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The Summer 2025 CentrePiece cover story explores the effects of declining competition.
How we can identify cost-effective policies to improve societal wellbeing - and why it will be key to shaping the future of the UK and beyond.
How can we shape engaging work environments that foster productivity and enable workers to flourish?
Lee Elliot Major is a guest on this edition of Rethink, talking about research recommending that the summer holidays should be cut by a week and that break taken instead in the autumn term. ... Read more...
30 June 2025
Congratulations to Jo Blanden, professor of economics at the University of Surrey and an associate in CEP’s education and skills programme, who has been recognised in the King’s Birthday Honours List 2025. P... Read more...
16 June 2025
Jonathan Haskell and Matthew J Slaughter write for Foreign Affairs about Trump's tariffs and the prices of economic uncertainty. ... Read more...
10 June 2025
We are deeply saddened to hear that CEP associate Ghazala Azmat, Professor of Economics at Sciences Po, passed away on Saturday, 7 June. Ghazala was a leading applied microeconomist, known for her work on labour markets,... Read more...
Congratulations to Dr Antonin Bergeaud who has been named the Best Young French Economist, 2025 by Le Monde and Le Cercle des Économists. The prize is awarded to a French economist under the age of 41 in recognit... Read more...
19 May 2025
Thomas Sampson speaks to presenter Tim Harford about the US tariffs on global trade that were announced by president Donald Trump on 2 April 2025 ... Read more...
04 April 2025
Richard Layard writing in the Financial Times, says that a clear commitment to train young people for work will help the government's economic agenda. ... Read more...
21 March 2025
The UKRI Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has awarded the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) £9.2mn for its five-year programme of work from 2025. This renewed funding will enable CEP to co... Read more...
18 March 2025
Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber comment on proposed changes to the planning system in Britain, arguing the government has shied away from the reform that is needed. ... Read more...
04 March 2025
Lee Elliot Major writes about the need for new financial arrangements for universities to uphold the principle that a university education should be accessible to all. ... Read more...
21 January 2025
John Van Reenen has spent his professional lifetime probing the weak spots of the UK economy. Now he is based in an office next to Reeves's at the Treasury, with his three fellow advisers. One Labour source says they str... Read more...
17 January 2025
Congratulations to Almudena Sevilla, professor of economics and public policy in LSE’s Department of Social Policy, and associate of the Centre for Economic Performance who has been recognised in the New Year's Hon... Read more...
06 January 2025
Research from the Centre for Economic Performance, a think tank based at the London School of Economics, said Brexit led to a 6.4 per cent drop in the UK's global exports. ... Read more...
18 December 2024
Brexit has hit UK trade less than many forecasters predicted thanks to larger companies adapting to red tape at the border, according to research by the London School of Economics. Researchers estimated UK worldwide good... Read more...
The damage from Brexit to trade links with the EU cost the UK £27bn in the first two years, but the overall impact was more limited than forecasters first estimated, according to the most comprehensive review of th... Read more...
Henry Overman OBE, professor of economic geography at LSE and CEP research director, has been appointed to the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council, it was announced today. Professor Overman is one of 16 members of the ... Read more...
17 December 2024
The Port Talbot steel works is closing its last remaining blast furnace, delivering a shattering blow to the economy and society of a South Wales town where employment and wages were once so strong it became known as Tre... Read more...
15 September 2024
Congratulations to Daniel Chandler who has been awarded the 2024 Voltaire Lecture Medal for his work on how to create a fair society. Chandler, research director of the LSE’s Programme on Cohesive Capitalism and a... Read more...
12 September 2024
Stephen Machin, professor of economics at LSE and CEP director, has been appointed to the newly-created Labour Market Advisory Board, it was announced today. Professor Machin is one of eight board members appointed by w... Read more...
10 September 2024
The 'shock' caused by restrictions introduced during the pandemic in 2020 could take 'seven years to erode', warn Stephen Gibbons, Sandra McNally and Piero Montebruno. ... Read more...
06 September 2024
The average rate of school absences not caused by Covid-19 self-isolation doubled after the pandemic, research by Stephen Gibbons, Sandra McNally and Piero Montebruno has found. ... Read more...
Spending extra cash on mental health services would boost economic growth and improve the nation’s wellbeing more than building new roads, according to an academic analysis from the London School of Economics. Rich... Read more...
03 September 2024
Academics have an opportunity to exert more influence in policymaking with demand for robust evidence on the rise, according to Richard Layard, co-author of a report that seeks a "radical change in the government's spend... Read more...
Spending money on mental health support teams in schools saves more money than it costs within two years, researchers from the London School of Economics' Centre for Economic Performance have said. Lord Layard, who led t... Read more...
Richard Layard writes that Labour must apply the wellbeing-to-cost test to every departmental proposal in the spending review. ... Read more...
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This report analyses innovation activity represented by patenting data for two carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies - bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and direct air carbon capture and storage (DACC... Read more...
Josh Burke, Siyu Feng, Maxwell Read, Esin Serin and Ram Smaran Suresh Kumar
09 July 2025
Urbanization has transformed cities into the economic hubs of high-income countries, yet concerns about declining social capital persist. This paper investigates the impact of changes in neighbourhood composition on soci... Read more...
Nicola Fontana
02 July 2025
How can a currency achieve more widespread international use? We study the internationalization of the Chinese renminbi (RMB) through the lens of a unique policy experiment in Argentina. In 2023, amid a severe dollar sho... Read more...
Felipe Benguria and Dennis Novy
Between 2017 and 2021, Spain progressively extended paternity leave from 2 to 16 weeks, equalizing it with maternity leave and introducing mandatory weeks. A 2018 reform also allowed fathers to split their leave. Using a... Read more...
Lidia Farre, Libertad Gonzalez, Claudia Hupkau and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela
In our new study, published in the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, we explore how a specific pre-colonial family institution - the tradition of cousin marriage - and the subsequent shocks of colonisation jointly impa... Read more...
Saul Estrin, Tomasz Mickiewicz and Peng Zhang
01 July 2025
Deglobalisation policies promote the vision that pulling back from economic integration can help correct international imbalances and reposition national economies for renewed prosperity. A core vision of Brexit was to t... Read more...
Danyal Arnold, Shania Bhalotia and Swati Dhingra
In 2018 and 2019, the US administration increased tariffs on imports from China. Did these tariffs lead to more US imports from other countries such as Mexico? Using highly disaggregated data on the universe of Mexican f... Read more...
Natalie Chen, Dennis Novy and Diego Solorzano
Amid geopolitical shocks, the EU is revisiting its industrial strategy. However, traditional metrics often paint a misleading picture of Europe's underlying strength. This column uses a new approach to measure the EU's r... Read more...
Filippo Di Mauro, Marco Matani and Gianmarco Ottaviano
25 June 2025
Fifty years ago, Richard Easterlin asked a fundamental question: does getting richer make us happier? His work gave rise to the Easterlin paradox: while wealthier individuals tend to be happier than poorer people, as cou... Read more...
Andrew E. Clark, Richard Layard and Ekaterina Oparina
Local authorities can deal with natural hazards more effectively if they know ahead of time who will be affected, writes Jonathan Colmer.... Read more...
Jonathan Colmer
24 June 2025
In 2018 and 2019, the US administration hiked tariffs on imports from China. This column shows that imports from Mexico partly filled the gap, leading to an export and employment surge in Mexico. Using highly disaggregat... Read more...
21 June 2025
How should UK exporters react to the tariffs imposed by President Trump? While some may start planning to increase production in the United States to avoid the tax, others whose US customers are less price-sensitive may ... Read more...
Catherine Thomas
20 June 2025
From Cambridge and Oxford to Harvard and Yale, elite universities are a feature of many education systems. Andrés Barrios Fernández, Christopher Neilson and Seth Zimmerman ask whether these institutions of higher educati... Read more...
Andrés Barrios Fernández, Christopher Neilson and Seth Zimmerman
Novel products, processes and technologies are important drivers of economic growth. Davide Coluccia and Gaia Dossi show how migrants from Britain to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century not only too... Read more...
Davide M. Coluccia and Gaia Dossi
Understanding the long-term social impact of historical events provides insights into current global debates on immigration, integration and Islamophobia. In a study of the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Shadi Farahza... Read more...
Shadi Farahzadi
Boosting women’s representation in government means understanding what type of gender discrimination is being practised, say Jay Euijung Lee and Martina Zanella.... Read more...
Jay Euijung Lee and Martina Zanella
Moving public agencies out of London was a major plank of the levelling-up agenda. Max Nathan, Henry Overman, Capucine Riom and Maria Sanchez-Vidal show how the BBC’s move to Salford had a positive effect on the local ec... Read more...
Max Nathan, Henry G. Overman, Capucine Riom and Maria Sanchez-Vidal
People like to live in certain places, even when higher wages are on offer elsewhere. Gabriel Ahlfeldt, Fabian Bald, Duncan Roth and Tobias Seidel show that once people’s preferences are considered, big cities offer a hi... Read more...
Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Fabian Bald, Duncan Roth and Tobias Seidel
What are the effects of psychological therapies on patients’ employment and earnings? In the first analysis of this question using nationally representative data, Klaudia Rzepnicka, Emma Sharland, Marta Rossa, Ted Dolby,... Read more...
Daniel Ayoubkhani, Ted Dolby, Vahé Nafilyan, Ekaterina Oparina, Marta Rossa, Klaudia Rzepnicka, Rob Saunders and Emma Sharland
Over the past four decades, the United States has seen rising market power, slowing productivity growth and deepening wealth inequality. Giammario Impullitti and Pontus Rendahl explore how declining competition may be th... Read more...
Giammario Impullitti and Pontus Rendahl
While correctly rejecting criticisms that existing guidance is biased, the latest Green Book review suggests changes that should improve appraisal and decision making.... Read more...
Henry G. Overman
19 June 2025
Professor Neil Lee gives evidence to the Commons Treasury Committee. The committee is asking whether the National Wealth Fund has the right tools and backing to drive meaningful economic growth... Read more...
Neil Lee
18 June 2025
Nearly 7 million UK people - around 13% of the population aged 16 and above - are estimated to be living below the Happiness Poverty Line. The World Wellbeing Movement defines the Happiness Poverty Line as those who rat... Read more...
Maria Cotofan, Sarah Cunningham, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Richard Layard and Ben Wealthy
Cities have faced a host of shocks throughout history, including earthquakes, hurricanes, coastal flooding, and storm surges, as well as wartime destruction, such as in the current Russia-Ukraine conflict. This column lo... Read more...
Kohei Takeda and Atsushi Yamagishi
15 June 2025
As the debate around industrial policy intensifies, there is broad consensus on the rationale for government support to encourage private sector innovation. Economy-wide returns from research and development (R&D) in the... Read more...
Matej Bajgar and Chiara Criscuolo
13 June 2025
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An in-person conference on Regional Economic Inequalities at Kiel Institute's Berlin office on 3-4 September 2025.... Read more...
Various speakers
Wednesday 03 September 2025 - Thursday 04 September 2025
Bringing PhD students in the field of international economics together for a day of job market paper presentations and discussions.... Read more...
Monday 22 September 2025 09:30 - 17:30
A two day conference discussing recent work on the economics of crime and the criminal justice system.... Read more...
Thursday 28 May 2026 - Friday 29 May 2026
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