Search Publications

CEP discussion paper

Money, time, and the demand for children

US fertility has fallen well below replacement, even as stated fertility ideals have not. We ask how much money and time women are willing to trade off for additional children, a question that is difficult to answer usin...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Severance pay reforms, worker flows, and labor market duality

This paper studies how cuts to statutory severance pay affect worker flows, contractual allocation, firm-level hiring composition, and wages in the Portuguese labor market. The analysis exploits the 2011-2013 reforms, wh...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Lost in translation: financial barriers to new technologies

Advanced economies are reshaped by transitions from old to new technological paradigms. These transitions rely on complementary innovations that spread new technologies across industries. What happens when a financial cr...Read more...

Blog

Nobel Prize Outreach:

Philippe Aghion: 'We should enhance manual jobs and soft skills'

Philippe Aghion was awarded the 2025 economic sciences prize for his work on creative destruction, a process where new innovations build upon, and take over from, previous innovations - creating economic growth. Here, he...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

A network approach to geopolitics

In international affairs, what a country does depends on its own interests and on what its partners do. This column uses data on political institutions and UN voting to recover the network of geopolitical influence. The ...Read more...

Chapter

Education, skills and wage growth: Strengthening human capital

in Perspectives on achieving good growth in the UK

Perspectives on achieving good growth in the UK draws together expert contributions from across the breadth of social science disciplines, to illustrate key opportunities and challenges in the growth agenda, while also d...Read more...

Chapter

Targeted investment: Closing the gap through strategic choices

in Perspectives on achieving good growth in the UK

Perspectives on achieving good growth in the UK draws together expert contributions from across the breadth of social science disciplines, to illustrate key opportunities and challenges in the growth agenda, while also d...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Income and Wealth:

Is it psychologically dangerous to live in a rich area? Evidence from census-matched micro data on suicides in England and Wales

This paper reports a new test of relative-deprivation theory. Research into the potential consequences of relative comparisons has in the past had to rely almost exclusively on subjective data on wellbeing. With informat...Read more...

Journal article

Social Science and Medicine:

Getting fit by doing good: Exercise, volunteering, and mental health at scale

Community-based lifestyle interventions combining physical exercise with volunteering are promoted as low-cost, scalable support for those with mental health problems, and feature prominently in social prescribing. Yet r...Read more...

Blog

Fabian Society:

The Budget 2026

Anna Valero writes that the budget gives a clear direction of travel, but delivery as well as intent will determine success....Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Company wage policy in a low-wage labour market

In many countries, minimum wage policies allow employers to pay young workers less than adults, and the UK is now debating how fast to phase out its lower youth minima. But do employers actually use the room that age-spe...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics:

The 2026 Budget buys stability and points in the right direction on growth

The 2026 Budget builds on the back of strong economic growth in the first half of the year. The overall direction of travel is clear and positive, writes Anna Valero. But the challenges of protecting investment and econo...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics:

Budget 2026 - continuity with Reeves

John Healey's 2026 Budget follows the fiscal foundations set down by Rachel Reeves, writes John Van Reenen. But while stability has been preserved, many tough decisions including welfare reform and funding increasing hea...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Thin markets, thick subsidies: local competition and the incidence of heat pump grants

We study how local supply shapes the incidence and quantity response of clean-technology subsidies. In October 2023, the UK government increased the grant for air-source heat pumps from 5,000 to 7,500 GBP in England and ...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economic Studies: Forthcoming

Conversations at scale: robust AI-led interviews

The advent of large language models (LLMs) creates new opportunities to conduct qualitative interviews at scale, with thousands of respondents, thereby bridging qualitative and quantitative methods. We develop a simple, ...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

The returns to viral media

Social media has lowered the barriers to political communication, allowing politicians to reach large audiences without relying on traditional media. Yet easier access does not imply an equal distribution of attention. T...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Losing their religion

This paper studies whether governments can change social norms that constrain women's education and work, and through which mechanism. Albania's 1967 religion ban, which created the world's first atheist state, provides ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Which types of education raise firm productivity? Evidence for managers and workers in the UK

This paper estimates the firm productivity returns to degree field, institution quality, and degree level, and compares them with wage returns. I link a LinkedIn panel from Revelio Labs to Orbis financial accounts for ov...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A double-differences approach to inference in regression discontinuity designs with a discrete running variable

We present a new approach to nonparametric inference in regression discontinuity designs where the running variable is discrete and may have few support points. The approach is based on an intuitive and comparatively wea...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics:

Does falling migration spell trouble for the Budget?

Migration rates to the UK are falling. That might sound politically advantageous for a government that is trying to show it has immigration under control, but some argue that it could in fact spell economic trouble for t...Read more...

CentrePiece article

My must-read paper

Richard Layard recommends the paper that pioneered wellbeing economics...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Can economics help to deter thefts of catalytic converters?

Read more...

CentrePiece article

Teachers are at their strictest in middle age

Read more...

CentrePiece article

Did Brexit make us better at communicating economics?

What happens when evidence meets lived experience...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Firms are leaving major energy savings on the table

Some use 20 times more energy than their peers to produce the same output...Read more...