of freed...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Property rights and innovation dynamism: the role of women inventors

How do stronger property rights for disadvantaged groups affect innovation? I investigate the impact of strengthened property rights for women on U.S. innovation by analyzing the Married Women's Property Acts, which gran...Read more...

Journal article

Annual Review of Economics:

Industrial policy and the great divergence

We discuss recent work evaluating the role of the government in shaping the economy during the long nineteenth century, a practice we refer to as industrial policy. States deployed a vast variety of different policies ai...Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

New opportunities in transport investment for growth?

In February, the government announced the new Local Transport Fund, a package of #4.7bn of spending. Places will be able to spend funds on a range of transport investments, with the aim of improving connectivity within a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Industrial policy and the great divergence

We discuss recent work evaluating the role of the government in shaping the economy during the long 19th century, a practice we refer to as industrial policy. We show that states deployed a vast variety of different poli...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The impact of public transportation and commuting on urban labour markets: evidence from the new survey of London life and labour, 1929-32

This paper examines the consequences of the commuter transport revolution on working-class labour markets in London, circa 1930. Using GIS-based data constructed from the New Survey of London Life and Labour, we examine ...Read more...

Journal article

82nd Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management:

Efficient industrial policy for innovation: standing on the shoulders of hidden giants

Knowledge spillovers drive a wedge between private and social returns to R&D. Efficient innovation policy assigns subsidies to fields where spillovers are relatively important. We develop new measures for the private and...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Efficient industrial policy for innovation: Standing on the shoulders of hidden giants

We quantify the efficiency gains from targeting R&D subsidies to fields with the highest knowledge spillover externalities. By combining new measures of spillovers and private returns with field-specific structural estim...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Why working from home will stick

Covid-19 drove a mass social experiment in working from home (WFH). We survey more than 30,000 Americans over multiple waves to investigate whether WFH will stick, and why. Our data say that 20 percent of full workdays w...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Consumer city: evidence from smartphone data

Traditional theories emphasise production decisions and the commuting costs of workers in shaping the spatial concentration of economic activity in cities. However, much of urban travel is related to consumption of non-t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Prime locations

We harness big data to detect prime locations - large clusters of knowledge-based tradable services - in 125 global cities and track changes in the within-city geography of prime service jobs over a century. Historically...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Regional differences in UK transport BCRs: an empirical assessment

The UK government uses a Value for Money (VfM) framework to help allocate infrastructure expenditure. At the core of this framework is a benefit to cost ratio (BCR) that is calculated using a set of established monetised...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Development Economics:

The belt and road initiative: reshaping economic geography in Central Asia?

This paper develops a computable spatial equilibrium model of Central Asia and uses it to analyze the possible effects of the Belt and Road Initiative on the economy of the region. The model captures international and su...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Regional Science:

Direct democracy and intergenerational conflicts in ageing societies

To evaluate the potential effects of population ageing on the outcomes of direct democracy, we analyze the effect of age on voting decisions in public referendums. In a case study of the Stuttgart 21 referendum on one of...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Transportation:

Quantifying wider economic impacts of agglomeration for transport appraisal: existing evidence and future directions

The Authors This paper is concerned with the Wider Economic Impacts (WEIs) of transport improvements that arise via scale economies of agglomeration. It reviews the background theory and empirical evidence on agglomerati...Read more...

Journal article

Urban Studies:

Does the law of one price hold for hedonic prices?

Hedonic prices of locational attributes in urban land markets are determined by a process of spatial arbitrage that is similar to that which underpins the law of one price. If hedonic prices deviate from their spatial eq...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Quantifying wider economic impacts of agglomeration for transport appraisal: existing evidence and future directions

This paper is concerned with the Wider Economic Impacts (WEIs) of transport improvements that arise via scale economies of agglomeration. It reviews the background theory and empirical evidence on agglomeration, explains...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

From periphery to core: measuring agglomeration effects using high-speed rail

We analyze the economic impact of the German high-speed rail (HSR) connecting Cologne and Frankfurt, which provides plausibly exogenous variation in access to surrounding economic mass. We find a causal effect of about 8...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

New Road Infrastructure: The Effects on Firms

This paper estimates the impact of new road infrastructure on employment and labour productivity using plant level longitudinal data for Britain. Exposure to transport improvements is measured through changes in accessib...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Policy Paper

Planes, Trains and Automobiles: The Economic Impact of Transport Infrastructure

In the run up to the 2015 general election, the main political parties have very mixed views as to what should be done about transport in the UK. Big transport investment proposals - expansion of London's airports and hi...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

From Periphery to Core: Measuring Agglomeration Effects Using High-Speed Rail

We analyze the economic impact of the German high-speed rail (HSR) connecting Cologne and Frankfurt, which provides plausibly exogenous variation in access to surrounding economic mass. We find a causal effect of about 8...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Urban Development and Air Pollution: Evidence from a Global Panel of Cities

We exploit a unique panel of 75 metro areas (`cities?) across the globe and employ a city-fixed effects model to identify the determinants of within-city changes in air pollution concentration between 2005 and 2011. Incr...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Chicken or Egg? The PVAR Econometrics of Transportation

To analyze the mutually dependent relationship between local economic performance and the demand for and supply of transport services, we employ the structural panel VAR method that is popular in the macroeconomic litera...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Impact of Better School Accessibility on Student outcomes

This paper identifies and quantifies the effects of better transport accessibility on student performance measured by mathematics test scores. A 27 km new subway line and the extension of an existing line in Santiago (Ch...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Does Better Rail Access Improve Homeowners? Happiness?: Evidence Based on Micro Surveys in Beijing

Development of urban transport infrastructures is a key policy focus---particularly in countries like China which have experienced fast urbanisation over the past decade. While existing studies provide marginal values fo...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

New Road Infrastructure: the Effects on Firms

This paper estimates the impact of road improvements on firm employment and productivity using plant level longitudinal data for Britain. Exposure to transport improvements is measured by changes in employment accessibil...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Does Public Investment Spur the Land Market?: Evidence from Transport Improvement in Beijing

Over 140 billion CNY (1GBP=10CNY) has been spent between 2000 and 2012 in Beijing on the construction of new rail transit lines. This massive public investment allows me to examine the consequences of transport improveme...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Cotton and cars: the huge gains from process innovation

New inventions are good for economic growth, but equally important are improvements in the way we make things - what's known as process innovation. Tim Leunig and Joachim Voth measure the impact of two such innovations -...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Spinning Welfare: the Gains from Process Innovation in Cotton and Car Production

Economists and economic historians want to know how much better life is today than in the past. Fifty years ago economic historians found surprisingly small gains from 19th century US railroads, while more recently econo...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

If We Build, Will They Pay? Predicting Property Price Effects of Transport Innovations

In this study I develop a partial equilibrium approach for the prediction of property price effects of transport network extensions. It combines a gravity-type labor market accessibility indicator with a transport decisi...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion: Evidence from US Cities

We investigate the relationship between interstate highways and highway vehicle kilometres travelled (VKT) in US cities. We find that VKT increases proportionately to highways and identify three important sources for thi...Read more...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

Causes of sprawl: a portrait from space

We study the extent to which US urban development is sprawling and what determines differences in sprawl across space. Using remote-sensing data to track the evolution of land use on a grid of 8.7 billion 30 x 30 metre c...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Rising Trade Costs? Agglomeration and Trade with Endogenous Transaction Costs

While transport costs have fallen, the empirical evidence also points at rising total trade costs. In a model of industry location with endogenous transaction costs, we show how and under which conditions a decline in tr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Evaluating Urban Transport Improvements: Cost Benefit Analysis in the Presence of Agglomeration and Income Taxation

There is a substantial empirical literature quantifying the positive relationship between city size and productivity. The paper draws out the implications of this productivity relationship for evaluations of urban transp...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Valuing Rail Access Using Transport Innovations

In this paper we implement a powerful empirical approach than has not previously been applied to rail transport evaluation to ascertain how much consumers value rail access. We study the effects on house prices of a tran...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Falling Trade Costs, Heterogeneous Firms and Industry Dynamics

This paper examines the response of industries and firms to changes in trade costs. Several new firm-level models of international trade with heterogeneous firms predict that industry productivity will rise as trade cost...Read more...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

Globalization and the inequality of nations

A monopolistically competitive manufacturing sector produces goods used for final consumption and as intermediates. Intermediate usage creates cost and demand linkages between firms and a tendency for manufacturing agglo...Read more...