Centre for Economic Performance

Highlights

c19 analysis card for self-employed two years on. designed by Raphael Whittle

Covid-19 and the self-employed - a two year update

The fifth LSE-CEP survey of the self-employed provides an up-to-date picture of how Covid-19 and its aftermath keep affecting the self-employed. Read more...

photograph of map with money and pins; credit: Christine Roy on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/ir5MHI6rPg0

Junior Trade Workshop, 16 Sep

The Junior Trade Workshop aims to bring together early-career researchers interested in international economics to promote a supportive community among early-career researchers and provide the chance to receive feedback from more senior colleagues. Read more...

crime insight. design by raphael whittle

Insights: crime

How do economists untangle the interactions between individuals, the economy and crime? A short history of CEP crime research.
Read more...

Latest

British Academy

Henry Overman becomes a Fellow of the British Academy

Congratulations to Henry Overman, research director of the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) and professor of economic geography at LSE, who has been elected as a new Fellow of the British Academy. He is among 85 ne... Read more...

22 July 2022

Independent

Shoppers face £454 increase in annual grocery bill as food inflation soars

Economists from the LSE Centre for Economic Performance found that the UK’s departure from the EU caused a 6 per cent increase in British food prices. ... Read more...

20 July 2022

Die Welt (German)

'Toxic Mixture' - UK’s weak income fuels inequality in the country

High energy prices are causing problems, as are the consequences of the Covid pandemic and the effects of Brexit. But research by the Resolution Foundation and the Center for Economic Performance suggests the causes of t... Read more...

15 July 2022

CEP Announcement

Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy makes the FT’s summer reading list

Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy has been chosen as one of the best mid-year reads by the Financial Times. The book by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake is described by the paper’s chief e... Read more...

30 June 2022

The Times

Brexit hitting production and wages, warns Resolution Foundation

Britain’s departure from the EU has damaged its competitiveness and will cut productivity and wages over the next ten years. Instead of the expected effect of narrowly reducing exports to the EU, Brexit has “... Read more...

22 June 2022

Financial Times

Rees-Mogg asks public to say which retained EU laws they want to scrap

Thomas Sampson, an associate professor of economics at the London School of Economics who has modelled the effects of Brexit on UK trade, said there was no economic basis for the assertion that cutting EU regulation woul... Read more...

22 June 2022

The Guardian

Brexit 'dragging down growth and costing hundreds a year in pay'

Britain's cost of living crisis is being made worse by Brexit dragging down the country's growth potential and costing workers hundreds of pounds a year in lost pay, say researchers. The Resolution Foundation thinktank a... Read more...

22 June 2022

Bloomberg UK

Are workers more productive at home?

Nick Bloom in conversation on a surprising find from the pandemic: remote work is fuelling economic growth. ... Read more...

02 June 2022

Economy 2030

The Economy 2030 Inquiry: the first year

The Economy 2030 Inquiry is examining the scale and impact of economic change that the UK is living through in the 2020s, and will set out a plan for successfully navigating it. For the past year, researchers from the R... Read more...

30 May 2022

The Economist

How to unleash more investment in intangible assets

Restarting the Future, a new book by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake, presents the idea that intangible assets, though hard to see and measure, are critically important to foster. ... Read more...

19 May 2022

CEP Announcement

Swati Dhingra to join Bank of England's monetary policy committee

Swati Dhingra has been appointed to the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) by chancellor Rishi Sunak. The MPC is responsible for deciding what monetary policy action the Bank of England will take to... Read more...

12 May 2022

The New Statesman

How poor mental health costs the economy billions

Mental illness accounts for over 40 per cent of all sickness absence - reducing productivity at work. Richard Layard explains how this highlights the need for wellbeing provision in management practice. ... Read more...

11 May 2022

The Guardian

Immigration and vocational training: UK evidence

Researchers from the London School of Economics’ Centre for Economic Performance find that a “clear and robust impact of Brexit-induced trade frictions” had led to an increase in prices. ... Read more...

27 April 2022

Financial Times

UK-EU trade relationships tumble after Brexit

Findings from the LSE's Centre for Economic Performance chime with warnings from business groups: that smaller firms have struggled to absorb customs controls, VAT and regulatory red tape, with many quitting exporting al... Read more...

26 April 2022

The Telegraph

‘No evidence’ of sustained hit to UK exports to EU since Brexit trade deal

Researchers find Brexit’s impacts on trade were only felt once the Trade and Cooperation Agreement kicked in, rather than steadily since the referendum. ... Read more...

26 April 2022

Independent

Brexit has devastated UK exports to smaller EU countries, study says

LSE finds one-third decline in trading relationships under Boris Johnson’s deal – which has hit small firms hardest. ... Read more...

26 April 2022

The Times

It’s time to take a firmer grip on companies and competition law

To understand what is happening to inequality between people we need to understand the behaviour of, and inequality between, firms. Papers published last month as part of the IFS Deaton Review of inequality in work, led ... Read more...

25 April 2022

NPR

Who eats the cost of higher food prices?

Xavier Jaravel explains some of the basic concepts around inflation. ... Read more...

12 April 2022

Financial Times

Growth is still the answer to the world’s economic problems

Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake argue that capitalism can be revitalised by promoting ‘further investment’ in what they call ‘intangible capital’. ... Read more...

11 April 2022

Research Professional News

Intangible economy demands a broader view of R&D

Jonathan Haskel and Stain Westlake explain why the UK government's focus on funding overlooks many levers for innovation policy. ... Read more...

30 March 2022

Science Focus

Want to be happy? Stop trying to be

All humans want a little of the good life, but Paul Dolan asks whether the sole pursuit of happiness is actually making us a society of sad, selfish and solitary creatures? ... Read more...

24 March 2022

The Guardian

Finland named world’s happiest country for fifth year running

Experts say social support, honesty and generosity key to wellbeing, as Afghanistan and Lebanon struggle in global ranking. ... Read more...

19 March 2022

BBC Two

Newsnight

Interview with Swati Dhingra - is this the end of globalisation? In a series of special programmes, Newsnight looks at the impact of the war in Ukraine on the world. ... Read more...

18 March 2022

The Telegraph

University personal statements 'favour' middle class students, admits minister

The written part of university applications could be changed to provide more support to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, the universities minister has said. The proposal comes after Lee Elliot Major criticise... Read more...

16 February 2022

CEP Announcement

Philippe Aghion awarded the Erasmus Medal of the Academia Europaea

Congratulations to Philippe Aghion, associate of CEP and the Programme on Innovation and Diffusion (POID), on being awarded the Erasmus Medal of the Academia Europaea. The award is given to a European scholar who has ... Read more...

15 February 2022

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Blog

Britain, a services superpower sinking into stagnation

British households have low levels of financial resilience and are forecast a sluggish living standards recovery coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, Britain is the result of an economy defined by the low grow... Read more...

Resolution Foundation and Centre for Economic Performance

05 August 2022

CEP Insights

Crime

What can economics tell us about crime? Economists have discovered that young people who leave school during a recession are more likely to end up in prison than those who enter the labour market when the economy is buoy... Read more...

Stephen Machin

01 August 2022

CEP discussion papers

The economic impacts of the UK's eat out to help out scheme

We evaluate the economic impacts of the UK's Eat Out to Help Out (EOTHO) scheme on the food service sector. EOTHO subsidised the cost of eating out, with a 50% discount Mondays to Wednesdays in August 2020. We exploit th... Read more...

Nicolas Gonzalez-Pampillon, Gonzalo Nunez-Chaim and Henry G. Overman

28 July 2022

Blog

Falling behind, the self-employed would sacrifice 10% of their income for an insurance scheme

Two years after the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, incomes of the self-employed in the UK are still well below their pre-pandemic levels. The number of self-employed workers dropped during the crisis and has not yet r... Read more...

Robert Blackburn and Maria Ventura

28 July 2022

CEP Covid-19 analyses

Covid-19 and the self-employed - A two year update

The fifth LSE-CEP survey of the self-employed of May 2022 provides an up to date picture of how Covid-19 and its aftermath keep affecting the self-employed. The findings show that, although working on average a little mo... Read more...

Robert Blackburn, Stephen Machin and Maria Ventura

28 July 2022

Blog

Skyscrapers with Gabriel Ahlfeldt

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

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt

27 July 2022

CEP discussion papers

Acquisitions, management and efficiency in Rwanda's coffee industry

Well-functioning markets allocate assets to owners that improve firms' management and performance. We study the effects of ownership changes on coffee mills in Rwanda - an industry in which managing relationships with fa... Read more...

Rocco Macchiavello and Ameet Morjaria

21 July 2022

Blog

Inflation update: what's driving the cost of living crisis?

Prices in the UK continue to rise, with the Consumer Price Index up 9.4% in June. A closer look at the underlying data shows that more items are going up in price than are going down, suggesting high inflation could be h... Read more...

Richard Davies

20 July 2022

CEP discussion papers

Human wellbeing and machine learning

There is a vast literature on the determinants of subjective wellbeing. International organisations and statistical offices are now collecting such survey data at scale. However, standard regression models explain surpri... Read more...

Andrew E. Clark, Conchita D'Ambrosio, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Niccolo Gentile, Caspar Kaiser, Ekaterina Oparina and Alexandre Tkatchenko

20 July 2022

Blog

What lies behind Sri Lanka's collapse?

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

Simon Commander, Tamashi De Silva and Saul Estrin

19 July 2022

CEP discussion papers

Market size, markups and international price dispersion in the cement industry

Prices for several intermediate inputs, including cement, are higher in developing economies - particularly in Africa. Combining data from the International Comparison Program with a global directory of cement plants we ... Read more...

Fabrizio Leone, Rocco Macchiavello and Tristan Reed

19 July 2022

Blog

Communication costs, science, and innovation

It seems obvious that lowering the cost of communication among innovators would facilitate scientific and technological progress. Yet, few studies examine this relationship. This column explores the introduction of the f... Read more...

Walker Hanlon, Stephan Heblich, Ferdinando Monte and Martin Schmitz

15 July 2022

CEP discussion papers

Social push and the direction of innovation

Innovators are intrinsically-motivated individuals who use ideas to create new goods and services. This raises the possibility that their social backgrounds may affect the direction of their innovative activity. Consiste... Read more...

Elias Einio, Josh Feng and Xavier Jaravel

13 July 2022

CEP discussion papers

Endogenous cross-region human mobility and pandemics

We study infectious diseases using a Susceptible-Infected-Recovered-Deceased model with endogenous cross-region human mobility. Individuals weigh the risk of infection against economic opportunities when moving across re... Read more...

Xiao Chen, Hanwei Huang, Jiandong Ju, Ruoyan Sun and Jialiang Zhang

13 July 2022

External publications

Title TBC

Imran Rasul (University College London)

Thursday 08 December 2022 13:45 - 15:00

CEP Public Events

Conference on the economics of crime and justice

A two day conference discussing recent work on the economics of crime and the criminal justice system.... Read more...

various speakers

Friday 19 May 2023 - Saturday 20 May 2023

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