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...

CEP discussion paper

Criminal career trajectories

This study analyzes criminal career trajectories using a unique administrative dataset of 230,578 individuals arrested and over 620,000 criminal offenses recorded by Greater Manchester Police between 2008 and 2019. Movin...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Cocaine goes bananas: global spillovers from an illicit supply shock

We study how a sharp expansion in Colombian cocaine production propagated internationally through global trade networks, generating substantial social costs. In Colombia, the production surge increased homicide rates by ...Read more...

Journal article

Spatial Economic Analysis:

Digital network centrality and the structure of goods trade

This paper studies how digital infrastructure is associated with the spatial structure of international trade in goods. We embed data availability into a structural gravity framework, conceptualising it as an information...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Digital network centrality and the structure of goods trade

This paper studies how digital infrastructure is associated with the spatial structure of international trade in goods. We embed data availability into a structural gravity framework, conceptualizing it as an information...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Technology spillovers, diffusion and rivalry in firm networks

We examine how upstream firms' technology adoption affects the performance and adoption decisions of downstream partners. Using business-to-business data with administrative records on advanced technology adoption, we fi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

On the shoulders of giants: financial spillovers in innovation networks

Do markets price knowledge spillovers? We show that patent grants influence the stock returns of firms that are connected through technological knowledge dependencies. Using directed patent citations among publicly liste...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy:

Green transitions: complementarities, multiple equilibria, and tipping points

With strategic complementarities stemming from peer effects in demand or technological spillovers, propagation and amplification mechanisms increase the effectiveness of climate policies. This suggests that climate goals...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...

CentrePiece article

Return innovation: how migration shapes diffusion of new technologies

Novel products, processes and technologies are important drivers of economic growth. Davide Coluccia and Gaia Dossi show how migrants from Britain to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century not only too...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Productivity, matchability and intermediation in production networks

This paper examines intermediation in production networks to unpack the firm attributes and matching costs that govern firm-to-firm networks and the gains from trade. Exploiting rich customs data for Chile, we show that ...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 discussion paper

Return innovation: the knowledge spillovers of the British migration to the United States, 1870-1940

This paper documents that out-migration promotes the diffusion of innovation from the country of destination to the country of origin of migrants. Between 1870 and 1940, nearly four million British immigrants settled in ...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

Firm heterogeneity and imperfect competition in global production networks

How do production networks and market structure interact to shape the effects of trade and competition policy? We develop a model with two-sided firm heterogeneity, matching frictions, and imperfect supplier competition....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender, careers and peers' gender mix

We use Italian Social Security data to study how the gender composition of a worker's professional network influences their career development. By exploiting variation within firms, occupations, and labor market entry co...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics:

Technology transfer in global value chains

Global value chains create opportunities for North-South technology diffusion. This paper studies technology transfer in value chains when contracts are incomplete and input production technologies are imperfectly exclud...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...

Journal article

Regional Studies:

Global production networks meets evolutionary economic geography

Two of the canonical approaches in regional studies are global production networks (GPNs) and evolutionary economic geography (EEG). Recent geopolitical and economic events have shown the importance of both theories in e...Read more...

Journal article

PLoS ONE :

Access to digital finance: Equity crowdfunding across countries and platforms

Financing entrepreneurship spurs innovation and economic growth. Digital financial platforms that crowdfund equity for entrepreneurs have emerged globally, yet they remain poorly understood. We model equity crowdfunding ...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...

Journal article

Research Policy:

Global value chains and domestic innovation

This paper explores how changes in both position and participation in Global Value Chain (GVC) networks affect firm innovation. The analysis combines matched patent-firm data for Japan with measures of GVC network centra...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Who stands on the shoulders of Chinese (scientific) giants? Evidence from chemistry

China's rise in science has the potential to push forward the knowledge frontier, but mere production of knowledge does not guarantee that others are able to build on it. We ask whether chemistry research originating fro...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Sparse production networks

Firm-to-firm connections in domestic and international production networks play a fundamental role in economic outcomes. Firm heterogeneity and the sparse nature of firm-to-firm connections implicitly discipline network ...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

Journal of Political Economy:

The origins of firm heterogeneity: a production network approach

We explore firm size heterogeneity in production networks. In comprehensive data for Belgium, firms with more customers have higher total sales but lower sales and lower market shares per customer. Downstream factors, es...Read more...

Journal article

Energy for Sustainable Development :

Assessing reliability of electricity grid services from space: the case of Uttar Pradesh, India

While most households around the world have access to electricity, the number of hours per day when the grid supplies them with adequate voltage can be low. Improving the reliability of electricity is crucial to make pro...Read more...

Journal article

Management Science:

Vertical integration and foreclosure: evidence from production network data

This paper studies the prevalence of potential anticompetitive effects of vertical mergers using a novel data set on U.S. and international buyer-seller relationships and across a large range of industries. We find that ...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...

Journal article

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management:

Green product innovation in industrial networks: a theoretical model

Previous studies have modeled green technological change as innovations in the process of production (e.g., abatement technologies or energy sources). But greening the economy also requires changing products. The automot...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

No inventor is an island: social connectedness and the geography of knowledge flows in the US

Do informal social ties connecting inventors across distant places promote knowledge flows between them? To measure informal ties, we use a new and direct index of social connectedness of regions based on aggregate Faceb...Read more...

Journal article

Quarterly Journal of Economics:

Misallocation in the market for inputs: enforcement and the organization of production

The strength of contract enforcement determines how firms source inputs and organize production. Using microdata on Indian manufacturing plants, we show that production and sourcing decisions appear systematically distor...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...

CEP discussion paper

Gravity in international finance: evidence from fees on equity transactions

We shed light on the impact of institutional quality and information barriers on trade in financial services using a novel panel data set on revenue earned on domestic and cross-border equity securities underwriting tran...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...

CEP discussion paper

Vertical integration and foreclosure: evidence from production network data

This paper studies the prevalence of vertical market foreclosure using a novel dataset on U.S. and international buyer-seller relationships, and across a large range of industries. We find that relationships are more lik...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

Production networks, geography, and firm performance

This paper examines the importance of buyer-supplier relationships for firm performance. We develop a model in which firms outsource tasks and search for suppliers. Lower search and outsourcing costs lead firms to search...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The origins of firm heterogeneity: a production network approach

This paper quantifies the origins of firm size heterogeneity when firms are interconnected in a production network. Using the universe of buyer-supplier relationships in Belgium, the paper develops a set of stylized fact...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

Misallocation in the market for inputs: enforcement and the organization of production

The strength of contract enforcement determines how firms source inputs and organize production. Using microdata on Indian manufacturing plants, we show that production and sourcing decisions appear systematically distor...Read more...

Journal article

Annual Review of Economics:

Networks and trade

Trade occurs between firms both across borders and within countries, and most trade transactions include at least one large firm with many trading partners. This article reviews the literature on firm-to-firm connections...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...

CEP discussion paper

Geography, ties and knowledge flows: evidence from citations in mathematics

Using data on academic citations, career and educational histories of mathematicians, and disaggregated distance data for the world's top 1000 math departments, we study how geography and ties affect knowledge flows amon...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Networks and trade

Trade occurs between firms both across borders and within countries, and the vast majority of trade transactions includes at least one large firm with many trading partners. This paper reviews the literature on firm-to-f...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...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Adjusting your dreams? High school plans and dropout behaviour

At the end of middle school, many low-achieving students realise that they do not have the ability to get into selective high school programmes, which may be a source of disengagement and eventually lead them to drop out...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...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

Sorting and agglomeration economies in French economics departments

Are agglomeration and peer effects at stake in academic research? To tackle this question, we study how departments? characteristics affect the quantity and quality of academics? publications in economics in France, cont...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Production networks, geography and firm performance

This paper examines the importance of buyer-supplier relationships, geography and the structure of the production network in firm performance. We develop a simple model where firms can outsource tasks and search for supp...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

The Economic Value of Local Social Networks

The idea that local social capital yields economic benefits is fundamental to theories of agglomeration, and central to claims about the virtues of cities. However, this claim has not been evaluated using methods that pe...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

Do Large Departments Make Academics More Productive? Agglomeration and Peer Effects in Research

We study the effect of a large set of department characteristics on individual publication records. We control for many individual time-varying characteristics, individual fixed-effects and reverse causality. Department ...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...

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...

CEP discussion paper

Networks in the Premodern Economy: the Market for London Apprenticeships, 1600-1749

This paper examines the importance of social and geographical networks in structuring entry into skilled occupations in premodern London. Using newly digitised records of those beginning an apprenticeship in London betwe...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...

CEP discussion paper

Institutions and the Management of Human Resources: Incentive Pay Systems in France and Great Britain

Using data from large-scale establishment surveys in Britain and France, we show that incentive pay for non-managers is more widespread in France than in Britain. We explain this finding in terms of the `beneficial const...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Competing for Contacts: Network Competition, Trade Intermediation and Fragmented Duopoly

A two-sided, pair-wise matching model is developed to analyse the strategic interaction between two information intermediaries who compete in commission rates and network size, giving rise to a fragmented duopoly market ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Information Costs, Networks and Intermediation in International Trade

This paper presents a pairwise matching model with two-sided information asymmetry to analyse the impact of information costs on endogenous network building and matching by information intermediaries. The framework innov...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

Do Friends and Relatives Really Help in Getting a Good Job?

Informal contacts are extensively used by both firms and workers to find jobs and fill vacancies. The common wisdom in the economic literature is that jobs created through this channel are of better quality and pay highe...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...