Results

CEP discussion paper

Defense promotion and industrial development

Major economies are rearming, and rearmament is itself industrial policy. I ask whether defense promotion?especially innovation policy?can drive industrial development beyond the defense sector. I synthesize evidence on ...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Place-based industrial policies in the long run

There is growing evidence that place-based industrial policies lead to positive economic effects. This column analyses the 'Million-Rouble Plants' programme of the 1950s when the Soviet Union helped China build state-of-...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Take-away findings from food delivery apps

Do delivery apps reduce or enhance the attraction of cities?...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Why waste segregation policies fail ? and how training makes them work

Reducing landfill use cuts greenhouse gas emissions and costs less...Read more...

Journal article

Nature Climate Change:

The environmental impact of multinational firms in Africa

Whereas environmental conditions are improving in many developed countries, environmental degradation is still widespread. Multinational enterprises could play a central role in solving or fuelling these global environme...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

When and why political leaders polarise rhetoric: Evidence from Twitter/X

Standard theories of electoral competition predict that politicians should converge toward the centre as elections approach. This column challenges this prediction, using 3.4 million tweets from 367 political leaders acr...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

Why don't we have nicer buildings?

The benefits of distinctive urban architecture extend far beyond the buildings themselves, but the costs are borne by the developers. This can lead to underinvestment in high-quality design - and it raises the question o...Read more...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

Making the invisible hand visible: managers and the allocation of workers to jobs

Why do managers matter for firm performance? This article provides evidence of the critical role of managers in matching workers to jobs within the firm using the universe of personnel records from a large multinational ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Geographical thinking

Making the industrial strategy work in Manchester...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Exchange-rate pass-through and invoicing currency choice in international production networks

We study exchange-rate pass-through and currency choice in international transactions, focusing on bilateral bargaining power in relationships between domestic buyers and foreign suppliers. Using detailed transaction-lev...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unpacking the restaurant experience: how food delivery technology favors the affluent urban core

We study how technological innovation has transformed the valuation of consumption services, using the sudden national expansion of food delivery services (FDS) in China as a natural experiment. Using a Bartik-style inst...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The economics of architecture

We illustrate the coordination problem in the provision of distinctive architectural design that arises from design externalities within a quantitative model. To quantify the model, we conduct a quantitative review of a ...Read more...

Blog

VoxDev:

Why waste segregation policies fail - and how training makes them work

Citizen training that builds households' practical capability to segregate waste can deliver large, persistent and socially amplified improvements in waste management, making it a highly cost-effective climate policy in ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Allocating land for housing in Tanzania

The economics of greenfield urban planning...Read more...

Chapter

Immigration, diversity and innovation in cities and regions

in A Research Agenda for Migration and Innovation

This chapter investigates the interplay between immigrant diversity and innovation, emphasizing the urban and regional dimensions where these effects are most pronounced. Cities and urban areas are pivotal to the generat...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Private highs: investigating university overmatch among students from elite schools

Inequality in elite college attendance is a key driver of intergenerational mobility. This paper shifts the focus upstream to examine how elite high school attendance - specifically, enrollment in UK private, fee-paying ...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy:

The making of civic virtues: a school-based experiment in three countries

This paper shows that schools can foster the transmission of civic virtues by helping students to develop concrete, democratically chosen, collective projects. We draw on a RCT implemented in 200 middle schools in three ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Economics of greenfield urban planning

Urban planning has shaped cities for millennia, demarcating property rights and mitigating coordination failures, but its rigidities often conflict with market-driven development, which reflects preferences. Although pla...Read more...

Journal article

Economics Letters:

Bridging barriers: how Covid-19 changed racial diversity in economics seminars

In this paper, new facts are documented on the racial distribution of seminar speakers in economics. From a sample of 270 institutions, I determined that before the Covid-19 pandemic, 82.5% of seminars were given by Whit...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Teaching happiness (economics) in your dismal-science courses

This paper discusses ideas for incorporating the study of happiness and other measures of self-reported or subjective well-being (SWB) into undergraduate economics courses. We begin by motivating why students of economic...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Fighting climate change: international attitudes toward climate policies

This paper explores global perceptions and understanding of climate change and policies, examining factors that influence support for climate action and the impact of different types of information. We conduct large-scal...Read more...

Journal article

LSE Public Policy Review:

Explaining variation in child penalties: the role of gender norms and policies

This paper contributes to understanding global variation in child and marriage penalties by focusing on the role of patriarchal control, gender norms, and public policies. We introduce a new measure of gender norms, the ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Evaluating transport improvements in spatial equilibrium

The recent development of quantitative urban models provides a new set of tools for evaluating transport improvements. Conventional cost-benefit analyses are typically undertaken in partial equilibrium. In contrast, quan...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Daniel Kahneman: a legacy

The late Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman had a long association with CEP. At an LSE event, Richard Layard, Gillian Tett and Paul Dolan discussed how his work influenced psychology, economics and society ? and their experi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Paper tiger? Chinese science and home bias in citations

We investigate the phenomenon of home bias in scientific citations, where researchers disproportionately cite work from their own country. We develop a benchmark for expected citations based on the relative size of count...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

What impact have trade sanctions had on Russia? (Podcast)

Recorded at the CEPR Paris Symposium. How effective have the trade sanctions imposed on Russia in 2022 been? Politically, they were comprehensive and quick. But anecdotal reporting has suggested that Russian firms that w...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

A practical guide to shift-share instruments

A recent econometric literature shows two distinct paths for identification with shift-share instruments, leveraging either many exogenous shifts or exogenous shares. We present the core logic of both paths and practical...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics:

Do carbon offsets offset carbon?

We develop and implement a new method for identifying wasted subsidies and use it to provide systematic evidence of the misallocation of carbon offsets in the Clean Development Mechanism - the world's largest carbon offs...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Five facts about MPCs: evidence from a randomized experiment

We present five facts from an experiment on the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) out of transitory transfers: (1) the one-month MPC on a cash-like transfer is 23 percent; (2) it is substantially higher (61 percent) o...Read more...

Chapter

Crime and the labor market

in Handbook of Labor Economics

The economics of crime has emerged as a critical field over the past 30 years, with economists increasingly exploring the causes and consequences of criminal behavior. This chapter surveys key contributions and developme...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy:

Ethnic minority and migrant pay gaps over the life-cycle

It is well-known that ethnic minority and migrant workers have lower average pay than the White UK-born workforce. However, we know much less about how these gaps vary over the life-cycle because of data limitations. We ...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

Wellbeing policy: what lessons from the Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman?

The late Daniel Kahneman was awarded the economics Nobel Prize in 2002 for influential research on how people make decisions. His work on wellbeing has also had wide impact, including on what official statistics measure ...Read more...

Journal article

PloS ONE:

Agglomeration costs limit sustainable innovation in cities in developing economies

Theory and evidence from developed economies suggests that innovation activities benefit from agglomeration economies associated with urban economic density. However, despite the fact that eighteen of the world?s top twe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Quantitative urban economics

This paper reviews recent quantitative urban models. These models are sufficiently rich to capture observed features of the data, such as many asymmetric locations and a rich geography of the transport network. Yet these...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Spatial economics

This paper reviews recent research in spatial economics. The field of spatial economics is concerned with the determinants and effects of the location of economic activity in geographic space. It analyses how geographica...Read more...

Government consultation

Scottish parliament: Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee

Christian Hilber gives evidence to the Housing inquiry....Read more...

Blog

LSE Impact of Social Sciences:

What makes the child penalty in academia different?

Women are underrepresented in senior academic positions in economics. Ria Ivandic and Anne Sophie Lassen assess the impact of having children on men and women's career trajectories and suggest how the sector can adapt....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Crime and the labor market

The economics of crime has emerged as a critical field over the past 30 years, with economists increasingly exploring the causes and consequences of criminal behavior. This chapter surveys key contributions and developme...Read more...

CentrePiece article

in brief... Designing carbon markets that deliver change

Ever since the European Union created its market-based carbon policy, governments and businesses have been keen to assess its impact. Jonathan Colmer, Ralf Martin, Mirabelle Muuls and Ulrich Wagner explain why analysing ...Read more...

Journal article

World Development:

Institutional transition: Social cohesion and demand for land titles in urban Tanzania

In much of urban Africa, demand for statutory property rights remains low even when governments coordinate land titling programmes and reduce the costs of registration. This paper studies the Residential Licence programm...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Closing the health gap: How chronic illness drives health inequality early on

Though health disparities have long been the subject of research and debate, life expectancy gaps between rich and poor remain striking, even in countries with universal access to healthcare. This column analyses the roo...Read more...

Blog

Centre for cities:

City Talks: Why we are seeing a boom in urban economics research (Podcast)

We are constantly finding out more about where people live and work, how people move around, where businesses choose to locate, and where people spend their money - all of which adds more depth to our picture of cities. ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Valuing consumption services as technology transforms accessibility: Evidence from Beijing

Home delivery reduced the value of cities as locations to access variety in durable consumption goods. Food delivery services (FDS) are doing the same for restaurants. Home-streaming of sports or home-delivered restauran...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Regional Science:

Within-city roads and urban growth

In this paper we study the role of within-city roads layout in fostering city growth. Within-city roads networks have not been studied extensively in economics although they are essential to facilitate human interactions...Read more...

Blog

Handbook of Labor Economics:

Handbook Talk with Stephen Machin: How does crime impact the economy and society? (Podcast)

In this podcast episode dedicated to the new edition of the Handbook of Labor Economics, Professor from the London School of Economics discusses the recent advances in the Economics of Crime. What are the economic con...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Personnel management and school productivity: evidence from India

This paper uses new data to study school management and productivity in India. We report five main results. First, management quality in public schools is low, and -2 standard deviations below high-income countries with ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Identifying agglomeration shadows: long-run evidence from ancient ports

We examine "agglomeration shadows" that emerge around large cities, which discourage some economic activities in nearby areas. Identifying agglomeration shadows is complicated, however, by endogenous city formation and "...Read more...

Journal article

Nature:

Hybrid working from home improves retention without damaging performance

Working from home has become standard for employees with a university degree. The most common scheme, which has been adopted by around 100 million employees in Europe and North America, is a hybrid schedule, in which ind...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Mafias and Firms (Podcast)

Which firms are infiltrated by organised crime, and why? We know that organised crime has links to some firms in the legal economy. But how big is this infiltration, and what do they gain from it? Rocco Macchiavello tell...Read more...

Blog

Imperial College Business School:

Do carbon markets work?

Ever since the EU created its market-based carbon policy, governments and businesses have been keen to see an impact. But analysing how effective policies can be on a noisy economic and global stage is complex - and hard...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Putting quantitative models to the test: an application to Trump's trade war

The primary motivation behind quantitative modeling in international trade and many other fields is to shed light on the economic consequences of policy changes. To help assess and potentially strengthen the credibility ...Read more...

Journal article

AEA Papers and Proceedings:

The linear algebra of economic geography models

We provide sufficient statistics for nominal and real wage exposure to productivity shocks in a constant elasticity economic geography model. These exposure measures summarize the first-order general equilibrium elastici...Read more...

Journal article

Town Planning Review:

Pushing water uphill: containment policies doomed to fail

London has had a green belt for seventy years making it the `canary in the coal mine? for `zero land take?. Because of strong demand for housing space, rising prosperity underlies rising urban land demand so rigid physic...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The organizational economics of school chains

We use the insights of firms' organizational economics to study school chains' organization. We match information on decentralization of activities for approximately 400 chains and 2,000 schools in England to student and...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association :

Formation of college plans: expected returns, preferences and adjustment process

We exploit a large exogenous shock to study the formation, and updating, of educational plans, and to examine how these plans ultimately impact later educational attainment. Using novel, longitudinal, microdata on cohort...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Immigration, female labour supply and local cultural norms

We study the local evolution of female labour supply and cultural norms in West Germany in reaction to the sudden presence of East Germans who migrated to the West after reunification. These migrants grew up with high ra...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Why representation matters in the economics profession

What prompts someone to become an economist? How important is representation in inspiring the next generation of black economists? And how positive should women economists be about the future? Felicia Odamtten, an econom...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Health Economics:

The causal effect of a health treatment on beliefs, stated preferences and memories

The paper estimates the causal effect of a health treatment on patients? beliefs, preferences and memories about the treatment. It exploits a natural experiment which occurred in the United Kingdom during the COVID-19 va...Read more...

Journal article

Nature Human Behaviour:

Consumption responses to an unconditional child allowance in the United States

The COVID-19 pandemic put families in the United States under financial stress. The federal government's largest response in 2021 was the American Rescue Plan Act, which temporarily expanded the Child Tax Credit (CTC) in...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy :

Local retail prices, product variety, and neighborhood change

We study how local grocery markets within a city are affected by changes in housing markets. Our empirical strategy exploits a shift in the spatial distribution of construction activity induced by a large-scale, place-ba...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Environmental Psychology:

Working memory and fluid intelligence are differentially related to categories of urban fabric in older adults: Results from the Berlin aging study

Urbanization is Globally increasing at a rapid rate but its consequences for mental health, including cognitive functioning, are not well understood. In particular, little is known about the effects of different morpholo...Read more...

Journal article

European Economic Review:

Remote talks: changes to economics seminars during Covid-19

This paper analyzes the consequences of the change in the presentation mode of economics seminars triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. The composition of seminar speakers changed significantly. The share of seminars held ...Read more...

Journal article

AEA Papers and Proceedings:

Parenthood and academic career trajectories

Women continue to be underrepresented in the field of economics, especially among permanent faculty. As parenthood is an important driver of gender inequality in the labor market, we study the impact of children on the a...Read more...

Journal article

Urban Studies:

Unbundling tenure security and demand for property rights: evidence from urban Tanzania

Rapid urbanisation in sub-Saharan Africa occurs with little land registration, and government-led regularisation schemes often find limited uptake of title deeds by residents. In theory, there could be private and public...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Urban-biased structural change

Economic activity in high-income countries has shifted towards services and away from manufacturing. But research remains scant on the patterns of structural change within countries across urban and rural areas. Using mi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The skyscraper revolution: global economic development and land savings

Tall buildings are central to facilitating sustainable urbanization and growth in cities worldwide. We estimate average elasticities of city population and built area to aggregate city building heights of 0.12 and -0.17,...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Unravelling the complexities of sanctions

Sanctions have become a linchpin of foreign policy. But as they have grown more complex, understanding their true impact on targeted economies has become increasingly difficult, and evidence of their firm-level effects i...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review :

The impact of regulation on innovation

We present a framework that can be used to assess the equilibrium impact of regulation on endogenous innovation with heterogeneous firms. We implement this model using French firm-level panel data, where there is a sharp...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

The evolution of work from home

Full days worked at home account for 28 percent of paid workdays among Americans 20?64 years old, as of mid-2023. That's about four times the 2019 rate and ten times the rate in the mid-1990s. We first explain why the bi...Read more...

Blog

LSE Impact of Social Sciences:

New approaches to economics research are reshaping how we understand and respond to gender stereotypes

New ways of analysing data from images and text are being used by economists to study discrimination in the labour market. A recent workshop, hosted by the Centre for Economic Performance and the Department of Social Pol...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Wellbeing: science and policy

What produces a happy society and a happy life? In the first textbook on wellbeing, Richard Layard and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve explain how wellbeing can be measured, what causes it and how it can be improved. They conclude ...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

What did Adam Smith think - and why does it matter today?

This year is the tercentenary of Adam Smith - 300 years since the birth of the man widely considered to be the father of economics. Jesse Norman MP, author of Adam Smith: What He Thought, and Why It Matters, talks to Rom...Read more...

Journal article

AEA Papers and Proceedings:

The local labor market effects of modern manufacturing capital: evidence from France

Using an event study methodology and comprehensive micro data from the French manufacturing sector, we analyze the local labor market effects of investments in modern manufacturing capital, including modern automation te...Read more...

Chapter

The What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth: some lessons from the first ten years

in The What Works Centres: lessons and insights from an evidence movement

What can policy do to increase local economic growth? This is a question that has challenged decision makers and academics for decades. It's also a fundamental question today, when the UK government has made economic gro...Read more...

Book

Wellbeing: Science and Policy

What produces a happy society and a happy life? Thanks to the new science of wellbeing, we can now answer this question using state-of-the-art empirical evidence. This transforms our ability to base our decisions on the ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

Quantitative urban models: from theory to data

Economic activity is highly unevenly distributed within cities, as reflected in the concentration of economic functions in specific locations, such as finance in the Square Mile in London. The extent to which this concen...Read more...

Journal article

Regional Studies:

Inclusive innovation in cities: from buzzword to policy

'Inclusive innovation' has become an increasingly important subnational policy agenda. This paper reviews this agenda, critiques its current usage and presents a new framework for how the concept can be applied by city g...Read more...

Journal article

Urban Studies:

Progressive cities: urban-rural polarisation of social values and economic development around the world

In contrast to the conservative values of rural populations, cities are often seen as bulwarks of more tolerant, liberal and progressive values. This urban-rural divide in values has become one of the major fault lines i...Read more...

Journal article

Applied Energy:

Breaking it down: a techno-economic assessment of the impact of battery pack design on disassembly costs

The electrification of the transport sector is a critical part of the net-zero transition. The mass adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) powered by lithium-ion batteries in the coming decade will inevitably lead to a larg...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The economics of cities: from theory to data

Economic activity is highly unevenly distributed within cities, as reflected in the concentration of economic functions in specific locations, such as finance in the Square Mile in London. The extent to which this concen...Read more...

Chapter

Housing policy and affordable housing

in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance

Lack of affordable housing is a growing and often primary policy concern in cities throughout the world. The main underlying cause for the "affordability crisis," which has been mounting for decades, is a combination of ...Read more...

Blog

UCLA Housing Voice:

Skyscrapers with Gabriel Ahlfeldt (podcast)

Skyscrapers! We can't help but find them fascinating. Some cities are full of skyscrapers, and others have none. Developers built a 70-story tower on that parcel, but the proposed building just down the street is only 30...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

What lies behind Sri Lanka's collapse?

Corruption, the preferential treatment of connections, dependence on debt finance, and explosive borrowing from China have combined to push Sri Lanka into economic collapse. Political instability has only prolonged the c...Read more...

Journal article

Regional Science and Urban Economics:

Introduction to the special issue: "Urban economics and history"

Read more...

Journal article

Regional Science and Urban Economics:

History and urban economics

This article reviews recent literature using insights from history to answer central questions in urban economics. This area of research has seen rapid growth in the past decade, thanks to new technologies that have made...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

Regional Science and Urban Economics:

Viewing urban spatial history from tall buildings

Micro-geographic data capturing the spatial distribution of economic activity within cities in history are difficult to access. This paper discusses how tall and durable buildings can be exploited as a source of "big dat...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Recidivism and neighbourhood institutions

Between 30% and 50% of individuals sentenced to prison are re-incarcerated in the two years after their release. Andres Barrios-Fernandez and Jorge Garcia-Hombrados examine links between church openings in Chile and re-i...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Human Resources:

The urban wage premium in imperfect labor markets

Using administrative data for West Germany, this paper investigates whether part of the urban wage premium stems from fierce competition in thick labour markets. We first establish that employers possess less wage-settin...Read more...

Chapter

The Urban Economics of Superdiversity

in The Oxford Handbook of Superdiversity

This chapter examines the economic impacts of superdiversity in theory and practice, drawing on the experience of the United Kingdom in the early 2000s. Superdiversity has a largely urban footprint, reflecting the afford...Read more...

Journal article

Urban Studies:

Incubators, accelerators and urban economic development

We combine theory and evidence on incubator and accelerator programmes and their effects on urban economic development. These structured co-working programmes have grown rapidly. However, a rich descriptive literature re...Read more...

Journal article

Regional Science and Urban Economics:

What future for history dependence in spatial economics?

History (sometimes) matters for the location and sizes of cities and neighborhood segregation patterns within cities. Together with evidence on rapid neighborhood change and self-fulfilling expectations, this implies tha...Read more...

Journal article

Health and Place:

Income-related health inequality in urban China (1991-2015): the role of homeownership and housing conditions

Unprecedented economic growth has been experienced over the several decades worldwide, but such rapid economic growth wasn't accompanied by equally-substantial improvement in health, especially health inequalities betwee...Read more...

Journal article

Urban Studies:

Critical commentary: The city and the virus

Cities around the world are the epicentres of the coronavirus pandemic: both in the first wave, as the disease spread from East Asia, and now, as many countries enter a third wave of infections. These spatial patterns ar...Read more...

Journal article

Land Economics:

Urban land use fragmentation and human wellbeing

We study how land use fragmentation affects the life satisfaction of city dwellers. To this end, we calculate fragmentation metrics based on exact geographical coordinates of land use from the European Urban Atlas and of...Read more...

Journal article

Landscape and Urban Planning:

Urban green is more than the absence of city: structural and functional neural basis of urbanicity and green space in the neighbourhood of older adults

The relationship between urbanization, the brain, and human mental health is subject to intensive debate in the current scientific literature. Particularly, since mood and anxiety disorders as well as schizophrenia are k...Read more...

Journal article

Economica:

Suburbanization in the USA, 1970-2010

The second half of the 20th century saw large-scale suburbanization in the USA, with the median share of residents who work in the county where they live falling from 87% to 71% between 1970 and 2000. We introduce a new ...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

City of dreams no more, a year on: worklessness and active labour market policies in urban India

This report provides key findings from a new field survey to assess the long-term impact of Covid-19 on urban workers in low-income areas of India. The survey took place during February and March 2021, just before the s...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

Planning ahead for better beighborhoods: long-run evidence from Tanzania

Africa?s demand for urban housing is soaring, even as it faces a proliferation of slums. In this setting, can modest infrastructure investments in greenfield areas where people subsequently build their own houses facilit...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy:

Education and management practices

The empirical management literature has found that the education of both managers and the workforce more generally appears to be an important driver of better management practices. This article sets out how such relation...Read more...