POID

POID Working Paper

Resolving the automation paradox: falling labor share, rising wages

A central socioeconomic concern about Artificial Intelligence is that it will lower wages by depressing the labor share - the fraction of economic output paid to labor. We show that declining labor share is more likely t...Read more...

POID Working Paper

Misaligned by Design: incentive failures in machine learning

The cost of error in many high-stakes settings is asymmetric: misdiagnosing pneumonia when absent is an inconvenience but failing to detect it when present can be life-threatening. Accordingly, artificial intelligence (A...Read more...

POID Working Paper

Leveraging subjective expectations for production functions

We propose estimating production functions using firms' subjective expectations of future output and inputs; data which are becoming increasingly available in surveys. This note compares their proposed estimator to tradi...Read more...

POID Working Paper

State and time-depending pricing

We present new evidence on how firms set prices using direct questions from a large, economywide survey of UK firms. Since 2023, 54% of firms report setting prices in a state-dependent manner, as opposed to changing pric...Read more...

POID Working Paper

The economic impact of Brexit

This paper examines the impact of the UK's decision to leave the European Union (Brexit) in 2016. Using almost a decade of data since the referendum, we combine simulations based on macro data with estimates derived from...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Automation is not hollowing out British factory jobs

Fears that new technology will wipe out jobs are as old as the factory floor. But new analysis by Aniket Baksy, Daniel Chandler and Peter John Lambert shows that rather than taking jobs away, automation in British factor...Read more...

POID Working Paper

Unrest, layoff and productivity at a Bangladeshi sweater factory

Conflicts between management and workers are common in newly industrializing countries. Combining ethnographic, survey and administrative records from a Bangladeshi sweater factory, we study how workers responded when ma...Read more...

POID Working Paper

Quality upgrading in global supply chains: Evidence from Colombian coffee

Do the returns to quality upgrading pass through supply chains to primary producers? We explore this question in the context of Colombia's coffee sector, in which market outcomes depend on interactions between farmers, e...Read more...

POID Working Paper

Promoting women to managerial roles in the Bangladeshi garment sector

Women remain disadvantaged in promotion to managerial positions. We conduct a field experiment with 24 large garment factories in Bangladesh to test for inefficient representation of women among line supervisors. We iden...Read more...

POID Working Paper

Funding the Ivory Tower: The effects of NSF institutional grants on universities and local innovation

This paper studies the effects of the NSF Science Development Program on universities and local innovation, combining historical data from scientific publications, doctoral dissertations, and patents. Introduced in 1965,...Read more...

Blog

Project Syndicate:

Europe does not lack capital - it lacks scale

Even the best start ups cannot thrive sustainably in an environment where each country protects its national champions, and where administrative barriers prevent the emergence of truly European ones. If Europe wants to b...Read more...

POID Working Paper

When Trade Drives Markup Divergence: An application to auto markets

When firms sell in multiple markets, demand-side markup estimates from a single market need not align with supply-side estimates derived from production data that aggregate across markets. Empirical analysis of this dive...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU :

Brexit's slow-burn hit to the UK economy

The UK is once again debating why its economy has grown slowly since the mid-2010s. This column examines the impact of the decision to leave the European Union in 2016. Using almost a decade of data since the referendum,...Read more...

Blog

The WorkLab podcast:

Harvard's Raffaella Sadun on why it's so hard to become a Frontier Firm

The business school professor shares insights on the human cost of change, making progress without a playbook, and how leaders can turn AI experiments into a competitive advantage. ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

Opening Up Military Innovation: Causal effects of reforms to US Defense research

For governments procuring innovation, one choice is whether to specify desired products (a conventional approach) or allow firms to suggest ideas (an open approach). Using a US Air Force R&D grant program where open and ...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Confusopoly unveiled: How firms use complexity to raise prices

Can entire markets strategically confuse consumers to raise prices? This column tracks the prices of nearly all mobile phone tariffs and handsets in the UK from 2010 to 2012, and finds that quality-adjusted prices rise i...Read more...

Blog

European Economic Association:

2025 Nobel Laureate: Philippe Aghion

John Van Reenen writes about the profound influence of Nobel laureate Philippe Aghion's work not only on growth and industrial organisation, but also on fields as diverse as trade, labour, taxation, the environment, poli...Read more...

POID Working Paper

Strategic Confusopoly: Evidence from the UK mobile telecommunications market

Can entire markets strategically confuse consumers to raise market prices? Using a detailed dataset covering virtually all mobile phone tariffs and their handsets in the United Kingdom between January 2010 and September ...Read more...

POID Working Paper

Resetting the innovation clock: Endogenous growth through technological turnover

We propose a model of endogenous economic growth with "weak" scale effects and diminishing returns to innovation at the micro level. In our model, entrants introduce new technologies through research and incumbents incre...Read more...

Blog

World Bank Blogs:

Learning amid disruption: a feasible, effective, and scalable investment in education during wartime

Wars devastate infrastructure and institutions, but their most profound costs are often borne by human capital. Education systems are among the first casualties of conflict: schools are destroyed, and families are displa...Read more...

POID Working Paper

Investing in Human Capital During Wartime: Experimental evidence from Ukraine

This paper provides insights into human capital investments during wartime by presenting evidence from three experiments of an online tutoring program for Ukrainian students amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Conducted b...Read more...

POID Working Paper

Good Rents versus Bad Rents: R&D misallocation and growth

Firm price-cost markups may reflect (a) bigger step sizes from quality innovations that confer significant knowledge spillovers onto other firms, and/or (b) higher process efficiency than competing firms or other factors...Read more...

POID Working Paper

Escaping Labor Scarcity: Innovation and human capital after WW1 in France

We use quasi-random local variation in the number of young men who died as a result of World War I to estimate the impact of this demographic shock on innovation and structural change in France. Our analysis shows that e...Read more...

Blog

Liberty Street Economics:

How Firms Spread Good Management

What is good management, and how is it transmitted across firms and plants? In a recent paper, we use survey and administrative data, coupled with a structural model of management, to explore these questions. We show tha...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

The impact of the 2025 US tariff announcements on UK firms

In the first half of 2025, the US and some of its trading partners announced significant changes to import tariffs. This column uses newly designed questions to study the impact of these changes on UK firms and to assess...Read more...