SERC papers

For individual series listings go to SERC Discussion Papers and SERC Policy Papers

You can find more urban and spatial economic papers on our Urban research programme section.

All SERC papers

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Cohesion Policy Incentives for Collaborative Industrial Research. The Evaluation of a Smart Specialisation Forerunner Programme

This paper evaluates a program of subsidies for Collaborative Industrial Research (co-) funded by the EU Cohesion Policy in Italy mobilizing over 1 billion euros. This program anticipated in the 2007-2013 funding cycle s...Read more...

Riccardo Crescenzi, Mara Giua and Guido de Blasio

22 February 2018

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

One or Many Cohesion Policies of the European Union? On the Diverging Impacts of Cohesion Policy across Member States

Do regions in all Member States (MSs) of the European Union (EU) benefit from Cohesion Policy? Are regional impacts persistently diversified across countries? In order to answer these questions this paper explores how th...Read more...

Riccardo Crescenzi and Mara Giua

22 February 2018

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Interaction of Public and Private Employment: Evidence from a German Government Move

We use the German government move from Bonn to Berlin in 1999 to test competing views about the impact of public employment on private sector activity in a local labor market. A relocated public sector job might create n...Read more...

Giulia Faggio, Teresa Schlüter and Philipp vom Berge

14 February 2018

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Impact of Public Employment: Evidence from Bonn

This paper evaluates the impact of public employment on private sector activity using the relocation of the German federal government from Berlin to Bonn in the wake of the Second World War as a source of exogenous varia...Read more...

Sascha O. Becker, Stephan Heblich and Daniel M. Sturm

4 January 2018

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Highways, Market Access and Spatial Sorting

We design a spatial model featuring workers embodied with heterogeneous skills. In equilibrium, locations with improved market access become relatively more attractive to the high-skilled, high-income earners. We then em...Read more...

Stephan Fretz, Raphaël Parchet and Frédéric Robert-Nicoud

23 November 2017

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Colonial Legacies: Shaping African Cities

Differential institutions imposed during colonial rule continue to affect the spatial structure and urban interactions in African cities. Based on a sample of 318 cities across 28 countries using satellite data on built ...Read more...

Neeraj Baruah, J. Vernon Henderson and Cong Peng

7 November 2017

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Matching Firms and Workers in a Field Experiment in Ethiopia

Do matching frictions affect youth employment in developing countries? We organise job fairs in Addis Ababa, to match firms with a representative sample of young, educated job-seekers. We create very few jobs: one for ap...Read more...

Girum Abebe, Stefano Caria, Marcel Fafchamps, Paolo Falco, Simon Franklin, Simon Quinn and Forhad Shilpi

18 October 2017

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Anonymity or Distance? Job Search and Labour Market Exclusion in a Growing African City

Do obstacles to job search contribute to labour market exclusion in developing countries? To answer this question, we contrast two very different interventions, designed to alleviate spatial and informational constraints...Read more...

Girum Abebe, Stefano Caria, Marcel Fafchamps, Paolo Falco, Simon Franklin and Simon Quinn

4 October 2017

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Decomposing the Impact of Immigration on House Prices

An inflow of immigrants into a region impacts house prices in three ways. For a fixed level of local population, housing demand rises due to the increase in foreign-born population. In addition, immigrants can influence ...Read more...

Rosa Sanchis-Guarner

29 September 2017

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Planning Ahead for Better Neighborhoods: Long Run Evidence from Tanzania

What are the long run consequences of planning and providing basic infrastructure in neighborhoods, where people build their own homes? We study "Sites and Services" projects implemented in seven Tanzanian cities during ...Read more...

Neeraj Baruah, Amanda Dahlstrand, Guy Michaels, Dzhamilya Nigmatulina, Ferdinand Rauch and Tanner Regan

27 September 2017

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Do Speed Cameras Save Lives?

I evaluate whether speed enforcement cameras reduce the number and severity of traffic accidents by penalizing drivers for exceeding speed limits. Relying on micro data on accidents and speed cameras across Great Britain...Read more...

Cheng Keat Tang

13 September 2017

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Housing Allowance and Rents: Evidence from a Stepwise Subsidy Scheme

This paper studies the effect of housing demand subsidies on rents using discontinuities in the Finnish housing allowance system as a quasi-experimental setting. The stepwise dependence of housing allowance on the floor ...Read more...

Essi Eerola and Teemu Lyytikäinen

30 August 2017

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Social Tenants' Health: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Landlord Interventions

Objectives: To test whether a social landlord can improve health outcomes for older tenants and reduce their NHS usage by simple interventions. Design: Randomised controlled trial. Setting: Social housing in five London ...Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Stephen Gibbons and Jemma Mouland

14 August 2017

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Local Economic Impacts of Regeneration Projects: Evidence from UK's Single Regeneration Budget

We study the local economic impacts of a major regeneration programme aimed at enhancing the quality of life of local people in deprived neighbourhoods in the UK. The analysis is based on a panel of firm and area level d...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons, Henry G. Overman and Matti Sarvimäki

4 August 2017

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Energy Costs of Historic Preservation

We explore the impact of historical preservation policies on domestic energy consumption. Using panel data for England from 2006 to 2013 and employing a fixed effects-strategy, we document that (i) rising national energy...Read more...

Christian A. L. Hilber, Charles Palmer and Edward W. Pinchbeck

26 July 2017

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Transfer Taxes and Household Mobility: Distortion on the Housing or Labor Market?

We estimate the effect of the UK Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) – a transfer tax on the purchase price of property or land – on different types of household mobility using micro data. Exploiting a discontinuity in the tax sc...Read more...

Christian A. L. Hilber and Teemu Lyytikäinen

23 June 2017

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Compact City in Empirical Research: A Quantitative Literature Review

The ‘compact city’ is one of the most prominent concepts to have emerged in the global urban policy debate, though it is difficult to ascertain to what extent its theorised positive outcomes can be substantiated by evide...Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Elisabetta Pietrostefani

22 June 2017

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...

Stephen Gibbons, Teemu Lyytikäinen, Henry G. Overman and Rosa Sanchis-Guarner

19 May 2017

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Using Micro-Geography Data to Identify Town-Centre Space in Great Britain

We often talk about ‘Town Centres’, but defining their location and extent is surprisingly difficult. Their boundaries are hard to pin down and intrinsically fuzzy. Nevertheless, the British government introduced very sp...Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber, Piero Montebruno and Rosa Sanchis-Guarner

10 May 2017

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Distributive Politics Inside the City? The Political Economy of Spain's Plan E

We study the allocation of investment projects by municipal governments across groups of voters using data from a fiscal stimulus program carried out in Spain between 2009 and 2011. This program provided municipalities w...Read more...

Felipe Carozzi and Luca Repetto

13 February 2017

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Airports, Market Access and Local Economic Performance: Evidence from China

In this paper we study the effect of airports on local economic performance that arises from better access to domestic markets, using China’s recent rapid air network expansion. We estimate the effects of the implied cha...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons and Wenjie Wu

6 February 2017

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Economic Effects of Density: A Synthesis

This paper synthesises the state of knowledge on the economic effects of density. We consider 15 outcome categories and 202 estimates of density elasticities from 102 studies. More than 50% of these estimates have not be...Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Elisabetta Pietrostefani

31 January 2017

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Stimulative Effect of an Unconditional Block Grant on the Decentralized Provision of Care

Understanding the impact of central government grants on decentralized health care provision is of crucial importance for the design of grant systems, yet empirical evidence on the prevalence of flypaper effects in this ...Read more...

Mark Kattenberg and Wouter Vermeulen

17 November 2016

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

East Side Story: Historical Pollution and Persistent Neighborhood Sorting

Why are the East sides of former industrial cities like London or New York poorer and more deprived? We argue that this observation is the most visible consequence of the historically unequal distribution of air pollutan...Read more...

Stephan Heblich, Alex Trew and Yanos Zylberberg

1 November 2016

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Fear of Fracking? The Impact of the Shale Gas Exploration on House Prices in Britain

Shale gas has grown to become a major new source of energy in countries around the globe. While its importance for energy supply is well recognized, there has also been public concern over potential risks – such as dama...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons, Stephan Heblich, Esther Lho and Christopher Timmins

26 October 2016

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Austerity States, Institutional Dismantling and the Governance of Sub-National Economic Development: The Demise of the Regional Development Agencies in England

Contributing to interpretations of the governance geographies of austerity, the paper explains how, why and in what forms austerity states are constructed by actors in particular political-economic contexts and geographi...Read more...

Mike Coombes, Peter O'Brien, Andy Pike and John Tomaney

22 August 2016

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Traffic Externalities and Housing Prices: Evidence from the London Congestion Charge

This study exploits the introduction of the London Congestion Charge (CC) that greatly improves traffic conditions in Central London to provide new evidence on the capitalization of traffic externalities onto housing val...Read more...

Cheng Keat Tang

19 August 2016

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Housing Market Impacts of Constraining Second Home Investments

We investigate how political backlash against wealthy second home investors in high-amenity places – tourist areas or superstar cities – affects local residents. We develop a general equilibrium model and exploit a quasi...Read more...

Christian A. L. Hilber and Olivier Schöni

15 August 2016

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Impact of Structural Reforms on Regional Growth: Distance to the Frontier Matters

This paper aims to understand the impact of nation-wide structural policies on the productivity growth of OECD regions. In particular we explore how this impact varies with the productivity gap of regions with their coun...Read more...

Sabine D'Costa, Enrique Garcilazo and Joaquim Oliveira Martins

29 July 2016

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Preservation of Historic Districts - Is it Worth it?

I investigate the welfare effect of conservation areas that preserve historic districts by regulating development. Such regulation may improve quality of life but does so by reducing housing productivity – the efficiency...Read more...

Sevrin Waights

28 July 2016

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Geography of City Liveliness and Land Use Configurations: Evidence from Location-Based Big Data in Beijing

This paper explores the complexity in the connection between city liveliness and land use configurations for housing and consumption amenities. The sources of this complexity are captured by an integrated spatial and tem...Read more...

Chengyu Li, Mark Wang, Jianghao Wang and Wenjie Wu

13 July 2016

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Highways, Market Access and Urban Growth in China

We investigate the effects of the construction of the national highway system in China on local economic outcomes. The analysis employs three main approaches. The first is based on a structural model of Ricardian trade t...Read more...

Nathaniel Baum-Snow, Loren Brandt, J. Vernon Henderson, Matthew A. Turner and Qinghua Zhang

8 June 2016

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Location, Search Costs and Youth Unemployment: Experimental Evidence from Transport Subsidies in Addis Ababa

Do high search costs affect the labour market outcomes of job seekers living far away from jobs? I randomly assign transport subsidies to unemployed youth in urban Ethiopia. Treated respondents increase job search intens...Read more...

Simon Franklin

26 May 2016

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Global Spatial Distribution of Economic Activity: Nature, History and the Role of Trade

We study the distribution of economic activity, as proxied by lights at night, across 250,000 grid cells of average area 560 square kilometres. We first document that nearly half of the variation can be explained by a pa...Read more...

J. Vernon Henderson, Tim Squires, Adam Storeygard and David Weil

10 May 2016

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Enabled to Work: The Impact of Government Housing on Slum Dwellers in South Africa

This paper looks at the link between housing conditions and household income and labour market participation in South Africa. I use four waves of panel data from 2002-2009 on households that were originally living in inf...Read more...

Simon Franklin

10 May 2016

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Quantitative Easing of an International Financial Centre: How Central London Came So Well Out of the Post-2007 Crisis

This paper documents and seeks to explain the remarkably positive employment trends of a central area of London in the years since the onset of the financial crisis. The volatility of this economy since the 1980s had sug...Read more...

Ian Gordon

6 May 2016

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Building the City: Urban Transition and Institutional Frictions

We model the building of a city, estimate parameters of the model, and calculate welfare losses from institutional frictions encountered in changing land-use. We distinguish formal and slum construction technologies; in ...Read more...

J. Vernon Henderson, Tanner Regan and Anthony J. Venables

27 April 2016

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Subways and Urban Growth: Evidence from Earth

We investigate the relationship between the extent of a city’s subway network, its population and its spatial configuration. To accomplish this investigation, for the 632 largest cities in the world, we construct panel d...Read more...

Marco Gonzalez-Navarro and Matthew A. Turner

27 April 2016

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Take What You Can: Property Rights, Contestability and Conflict

Weak property rights are strongly associated with underdevelopment, low state capacity and civil conflict. In economic models of conflict, outbreaks of violence require two things: the prize must be both valuable and con...Read more...

Thiemo Fetzer and Samuel Marden

26 April 2016

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Taking Care of the Budget? Practice-level Outcomes during Commissioning Reforms in England

I investigate whether vesting budgets with doctors impacts treatment decisions and patients outcomes by exploiting the transitional phase of major recent health care reforms in England that passed budgets to consortia of...Read more...

Edward W. Pinchbeck

15 February 2016

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The (Displacement) Effects of Spatially Targeted Enterprise Initiatives: Evidence from UK LEGI

We investigate the impacts of a significant area-based intervention (LEGI) that aimed to increase employment and entrepreneurial activity in 30 disadvantaged areas across England. We examine the spatial pattern of effect...Read more...

Elias Einiö and Henry G. Overman

9 February 2016

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Policy Paper

Powerhouse of Cards? Understanding the 'Northern Powerhouse'

The ‘Northern Powerhouse’ is the UK government’s latest attempt to reduce regional disparities. By bringing together the cluster of cities in the North of England, the aim is to create an agglomeration with the scale to ...Read more...

Neil Lee

22 January 2016

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Why Does Birthplace Matter So Much? Sorting, Learning and Geography

We consider the link between birthplace and wages. Using a unique panel dataset we estimate a raw elasticity of wage with respect to birthplace size of 4.6%, two thirds of the 6.8% raw elasticity with respect to city siz...Read more...

Clément Bosquet and Henry G. Overman

22 January 2016

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Trade and Frictional Unemployment in the Global Economy

We develop a multi-country, multi-sector trade model with labor market frictions and equilibrium unemployment. Trade opening leads to a reduction in unemployment if it raises real wages and reallocates labor towards sect...Read more...

Céline Carrère, Anja Grujovic and Frédéric Robert-Nicoud

10 December 2015

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Spatial Decay in Commuting Probabilities: Employment Potential vs. Commuting Gravity

We show that an employment potential capitalisation model, which establishes a spatial relationship between the price of land and the spatial distribution of employment through a transport matrix, produces estimates of t...Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Nicolai Wendland

4 November 2015

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Transfer Taxes and Household Mobility: Distortion on the Housing or Labor Market?

Christian A. L. Hilber and Teemu Lyytikäinen

12 October 2015

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

ICT and Education: Evidence from Student Home Addresses

Governments are making it a priority to upgrade information and communication technologies (ICT) with the aim to increase available internet connection speeds. This paper presents a new empirical strategy to estimate the...Read more...

Benjamin Faber, Rosa Sanchis-Guarner and Felix Weinhardt

6 October 2015

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Offshoring and the Geography of Jobs in Great Britain

This paper investigates the impact of the offshoring of production activities on domestic jobs in Great Britain. The paper considers both the spatial heterogeneity across local labour markets and variations in the intens...Read more...

Luisa Gagliardi, Simona Iammarino and Andrés Rodríguez-Pose

5 October 2015

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Role of Education for Amenity Based Sorting in British Cities

This paper investigates the relation between amenities and skills by looking at the sorting behavior of skilled individuals across neighbourhoods within British cities. Using a detailed micro dataset on housing transacti...Read more...

Luisa Gagliardi and Teresa Schlüter

1 October 2015

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Credit Constraints and the Composition of Housing Sales. Farewell to First-Time Buyers?

During the housing bust of 2008–2009, home prices and transaction volumes fell across the entire United Kingdom. However, while the fall in prices was similar across housing types, transaction volumes fell more for homes...Read more...

Felipe Carozzi

18 September 2015

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

FDI Location Across British Regions and Inward Investment Policy

The theory and empirical evidence on FDI location emphasise agglomeration economies over classical location factors, such as grants. This paper uses panel data to analyse the effect of the main instrument of inward inves...Read more...

Jonathan Jones and Colin Wren

December 2008

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Business as Unusual. An Explanation of the Increase of Private Economic Activity in High-Conflict Areas in Afghanistan

In this paper we use a unique dataset that combines spatial detailed information on conflict events and on households' activity, to show a positive and significant correlation between violent conflict and entrepreneurshi...Read more...

Tommaso Ciarli, Chiara Kofol and Carlo Menon

17 July 2015

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Regulating Housing Vacancies Away? The Paradoxical Effects of Mismatch

Policy makers agree that vacant houses are undesirable. Moreover the existence of empty houses is used as an argument for allocating less land for new construction. So higher vacancy rates tend to trigger tighter restric...Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber and Hans R. A. Koster

17 July 2015

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Vertical City: The Price of Land and the Height of Buildings in Chicago 1870-2010

We analyze the determinants of building heights in Chicago by combining a micro-geographic data set on tall buildings with a unique panel of land prices covering 140 years. Consistent with the predictions of classic urba...Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Daniel P. McMillen

14 July 2015

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Big Plant Closures and Agglomeration Economies

This paper analyses the effects of large manufacturing plant closures on local employment. Specifically, we estimate the net employment effects of the closure of 45 large manufacturing plants in Spain, which relocated ab...Read more...

Jordi Jofre-Monseny, Maria Sánchez-Vidal and Elisabet Viladecans-Marsal

13 July 2015

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

What Makes Cities More Productive? Agglomeration Economies and the Role of Urban Governance: Evidence from 5 OECD Countries

This paper estimates agglomeration benefits across five OECD countries, and represents the first empirical analysis that combines evidence on agglomeration benefits and the productivity impact of metropolitan governance ...Read more...

Rudiger Ahrend, Emily Farchy, Ioannis Kaplanis and Alexander C. Lembcke

13 July 2015

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Are People Moving Home Less? An Analysis of Address Changing in England and Wales, 1971-2011, Using the ONS Longitudinal Study

Expectations of migration and mobility steadily increasing in the longer term, which have a long currency in migration theory and related social science, are at odds with the latest US research showing a marked decline i...Read more...

Tony Champion and Ian Shuttleworth

6 July 2015

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Is Internal Migration Slowing? An Analysis of Four Decades of NHSCR Records for England and Wales

This paper is prompted by the widespread acceptance that the rates of inter-county and inter-state migration have been falling in the USA and sets itself the task of examining whether this decline in migration intensitie...Read more...

Tony Champion and Ian Shuttleworth

6 July 2015

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Spillovers from Immigrant Diversity in Cities

Using comprehensive longitudinal matched employer-employee data for the U.S.,this paper provides new evidence on the relationship between productivity and immigration-spawned urban diversity. Existing empirical work has ...Read more...

Abigail Cooke and Thomas Kemeny

15 June 2015

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...

Stephen Gibbons

Revised July 2017

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Moving People with Ideas - Innovation, Inter-regional Mobility and Firm Heterogeneity

This paper looks at the link between inter-regional mobility, innovation and firms’ behavioural heterogeneity in their reliance on localised external sources of knowledge. By linking patent data (capturing inventors’ int...Read more...

Riccardo Crescenzi and Luisa Gagliardi

15 April 2015

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Exploring the Geography of China's Airport Networks: A Hybrid Complex-Network Approach

Air networks are normal examples of transportation systems among ubiquitous big data networks in the dynamic nature. This is particularly the case in developing countries with rapid airport network expansions. This paper...Read more...

Zhengbin Dong and Wenjie Wu

27 March 2015

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...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Arne Feddersen

25 March 2015

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Distinctively Different: A New Approach to Valuing Architectural Amenities

We propose a method to estimate the capitalized value of the architectural design quality of a neighbourhood. Our economic design premium is identified by spatially differentiating property prices and design quality with...Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Nancy Holman

4 February 2015

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...

Frank Ethridge, Maryann Feldman, Thomas Kemeny and Ted Zoller

19 January 2015

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...

Christian A. L. Hilber and Charles Palmer

19 December 2014

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Time Value of Housing: Historical Evidence from London Residential Leases

Most housing transactions in London involve trading long leases of varying lengths. We exploit this feature to estimate the time value of housing --- the relationship between the value of a property and the length of tim...Read more...

Philippe Bracke, Edward W. Pinchbeck and James Wyatt

18 December 2014

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Walk This Way: Estimating Impacts of Walk in Centres at Hospital Emergency Departments in the English National Health Service

In publicly funded health care systems policy-makers face a dilemma: placing low acuity emergency care services outside hospitals may widen access to care and divert patients from making costly hospital visits, but may a...Read more...

Edward W. Pinchbeck

4 December 2014

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Asymptotic Properties of Imputed Hedonic Price Indices

Hedonic price indices are currently considered to be the state-of-the-art approach to computing constant-quality price indices. In particular, hedonic price indices based on imputed prices have become popular both among ...Read more...

Olivier Schöni

20 October 2014

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Employment and Technological Change: On the Geography of Labour Market Adjustments

This paper investigates the impact of technological change on local labour market outcomes in Britain. Using a newly assembled panel database for the period 2000-2007 and a directly observed measure of technological chan...Read more...

Luisa Gagliardi

17 October 2014

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Local Economic Conditions and the Nature of New Housing Supply

We present a modified open monocentric city model that assumes that land is available for conversion into new housing throughout the city. The model predicts that positive local income shocks (i) increase the city’s shar...Read more...

Christian A. L. Hilber, Jan Rouwendal and Wouter Vermeulen

29 August 2014

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Neighbourhood Turnover and Teenage Attainment

Theories about neighbours’ influence on children based on social capital, cohesion and disorganisation stress the importance of neighbourhood stability. However, amongst the vast number of studies on the effect of neighb...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons, Olmo Silva and Felix Weinhardt

14 August 2014

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Spatial Methods

This paper is concerned with methods for analysing spatial data. After initial discussion on the nature of spatial data, including the concept of randomness, we focus most of our attention on linear regression models tha...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons, Henry G. Overman and Eleonora Patacchini

13 August 2014

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Speed 2.0. Evaluating Access to Universal Digital Highways

This paper shows that having access to a fast Internet connection is an important determinant of capitalization effects in property markets. We combine microdata on property prices in England between 1995 and 2010 with l...Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Pantelis Koutroumpis and Tommaso Valletti

24 July 2014

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

First-Come First-Served: Identifying the Demand Effect of Immigration Inflows on House Prices

An inflow of immigrants into a region affects house prices in three ways. In the short run, housing demand increases due to the increase in foreign-born population. In the long run, immigrants affect native location deci...Read more...

Rosa Sanchis-Guarner

27 May 2014

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Gone with the Wind: Valuing the Visual Impacts of Wind Turbines through House Prices

This study provides quantitative evidence on the local benefits and costs of wind farm developments in England and Wales, focussing on their visual environmental impacts. In the tradition of studies in environmental, pub...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons

2 April 2014

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...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Kristoffer Moeller and Nicolai Wendland

25 March 2014

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Policy Paper

Evaluating Spatial Policies

In most countries economic prosperity is very unevenly distributed across space: regions, cities and neighbourhoods seem to be very unequal, whether we look at average earnings, employment, education or almost any other ...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons, Max Nathan and Henry G. Overman

19 March 2014

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Culturally Clustered or in the Cloud? Location of Internet Start-ups in Berlin

Knowledge based firms like IT companies do neither have a capital- nor a land intensive production. They predominantly rely on qualified labour and increasingly depend on the location of its (potential) employees. This i...Read more...

Kristoffer Moeller

19 March 2014

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...

Kenzo Asahi

11 March 2014

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Relocation of Public Sector Workers: Evaluating a Place-based Policy

This paper investigates the local labor market impact of a UK relocation initiative, the 2014 Lyons Review. The review resulted in the dispersal of about 25,000 civil service jobs out of London and the South East towards...Read more...

Giulia Faggio

12 February 2014

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

'Iconic Design' as Deadweight Loss: Rent Acquisition by Design in the Constrained London Office Market

Britain’s land use regulation (planning) system imposes very tight restrictions on the supply of office space so creating substantial rents. An unmeasured part of the costs associated with these restrictions likely comes...Read more...

Paul Cheshire and Gerard H. Dericks

23 January 2014

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Do Inventors Talk to Strangers? On Proximity and Collaborative Knowledge Creation

This paper investigates how physical, organisational, institutional, cognitive, social, and ethnic proximities between inventors shape their collaboration decisions. Using a new panel of UK inventors and a novel identifi...Read more...

Riccardo Crescenzi, Max Nathan and Andrés Rodríguez-Pose

9 January 2014

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Heterogeneous Agglomeration

Many prior treatments of agglomeration either explicitly or implicitly suppose that all industries agglomerate for the same reasons, with traditional Marshallian (1890) factors affecting all industries similarly. An impo...Read more...

Giulia Faggio, Olmo Silva and William C. Strange

8 January 2014

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Urban Renewal after the Berlin Wall

Urban renewal areas are popular but empirically understudied spatial planning instruments designed to prevent urban decline and induce renewal. We use a quasi-experimental research design to study the effects of 22 renew...Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Wolfgang Maennig and Felix J. Richter

18 December 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Local Institutions and Local Economic Growth: The State of the Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) in England - A National Survey

This study seeks to take stock of where the LEPs are at and where they are heading by analysing their strategies and priorities, organisation and governance, resources, effectiveness and working relations, innovations, l...Read more...

David Marlow, Anja McCarthy, Peter O'Brien, Andy Pike and John Tomaney

29 November 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Immigrant Diversity and Economic Development in Cities: A Critical Review

This paper reviews a growing literature investigating how ‘immigrant’ diversity relates to urban economic performance. As distinct from the labor-supply focus of much of the economics of immigration, this paper reviews w...Read more...

Thomas Kemeny

29 November 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Cheap Imports and the Loss of U.S. Manufacturing Jobs

This paper examines the role of international trade, and specifically imports from low-wage countries, in determining patterns of job loss in U.S. manufacturing industries between 1992 and 2007. Motivated by intuitions f...Read more...

Abigail Cooke, Thomas Kemeny and David Rigby

13 November 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Gender and Competition: Evidence from Academic Promotions in France

Differences in promotion across genders are still prevalent in many occupations. Recent work based on experimental evidence indicates that women participate less in or exert lower effort during contests. We exploit the u...Read more...

Clément Bosquet, Pierre-Philippe Combes and Cecila Garcia-Peñalosa

7 November 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Here Be Startups: Exploring a young digital cluster in Inner East London

The digital industries cluster known as 'Silicon Roundabout' has been quietly growing in East London since the 1990s. Now rebranded 'Tech City', it is now the focus of huge public and government attention. National and l...Read more...

Max Nathan and Emma Vandore

7 November 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

No Escape? The Co-ordination Problem in Heritage Preservation

Conservation areas (CAs) are among the most restrictive English planning policies. Designation implies a significant limitation of owners’ control over the shape and appearance of their properties. The policy, however, c...Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Nancy Holman

23 October 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Cultural Diversity, Cities and Innovation: firm Effects or City Effects?

Growing cultural diversity is seen as important for innovation. Research has focused on two potential mechanisms: a firm effect, with diversity at the firm level improving knowledge sourcing or ideas generation, and a ci...Read more...

Neil Lee

11 October 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Game of Zones: The Economics of Conservation Areas

Provided there are positive external benefits attached to the historic character of buildings, owners of properties in designated conservation areas benefit from a reduction in uncertainty regarding the future of their a...Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Kristoffer Moeller, Sevrin Waights and Nicolai Wendland

27 September 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Student Satisfaction, League Tables and University Applications

We investigate the impact of information about student satisfaction on university choice, using data from the UK’s National Student Survey (NSS) and on applications to undergraduate degree courses. We show that the NSS h...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons, Eric Neumayer and Richard Perkins

27 September 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Do Long Distance Moves Discourage Homeownership? Evidence from England

We hypothesize that as the distance of a residential move increases, the cost of collecting information on the destination housing market rises, the amount and quality of information collected fall, and the chances of ma...Read more...

Sejeong Ha and Christian A. L. Hilber

26 September 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Gibrat's Law and the British Industrial Revolution

This paper examines Gibrat’s law in England and Wales between 1801 and 1911 using a unique data set covering the entire settlement size distribution. We find that Gibrat’s law broadly holds even in the face of population...Read more...

Alexander Klein and Tim Leunig

25 September 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Urban Escalators and Inter-regional Elevators: The Difference that Location, Mobility and Sectoral Specialisation make to Occupational Progression

This paper uses evidence from the (British) Longitudinal Study to examine the influence on occupational advancement of the city-region of residence (an escalator effect) and of relocation between city-regions (an elevato...Read more...

Tony Champion, Mike Coombes and Ian Gordon

25 September 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Land Use Regulation and Productivity - Land Matters: Evidence from a UK Supermarket Chain

We use store-specific data for a UK supermarket chain to estimate the impact of planning on store output. Exploiting the variation in policies between England and other UK countries, we isolate the impact of Town Centre ...Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber and Ioannis Kaplanis

20 August 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Down and Out in Italian Towns: Measuring the Impact of Economic Downturns on Crime

The paper investigates the effect of local economic conditions on crime. The study focuses on Italy’s local labor markets and analyzes the short-term response of crime to the severe slump of 2007-2009. It shows that the ...Read more...

Carlo Menon and Guido de Blasio

21 June 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Urbanity

I define a composite amenity that provides aesthetic and consumption value to local residents: Urbanity. A novel data set of geo-tagged photos shared in internet communities serves as a proxy for urbanity. From the spati...Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt

17 May 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Urban Wage Growth Premium: Sorting or Learning?

This paper is concerned with the urban wage premium and addresses two central issues about which the field has not yet reached a consensus. First, the extent to which sorting of high ability individuals into urban areas ...Read more...

Sabine D'Costa and Henry G. Overman

17 May 2013

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...

Wenjie Wu

23 April 2013

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...

Clément Bosquet and Pierre-Philippe Combes

23 April 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

How Far Do England’s Second-Order Cities Emulate London as Human-Capital ‘Escalators’?

In the urban resurgence accompanying the growth of the knowledge economy, second-order cities appear to be losing out to the principal city, especially where the latter is much larger and benefits from substantially grea...Read more...

Tony Champion, Mike Coombes and Ian Gordon

21 March 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

My Precious! The Location and Diffusion of Scientific Research: Evidence from the Synchrotron Diamond Light Source

We analyze the impact of the establishment of a GBP 380 million basic scientific research facility in the UK on the geographical distribution of related research. We investigate whether the siting of the Diamond Light So...Read more...

Christian Helmers and Henry G. Overman

21 March 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Real Wages, Amenities and the Adjustment of Working Hours Across Regional Labour Markets

This article establishes a link between the traditional labour economics and the urban economics literature by analyzing differences in working hours across regional labour market areas in the UK. Using a real wage index...Read more...

Teresa Schlüter

8 March 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Top Team Demographics, Innovation and Business Performance: Findings from English Firms and Cities 2008-9

High levels of net migration to the UK have contributed to growing cultural diversity, and researchers are turning their attention to the long-term effects of diversity on productivity. Yet little is known about these is...Read more...

Max Nathan

8 March 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Access All Areas? The Impact of Fees and Background on Student Demand for Postgraduate Higher Education in the UK

This paper analyses participation in postgraduate higher education in the UK at the micro-level makes several contributions to the literature. Firstly, it describes trends in postgraduate participation in the UK. Secondl...Read more...

Philip Wales

6 February 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

House Prices and Rents: Micro Evidence from a Matched Dataset in Central London

Using the proprietary dataset of a real estate agency, I analyse tens of thousands of housing sale and rental transactions in Central London during the 2005-2011 period. I run hedonic regressions on both prices and rents...Read more...

Philippe Bracke

6 February 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Importance of Time Zone Assignment: Evidence from Residential Electricity Consumption

This paper presents the first nationwide empirical assessment of residential electricity use in response to the timing of daylight. Employing Geographical Information Systems (GIS) solar times of sunrise and sunset are c...Read more...

Felix Weinhardt

7 January 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Rocketing Rents The magnitude and attenuation of agglomeration economies in the commercial property market

Rocketing rents in urban areas are likely explained by agglomeration economies. This paper measures the impact of these external economies on commercial property values using unique micro¿]data on commercial rents and em...Read more...

Hans R. A. Koster

7 January 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Historic Amenities, Income and Sorting of Households

We test the impact of historic amenities on house prices and sorting of households within cities. Conservation area boundaries enable us to employ a semiparametric regression-discontinuity approach to measure the impact ...Read more...

Hans R. A. Koster, Piet Rietveld and Jos van Ommeren

7 January 2013

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Causal Effect of Credit Guarantees for SMEs: Evidence from Italy

We evaluate the effectiveness of a partial credit guarantee program implemented in a large Italian region using unique microdata from a broad set of firms. Our results show that the policy was effective to the extent tha...Read more...

Alessio D'Ignazio and Carlo Menon

19 December 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Size Distribution Across All 'Cities': A Unifying Approach

Older cities in the US tend to be larger than younger ones. The distribution of city sizes is, therefore, systematically related to the country's city age distribution. We introduce endogenous city creation into a dynami...Read more...

Kristian Giesen and Jens Südekum

19 December 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Specialization and Regional Economic Development

Debates about urban growth and change often center on specialization.However, arguments linking specialization to metropolitan economic development contain diverse, and sometimes conflicting, claims. Is it better to be h...Read more...

Thomas Kemeny and Michael Storper

6 December 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Driving Up Wages: The Effects of Road Construction in Great Britain

This paper estimates the effects of road construction on individual labour market outcomes using micro-data from Great Britain between 2002 and 2008. To capture these effects, I use a measure of accessibility to employme...Read more...

Rosa Sanchis-Guarner

26 October 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Impact of Supply Constraints on House Prices in England

i) This discussion paper, originally published September 2012, is a completely revised version from April 2014. ...Read more...

Christian A. L. Hilber and Wouter Vermeulen

Revised July 2014

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Economics of Density: Evidence from the Berlin Wall

This paper develops a quantitative model of city structure to separate agglomeration forces, dispersion forces and fundamentals as determinants of location choices. The model remains tractable and amenable to empirical a...Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Stephen J. Redding, Daniel M. Sturm and Nikolaus Wolf

13 September 2012

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...

Stephen Gibbons, Teemu Lyytikäinen, Henry G. Overman and Rosa Sanchis-Guarner

7 September 2012

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...

Wenjie Wu

Revised April 2014

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Effect of the UK Stamp Duty Land Tax on Household Mobility

We estimate the effect of the UK Stamp Duty Land Tax on household mobility using micro data. Exploiting a discontinuity in the tax schedule as a quasi-experimental setting, we isolate the impact of the stamp duty from ot...Read more...

Christian A. L. Hilber and Teemu Lyytikäinen

23 July 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Trade Liberalisation Does Not Always Raise Wage Premia: Evidence from Ugandan Districts

The process of economic integration over the past two decades has been accompanied by an expanding income wedge between skilled and unskilled workers in many developing countries. This was also the case for Ugandan wage ...Read more...

Massimiliano Calì

29 June 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Spatial Variations in Amenity Values: New Evidence from Beijing, China

Using parks as an example, this paper explores the robustness and sources of spatial variation in the estimated amenity values using an extended geographically weighted regression (GWR) technique. This analysis, illustra...Read more...

Wenjie Wu

29 June 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Total Factor Productivity Growth in Local Economic Partnership Regions in Britain, 1997-2008

This paper decomposes aggregate TFP growth in Britain for 1997-2008 to show the contribution of different LEPs and the role played by manufacturing and services and UK- and foreign-owned plants within these LEPs. These c...Read more...

Richard Harris and John Moffat

21 June 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Effect of Public Sector Employment on Local Labour Markets

This paper considers the impact of public sector employment on local labour markets. Using English data at the Local Authority level for 2003 to 2007 we find that public sector employment has no identifiable effect on to...Read more...

Giulia Faggio and Henry G. Overman

14 June 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Do Homeowners Benefit Urban Neighborhoods? Evidence from Housing Prices

Homeownership is heavily subsidized in many countries mainly through the tax code. The adverse effects of lenient tax treatment of owner-occupied housing on economic efficiency and growth are large and well documented in...Read more...

Mika Kortelainen and Tuukka Saarimaa

23 May 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Does Self-Employment Measure Entrepreneurship? Evidence from Great Britain

Research on entrepreneurship often uses information on self-employment to proxy for business creation and innovative behaviour. However, little evidence has been collected on the link between these measures. In this pape...Read more...

Giulia Faggio and Olmo Silva

22 May 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Firm Size and Judicial Efficiency in Italy: Evidence from the Neighbour's Tribunal

We investigate the causal relationship between judicial efficiency and firm size across Italian municipalities, exploiting spatial discontinuities in tribunals' jurisdiction for identification. Results show that halving ...Read more...

Silvia Giacomelli and Carlo Menon

4 May 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Ambition, Human Capital Acquisition and the Metropolitan Escalator

This paper examines the relation between ambition, as a form of dynamic human capital, and the escalator role of high order metropolitan regions, as originally identified by Fielding (1989). It argues that occupational p...Read more...

Ian Gordon

4 May 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Accounting for Big City Growth in Low Paid Occupations: Immigration and/or Service Class Consumption

Growth of 'global cities' in the 1980s was supposed to have involved an occupational polarisation, including growth of low paid service jobs. Though held to be untrue for European cities, at the time, some such growth di...Read more...

Ian Gordon and Ioannis Kaplanis

4 May 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Is Pennine England becoming more Polycentric or more Centripetal? An Analysis of Commuting Flows in a Transforming Industrial Region, 1981-2001

This paper examines census-derived commuting data for the world’s earliest major urbanindustrial region, now home to 10 million people. Owing its origins to water power from the Pennine rivers, this region now comprises ...Read more...

Tony Champion and Mike Coombes

25 April 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Great Britain's Second-Order City Regions in Recessions, 1978-2010

While it is now accepted that the 2008-09 recession accentuated regional differences in Britain, it is more difficult to identify the role of major cities, especially over a longer time scale. Using previously establishe...Read more...

Tony Champion and Alan Townsend

24 April 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Homeownerhip and Entrepreneurship

We study the link between homeownership and entrepreneurship by exploiting the longitudinal dimension of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and constructing a detailed monthly-spell dataset that tracks individuals...Read more...

Philippe Bracke, Christian A. L. Hilber and Olmo Silva

24 April 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Politics in Coalition Formation of Local Governments

We analyze empirically the coalition formation of local governments using a novel reduced form econometric procedure that allows for multi-partner mergers. Using Finnish municipal merger data where mergers were decided i...Read more...

Tuukka Saarimaa and Janne Tukiainen

2 March 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

A Note on the Value of Foregone Open Space in Sprawling Cities

Foregone benefits of the open space that is sacrificed through urban sprawl are hard to quantify. We obtain a simple benchmark measure by introducing a demand for trips beyond the urban boundary into the monocentric city...Read more...

Jan Rouwendal and Wouter Vermeulen

2 February 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Flexible Employment and Cross-Regional Adjustment

Employment flexibility is commonly associated to greater labour mobility and thus faster cross-regional adjustments. The literature however offers very little hard evidence on this and quite limited theoretical guidance....Read more...

Ioannis Kaplanis and Vassilis Monastiriotis

20 January 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

External Benefits of Brownfield Redevelopment: An Applied Urban General Equilbirum Analysis

Does brownfield redevelopment warrant government support? We explore several external benefits in an urban general equilibrium framework. Preferences are modelled such that demand for housing units in the city is downwar...Read more...

Niels Vermeer and Wouter Vermeulen

17 January 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Causal Effects of an Industrial Policy

Business support policies designed to raise productivity and employment are common worldwide, but rigorous micro-econometric evaluation of their causal effects is rare. We exploit multiple changes in the area-specific el...Read more...

Chiara Criscuolo, Ralf Martin, Henry G. Overman and John Van Reenen

10 January 2012

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Does Skilled Migration Foster Innovative Performance? Evidence from British Local Areas

What is the effect of an increase in the stock of human capital on the innovative performance of a local economy? This paper tests the hypothesis of a causal link between an increase in the average stock of human capital...Read more...

Luisa Gagliardi

18 November 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Bright Side of Social Capital: How 'Bridging' Makes Italian Provinces More Innovative

Social capital has remained relatively underexplored in innovation literature. Existing studies have failed to reach a consensus on its impact on local innovative performance: some empirical analyses emphasize a positive...Read more...

Riccardo Crescenzi, Luisa Gagliardi and Marco Percoco

18 November 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Estimating and Forecasting with a Dynamic Spatial Panel Data Model

This paper focuses on the estimation and predictive performance of several estimators for the dynamic and autoregressive spatial lag panel data model with spatially correlated disturbances. In the spirit of Arellano and ...Read more...

Badi H. Baltagi, Bernard Fingleton and Alain Pirotte

3 November 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Geographic Concentration and the Temporal Scope of Agglomeration Economics: An Index Decomposition

The paper decomposes a geographical concentration index to examine the temporal scope of a spillover, which is the period of time over which one firm’s activity directly affects the location of other firms’ activities. N...Read more...

Colin Wren

3 November 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Policy Paper

Assessing the Government's Proposals to Reform the UK Planning System

This note discusses the UK government’s proposed reforms to the land use planning system. It considers the case for reform and the extent to which the reforms are likely to meet their objectives. It then makes some sugge...Read more...

Max Nathan and Henry G. Overman

2 November 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Policy Paper

What We Know (and Don't Know) About the Links between Planning and Economic Performance

This note considers the impact of land use planning on economic performance. Specifically, we discuss some of the economic and social costs of the current English system, some of which have been underplayed in public deb...Read more...

Max Nathan and Henry G. Overman

2 November 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Agglomeration Externalities and Urban Growth Controls

Should constraints on urban expansion be relaxed because of external agglomeration economies? In a system of heterogeneous cities, we demonstrate that second-best land use policy consists of a tax on city creation and a ...Read more...

Wouter Vermeulen

26 October 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Policy Paper

The Future of Rural Policy: Lessons from Spatial Economics (Policy Note)

This policy note spells out lessons for rural policy that emerge from recent SERC research. It summarises a SERC policy paper available at http://www.spatialeconomics.ac.uk/textonly/SERC/publications/download/sercpp008.p...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons and Henry G. Overman

11 October 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Policy Paper

The Future of Rural Policy: Lessons from Spatial Economics

This policy paper is concerned with rural policy. It spells out the lessons for rural policy that emerge from recent SERC research....Read more...

Stephen Gibbons and Henry G. Overman

11 October 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Ethnic Inventors, Diversity and Innovation in the UK: Evidence from Patents Microdata

Ethnic inventors play important roles in US innovation systems, especially in high-tech regions like Silicon Valley. Do ‘ethnicity-innovation’ channels exist elsewhere? This paper investigates, using a new panel of UK pa...Read more...

Max Nathan

11 October 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Economics Implications of House Price Capitalization: A Synthesis

In this article I argue that the extent to which fiscal variables are capitalized into house prices has important economic implications. I synthesize an emerging literature that explores the conditions under which public...Read more...

Christian A. L. Hilber

11 October 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Does Additional Spending Help Urban Schools? An Evaluation Using Boundary Discontinuities

Improvement of educational attainment in schools in urban, disadvantaged areas is an important priority for policy – particularly in countries like England which have a long tail at the bottom of the educational distribu...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons, Sandra McNally and Martina Viarengo

27 August 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

On the Relative Importance of Agglomeration Economies in the Location of FDI Across British Regions

The paper examines the relative importance for industrial location of production linkages and knowledge spillovers, distinguishing between intermediate and non-intermediate goods that are backwards or forwards in nature....Read more...

Jonathan Jones and Colin Wren

27 August 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

From Russia with Love: The Impact of Relocated Firms on Incumbent Survival

We identify the impact of local firm concentration on incumbent performance with a quasi natural experiment. When Germany was divided after World War II, many firms in the machine tool industry fled the Soviet occupied z...Read more...

Oliver Falck, Christina Guenther, Stephan Heblich and William R. Kerr

27 August 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Form or Function? The Impact of New Football Stadia on Property Prices in London

Prestigious sports facilities increasingly feature among the most expensive development projects worldwide. Considerable public funds are often committed based on expected neighbourhood effects. This paper focuses on the...Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Georgios Kavetsos

13 July 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Is the Sky the Limit? An Analysis of High-Rise Office Buildings

Modern central business districts are characterised by high-rise office buildings. Helsley and Strange (2008) argue that skyscrapers are caused by agglomeration economies and a prize for being the tallest, so a reputatio...Read more...

Hans R. A. Koster, Piet Rietveld and Jos van Ommeren

13 July 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Homeownership and NIMBYism: A Spatial Analysis of Airport Effects

This study evaluates the cost of aircraft noise in Berlin, Germany, on the background of the home-voter hypothesis, which has received increasing attention in the literature. First, we use exogenous variation in airport ...Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Wolfgang Maennig

July 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Whether to Hire Local Contract Teachers? Trade-off Between Skills and Preferences in India

Whether to hire teachers locally on a contract basis, or via competitive examinations as government officials, is a major policy question in developing countries. We use a Discrete Choice Experiment to assess the job pre...Read more...

Sonja Fagernäs and Panu Pelkonen

July 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Valuing Iconic Design: Frank Lloyd Wright Architecture in Oak Park, Illinois

This study investigates the willingness of homebuyers to pay for co-location with iconic architecture. Oak Park, Illinois was chosen as the study area given its unique claim of having 24 residential structures designed b...Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Alexandra Mastro

July 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Tax Competition Among Local Governments: Evidence from a Property Tax Reform in Finland

This paper uses a Finnish policy intervention to study tax competition among local governments. Changes in the statutory lower limits to the property tax rates are used as a source of exogenous variation to estimate the ...Read more...

Teemu Lyytikäinen

June 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Policy Paper

Economic Growth in Cities: Issues for Central Government

This note is concerned with the role of cities and urban policy in growth. Decentralisation from central to local government may help city leaders raise economic performance. It also generates new policy choices for cent...Read more...

Henry G. Overman

June 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Effects of Agglomeration on Wages: Evidence from the Micro-Level

This paper estimates individual wage equations in order to test two rival non-nested theories of economic agglomeration, namely New Economic Geography (NEG), as represented by the NEG wage equation and urban economic (UE...Read more...

Bernard Fingleton and Simonetta Longhi

June 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Agglomeration in the Periphery

i. This discussion paper is a completely revised version of SERCDP0047, published April 2010....Read more...

Matti Sarvimäki

May 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Tracking Unemployment in Wales through Recession and into Recovery

This paper assesses turning points in the economic cycle of Welsh unitary authorities by applying a mathematical algorithm to the claimant count unemployment data. All but one unitary authority has now emerged from reces...Read more...

Michael Artis and Marianne Sensier

April 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Investigating Agglomeration Economies in a Panel of European Cities and Regions

This paper investigates agglomeration economies in an annual panel of NUTS 2 and NUTS 3 city regions across France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the UK over 1980-2006 and comparing three sub-samples to see if the e...Read more...

Michael Artis, Declan Curran and Marianne Sensier

April 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Where is the Economics in Spatial Econometrics?

Spatial econometrics has been criticized by some economists because some model specifications have been driven by data-analytic considerations rather than having a firm foundation in economic theory. In particular this a...Read more...

Luisa Corrado and Bernard Fingleton

March 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Shifting Credit Standards and the Boom and Bust in U.S. House Prices

The U.S. house price boom has been linked to an unsustainable easing of mortgage credit standards. However, standard time series models of US house prices omit credit constraints and perform poorly in the 2000’s. We inco...Read more...

John V. Duca, John Muellbauer and Anthony Murphy

March 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

House Prices and Credit Constraints: Making Sense of the U.S. Experience

Most US house price models break down in the mid-2000's, due to the omission of exogenous changes in mortgage credit supply (associated with the sub-prime mortgage boom) from house price-to-rent ratio and inverted housin...Read more...

John V. Duca, John Muellbauer and Anthony Murphy

March 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Amenity Value of English Nature: A Hedonic Price Approach

Using a hedonic property value price approach, we estimate the amenity value associated with proximity to habitats, designated areas, domestic gardens and other natural amenities in England. There is a long tradition of ...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons, Susana Mourato and Guilherme Resende

March 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

R&D, Innovation and Exporting

This study considers the determinants of whether a firm exports, undertakes R&D and/or innovates, and, in particular, the contemporaneous links between these variables using three waves of the UK Community Innovation Sur...Read more...

Richard Harris and John Moffat

March 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Industry and the Urge to Cluster: A Study of the Informal Sector in India

This paper studies the determinants of firm location choice at the district-level in India to gauge the relative importance of agglomeration economies vis-à-vis good business environment. A peculiar characteristic of the...Read more...

Megha Mukim

March 2011

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...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt

March 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Economics of Super-Diversity: Findings from British Cities, 2001-2006

British cities have a surprisingly long history of cultural diversity. Recently they have become significantly more multicultural, with ‘super-diversity’ emerging in many urban neighbourhoods. Public interest in these ch...Read more...

Max Nathan

February 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Long Term Impacts of Migration in British Cities: Diversity, Wages, Employment and Prices

British cities are becoming more culturally diverse, with migration a main driver. Is this growing diversity good for urban economies? This paper explores, using a new 16-year panel of UK cities. Over time, net migration...Read more...

Max Nathan

February 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Policy Paper

Strategies for Underperforming Places

All governments are concerned with tackling the problems of areas that experience sustained decline and underperformance. In the UK, several factors have combined to raise profound questions about future government polic...Read more...

Paul Lawless, Henry G. Overman and Peter Tyler

February 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Modelling and Forecasting with County Court Data: Regional Mortgage Possession Claims and Orders in England and Wales

This paper presents new quarterly panel data models for county court claims and orders for mortgage possession for seven regions of England plus Wales. Different types of data on mortgage possessions are compared. The in...Read more...

Janine Aron and John Muellbauer

February 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Does Cultural Diversity Help Innovation in Cities: Evidence from London Firms

London is one of the world’s major cities, and one of its most diverse. London’s cultural diversity is widely seen as a social asset, but there is little hard evidence on its importance for the city’s businesses. Theory ...Read more...

Neil Lee and Max Nathan

February 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Evaluating the Effects of Planning Policies on the Retail Sector: Or do Town Centre First Policies Deliver the Goods?

Few studies conceive of land as a productive factor but British land use policies may lower total factor productivity (TFP) in the retailing industry by (i) restricting the total availability of land for retail, thereby ...Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber and Ioannis Kaplanis

Revised September 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Real Earnings Disparities in Britain

This report estimates housing-cost-earnings differentials across labour market areas in Britain. We show that quality-adjusted housing costs rise on average, one for one with the skill-adjusted earnings of the average wo...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons, Henry G. Overman and Guilherme Resende

January 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Plant-level Determinants of Total Factor Productivity in Great Britain, 1997-2006

This paper examines the determinants of total factor productivity (TFP) using a GB plant-level dataset. Using a systems-GMM approach, it considers the role of the following four plant characteristics: internal and extern...Read more...

Richard Harris and John Moffat

January 2011

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Do Neighbours Affect Teenage Outcomes? Evidence from Neighbourhood Changes in England

In this paper, we use census data on several cohorts of secondary school students in England matched to detailed information on place of residence to investigate the effect of neighbours’ background characteristics and p...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons, Olmo Silva and Felix Weinhardt

November 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Mostly Pointless Spatial Econometrics?

We argue that identification problems bedevil most applied spatial research. Spatial econometrics solves these problems by deriving estimators assuming that functional forms are known and by using model comparison techni...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons and Henry G. Overman

October 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

In Search of the 'Economic Dividend' of Devolution: Spatial Disparities, Spatial Economic Policy and Decentralisation in the UK

After a decade of devolution and amid uncertainties about its effects, it is timely to assess and reflect upon the evidence and enduring meaning of any ‘economic dividend’ of devolution in the UK. Taking a multi-discipli...Read more...

Andy Pike, Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, John Tomaney, Gianpiero Torrisi and Vassilis Tselios

October 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Does the Rotten Child Spoil His Companion? Spatial Peer Effects Among Children in Rural India

This paper identifies the effect of neighborhood peer groups on childhood skill acquisition using observational data. We incorporate spatial peer interaction, defined as a child's nearest geographical neighbors, into a p...Read more...

Christian Helmers and Manasa Patnam

October 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Bank Location and Financial Liberalization Reforms: Evidence from Microgeographic Data

We examine the effects of bank deregulation on the spatial dynamics of retail-bank branching, exploiting, much like a quasi-natural experiment, the context of intense liberalization reforms in Belgium in the late ninetie...Read more...

Marieke Huysentruyt, Eva Lefevere and Carlo Menon

October 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Wage Disparities in Britain: People or Place?

This paper investigates wage disparities across sub-national labour markets in Britain using a newly available microdata set. The findings show that wage disparity across areas is very persistent over time. While area ef...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons, Henry G. Overman and Panu Pelkonen

October 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Capitalization of Central Government Grants into Local House Prices: Panel Data Evidence from England

We explore the impact of central government grants on local house prices in England using a panel data set of local authorities (LAs) from 2001 to 2008. Electoral targeting of grants to LAs by the incumbent national gove...Read more...

Christian A. L. Hilber, Teemu Lyytikäinen and Wouter Vermeulen

September 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Geography or Economics? A Micro-Level Analysis of the Determinants of Degree Choice in the Context of Regional Economic Disparities in the UK

The importance of human capital to the economic performance of a national, regional or local economy is now well established. Labour markets are thought to reward individuals in proportion to their marginal productivity ...Read more...

Philip Wales

September 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Mortgage Interest Deduction and its Impact on Homeownership Decisions

This paper examines the impact of the combined U.S. state and federal mortgage interest deduction (MID) on homeownership attainment, using data from 1984 to 2007 and exploiting variation in the subsidy across states, ove...Read more...

Christian A. L. Hilber and Tracy M. Turner

September 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Impact of University Research on Corporate Patenting

This paper analyses the association between the number of patenting manufacturing firms and the quantity and quality of relevant university research across UK postcode areas. We show that different measures of research `...Read more...

Christian Helmers and Mark Rogers

September 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Towards the Resilient Region?: Policy Activism and Peripheral Region Development

Discussions of local and regional development have recently broadened from a preoccupation with growth to one which captures the notion of resilience. This paper makes two main contributions to these debates. First, the ...Read more...

Stuart Dawley, Andy Pike and John Tomaney

September 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Modelling and Forecasting UK Mortgage Arrears and Possessions

This paper presents new models for aggregate UK data on mortgage possessions (foreclosures) and mortgage arrears (payment delinquencies). The innovations include the treatment of difficult to observe variations in loan q...Read more...

Janine Aron and John Muellbauer

August 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Minimum Wages and Schooling: Evidence from the UK's Introduction of a National Minimum Wage

This paper uses the introduction of the national minimum wage in the UK in April 1999 as a ‘natural experiment’ to analyse the impact of minimum wages on enrolment in schooling. At the time of its introduction, only work...Read more...

Patricia Rice

May 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Is Fiscal Decentralization Harmful for Economic Growth? Evidence from the OECD Countries

The global drive towards decentralization has been increasingly justified on the basis that greater transfers of resources to subnational governments are expected to deliver greater efficiency in the provision of public ...Read more...

Roberto Ezcurra and Andrés Rodríguez-Pose

May 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Regional Manufacturing Wages: Dancing to the Tune of Trade Shocks

Firms generally choose to locate their production where profits are maximized. As costs affect profits, trade-offs between two marginal costs – employees’ wages and transport costs – may be important for decisions regard...Read more...

Filipe Lage de Sousa

April 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Self-Reinforcing Shocks: Evidence from a Resettlement Policy

i. A completely revised version of this paper is available as SERCDP0080, May 2011....Read more...

Aki Kangasharju and Matti Sarvimäki

April 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Housing Markets and the Financial Crisis of 2007-2009: Lessons for the Future

An unsustainable weakening of credit standards induced a US mortgage and housing bubble whose consumption impact was amplified by innovations altering the collateral role of housing. In countries with more stable credit ...Read more...

John V. Duca, John Muellbauer and Anthony Murphy

April 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Economic Geographers and the Limelight: The Reaction to the 2009 World Development Report

The reaction of economic geographers to the World Bank's World Development Report 2009 – Reshaping Economic Geography – has so far been a corporatist turf-protecting exercise. The report has been dismissed as the work of...Read more...

Andrés Rodríguez-Pose

April 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Policy Paper

City-Region Governance, Policy Variation and Economic Performance

Advocates for devolution of responsibility for economic development have frequently made a link between the governance of city-regions and their economic performance. The evidence they adduce for this does not clearly be...Read more...

Paul Steeples

February 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Predicting the Geography of House Prices

Prediction is difficult. In this paper we use panel data methods to make reasonably accurate shortterm ex-post predictions of house prices across 353 local authority areas in England. The issue of prediction over the lon...Read more...

Bernard Fingleton

February 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Agglomeration Elasticities and Firm Heterogeneity

This paper estimates the relationship between agglomeration and multi factor productivity at the one digit industry level and by region using longitudinal firm level data for New Zealand. A key focus of the paper is on m...Read more...

Daniel J. Graham and David C. Maré

February 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Moving into the Projects: Social Housing Neighbourhoods and School Performance in England

This study estimates the effect of living in a very deprived neighbourhood, as identified by a high density of social housing, on the educational attainment of fourteen years old (9th grade) students in England. Neighbou...Read more...

Felix Weinhardt

February 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Local Human Capital and Its Impact on Local Employment Chances in Britain

This paper examines how high human capital in a locality is associated with the employment outcomes of individuals. A probit model is used to examine how the employment probability of otherwise similar working age males ...Read more...

Ioannis Kaplanis

January 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Wage Effects from Changes in Local Human Capital in Britain

This paper examines the wage effects arising from changing local human capital in the labour market areas of Britain. Employing wage regressions, it is found that individuals’ wages are positively associated with changes...Read more...

Ioannis Kaplanis

January 2010

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...

Christian A. L. Hilber and Frédéric Robert-Nicoud

January 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

New Housing Supply and the Dilution of Social Capital

This paper examines the role of local housing supply conditions for social capital investment. Using an instrumental variables approach and data from the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, it is documented that t...Read more...

Christian A. L. Hilber

January 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Does Hospital Competition Save Lives? Evidence from the English NHS Patient Choice Reforms

This paper examines whether or not hospital competition in a market with fixed reimbursement prices can prompt improvements in clinical quality. In January 2006, the British Government introduced a major extension of the...Read more...

Zack Cooper, Stephen Gibbons, Simon Jones and Alistair McGuire

January 2010

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Impact of Aging and Technological Relatedness on Agglomeration Externalities: A Survival Analysis

We study localization, urbanization, and Jacobs’ externality effects on plant survival in Sweden (1970-2004). We focus on two questions: (1) do agglomeration externalities change with the age of plants? (2) using new inf...Read more...

Ron Boschma, Martin Henning and Frank Neffke

November 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Dynamics of FDI Location: A Markov Analysis for British Regions

The paper uses the framework of Markov chains to examine convergence in the location of inward foreign direct investment across the regions of Great Britain over 1985-2005. An analysis is undertaken by industry group tha...Read more...

Jonathan Jones and Colin Wren

November 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Stars and Comets: An Exploration of the Patent Universe

The analysis of patent and citation data has become a popular source of evidence on localized knowledge spillovers and innovation. Nevertheless, an aspect has been overlooked: the patent distribution across inventors is ...Read more...

Carlo Menon

November 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Fluctuating Record of Economic Regeneration in England's Second-Order City Regions, 1984-2007

This study examines how far and in what way ‘Our cities are back’, as claimed by England’s Core Cities Group. It focuses on 1984-2007 employment changes for the eight Core Cities and their city regions: Birmingham, Brist...Read more...

Tony Champion and Alan Townsend

October 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Spatial Costs in a Monocentric City (And Implications for Agglomeration)

Using water supply as a model for a wider range of infrastructure services, the effect of a negative exponential density gradient on distribution costs is investigated for four monocentric urban development scenarios: (a...Read more...

Hugh B. Wenban-Smith

October 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Productivity and Firm Selection: Quantifying the 'New' Gains from Trade

We discuss how standard computable equilibrium models of trade policy can be enriched with selection effects without missing other important channels of adjustment. This is achieved by estimating and simulating a partial...Read more...

Gregory Corocs, Massimo Del Gatto, Giordano Mion and Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano

October 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Productivity Advantages of Large Cities: Distinguishing Agglomeration from Firm Selection

Firms are more productive on average in larger cities. Two explanations have been offered: agglomeration economies (larger cities promote interactions that increase productivity) and firm selection (larger cities toughen...Read more...

Pierre-Philippe Combes, Gilles Duranton, Laurent Gobillon, Diego Puga and Sébastien Roux

October 2009

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...

Gilles Duranton and Matthew A. Turner

October 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Agglomeration Economies and Labour Productivity: Evidence from Longitudinal Worker Data for GB's Travel-to-Work Areas

This paper analyzes the impact of agglomeration externalities on hourly earnings using longitudinal worker micro-level data from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings over the period 2002- 2006. We find that the effect...Read more...

Daniel J. Graham and Patricia C. Melo

October 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Trade, Wages and Productivity

We develop a new general equilibrium model of monopolistic competition with heterogeneous firms, variable demand elasticity and multiple asymmetric regions, in which trade integration induces wage and productivity change...Read more...

Kristian Behrens, Giordano Mion, Yasusada Murata and Jens Südekum

October 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Impact of Immigration on Occupational Wages: Evidence from Britain

This paper asks whether immigration to Britain has had any impact on average wages. There seems to be a broad consensus among academics that the share of immigrants in the workforce has little or no effect on the pay rat...Read more...

Stephen Nickell and Jumana Saleheen

October 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Policy Paper

Urban Containment, Housing Affordability and Price Stability - Irreconcilable Goals

The planning goals of urban containment and now densification conceive of houses in terms of physical units and of land ‘supply’ as the area allocated for housing by the planning system; estimates of ‘demand’ are driven ...Read more...

Paul Cheshire

September 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

'Gis a Job': What Use Geographical Information Systems in Spatial Economics?

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are used for inputting, storing, managing, analysing and mapping spatial data. This article argues that each of these functions can help researchers interested in spatial economics....Read more...

Henry G. Overman

August 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Does Decentralization Matter for Regional Disparities? A Cross-Country Analysis

This paper looks at the relationship between fiscal and political decentralization and the evolution of regional inequalities in a panel of 26 countries – 19 developed and 7 developing – for the period between 1990 and 2...Read more...

Roberto Ezcurra and Andrés Rodríguez-Pose

July 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Assessing Agglomeration Economies in a Spatial Framework with Endogenous Regressors

This paper is concerned with the influence of agglomeration economies on economic outcomes across British regions. The concentration of economic activity in one place can foster economic performance due to the reduction ...Read more...

Michael Artis, Ernest Miguélez and Rosina Moreno

June 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Analysing the Impact of Public Capital Stock Using the NEG Wage Equation: A Panel Data Approach

This paper examines the relationship between the level of public infrastructure and the level of productivity using panel data for the Spanish provinces over the period 1984-2004, a period which is particularly relevant ...Read more...

Bernard Fingleton and Miguel Gómez-Antonio

June 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Policy Paper

Local Authorities and the Downturn: A Review of Issues, Experience and Options

This report considers the potential/appropriate role for local authorities (LAs) in relation to the downturn phase of the current recession. It focuses on the most valuable functions which they can fulfil in this context...Read more...

Ian Gordon, Tony Travers and Christine Whitehead

June 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The UK Intranational Trade Cycle

The paper uses annual data on real GDP for the UK regions and 12 manufacturing sectors to derive regional and regional/sectoral business cycles using an H-P filter. The cohesion of the cycles is examined via cross-correl...Read more...

Michael Artis and Toshihiro Okubo

April 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Simulating Wages and House Prices Using the NEG

The paper incorporates house prices within an NEG framework leading to the spatial distributions of wages, prices and income. The model assumes that all expenditure goes to firms under a monopolistic competition market s...Read more...

Bernard Fingleton

April 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Why Do Some Firms Undertake R&D Whereas Others Do Not?

Data for the UK show Northern Ireland remains at the bottom of the productivity league table, and that its R&D performance is consistently amongst the lowest across the UK regions. This paper analyses the data from a sur...Read more...

Richard Harris and Mary Trainor

April 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Common and Spatial Drivers in Regional Business Cycles

We examine real business cycle convergence for 41 euro area regions and 48 US states. Results obtained by a panel model with spatial correlation indicate that the relevance of common business cycle factors is rather stab...Read more...

Michael Artis, Christian Dreger and Konstantin Kholodilin

April 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Long-Term Effects of Forced Migration

We study the long-term effects of human displacement using individual level panel data on forced migrants and comparable non-migrants. After World War II, Finland ceded a tenth of its territory to the Soviet Union and re...Read more...

Markus Jäntti, Matti Sarvimäki and Roope Uusitalo

March 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Valuing School Quality Using Boundary Discontinuities

A large body of international research shows that house prices respond to local school quality as measured by average test scores. But better test scores could signal better expected academic outputs or simply reflect hi...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons, Stephen Machin and Olmo Silva

March 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

In Search of 'W'

This paper provides a survey and critique of how spatial links are taken into account in empirical analysis by applied economists/regional scientists. Spatial spillovers and spatial interrelationships between economic va...Read more...

Richard Harris and Victoria Kravtsova

March 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Spillover and Backward Linkage Effects of FDI: Empirical Evidence for the UK

Recent work (including that of the author) on the impact of FDI has been based on microlevel (i.e. firms, establishments or plants) data, since this allows much greater control when examining such issues as whether FDI p...Read more...

Richard Harris

March 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Does Urbanisation Affect Rural Poverty? Evidence from Indian Districts

Although the high rate of urbanization and the high incidence of rural poverty are two distinct features of many developing countries, we still do not know the effects of the former on the latter. We address this issue b...Read more...

Massimiliano Calì and Carlo Menon

February 2009

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Education and Income Inequality in the Regions of the European Union

This paper provides an empirical study of the determinants of income inequality across regions of the EU. Using the European Community Household Panel dataset for 102 regions over the period 1995-2000, it analyses how mi...Read more...

Andrés Rodríguez-Pose and Vassilis Tselios

November 2008

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Family Types and the Persistence of Regional Disparities in Europe

This paper examines the association between one of the most basic institutional forms, the family, and a series of demographic, educational, social, and economic indicators across regions in Europe. Using Emmanuel Todd’s...Read more...

Gilles Duranton, Andrés Rodríguez-Pose and Richard Sandall

November 2008

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Urban Growth Drivers in a Europe of Sticky People and Implicit Boundaries

We investigate urban GDP pc growth across the EU12 using data for functionally defined cities - rather than administrative regions. We test hypotheses on the role of human capital, EU integration and fragmentation of urb...Read more...

Paul Cheshire and Stefano Magrini

November 2008

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Survival of the Fittest in Cities: Agglomeration, Selection and Polarisation

Empirical studies consistently report that labour productivity and TFP rise with city size. The reason is that cities attract the most productive agents, select the best of them, and make the selected ones even more prod...Read more...

Kristian Behrens and Frédéric Robert-Nicoud

November 2008

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Labour Pooling as a Source of Agglomeration: An Empirical Investigation

We provide empirical evidence on the role of labour market pooling in determining the spatial concentration of UK manufacturing establishments. This role arises because large concentrations of employment iron out idiosyn...Read more...

Henry G. Overman and Diego Puga

September 2008

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Prediction Using Panel Data Regression with Spatial Random Effects

This paper considers some of the issues and difficulties relating to the use of spatial panel data regression in prediction, illustrated by the effects of mass immigration on wages and income levels in local authority ar...Read more...

Bernard Fingleton

September 2008

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Government's Review of Sub-National Economic Development and Regeneration: Key Issues

We are now in the midst of another concerted attempt by Government to make sense of and tidy up the sub-national governance of economic development and regeneration. This is a challenging task made all the more difficult...Read more...

Andy Pike and John Tomaney

September 2008

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Re-Investment and the Survival of Foreign-Owned Plants

Foreign-owned plants have higher conditional exit rates, but this paper tests the hypothesis that re-investment 'embeds' these plants, leading to significantly longer survival time durations. A unique dataset is used for...Read more...

Jonathan Jones and Colin Wren

August 2008

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Foreign Direct Investment and Prospects for the Northern Region

This paper's purpose is to review the recent experience of foreign direct investment (FDI) in North East England, and to explore the implications of this for the region's prospective economic development. Foreign-owned p...Read more...

Jonathan Jones and Colin Wren

August 2008

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Testing the NEG Model: Further Evidence from Panel Data

Local wage variations in the UK are explained by two non-nested rival hypotheses. The first derives from new economic geography theory, in which wages depend on market potential. The second come from urban economics theo...Read more...

Bernard Fingleton

August 2008

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Models of Regional Growth: Past, Present and Future

This paper presents an overview of various models of regional growth that have appeared in the literature in the last 40 years. It considers the past, and therefore supply-side models, such as the standard neoclassical, ...Read more...

Richard Harris

July 2008

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Peers and Achievement in England's Secondary Schools

The belief that children thrive if educated amongst higher-achieving schoolmates guides many parents in their choice of school. We extend the literature on this issue by considering children making the transition from pr...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons and Shqiponja Telhaj

July 2008

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