POID

Blog

Vox EU:

The economics of organisational strategy

Many of today's global problems, such as sustainability, technology, skills, and diversity can only be solved by organisations. This column argues that more work is needed to understand strategic management by firms, how...Read more...

Blog

IMF Finance and Development magazine:

A fivefold increase in remote work since the pandemic could boost economic growth and bring wider benefits

Economics is famous for being the dismal science. Sadly, recent work highlighting the slowdown in productivity growth stretching back to the 1950s is no exception. But here Nicholas Bloom takes a more cheerful view becau...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Good management practices are great for productivity ... as well as profit shifting

Following the release of the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers, there has been renewed research into profit shifting by multinational firms. This column utilises a novel dataset to show that well-managed subsidiaries...Read more...

Blog

United States Politics and Policy:

Studying women's property rights in the 19th century can help uncover the missing inventors

The underrepresentation of disadvantaged groups, particularly women, in the innovation process and entrepreneurial activities is an ongoing issue across the globe. Despite making up 50 percent of the population, women co...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Managing to cope with natural disasters

Human-induced climate change is making disasters more frequent and more intense. Policy could help reduce the economic costs of climate change by helping firms withstand extreme weather events. This column explores how m...Read more...

POID Working Paper

Brexit and investment

In 2016, the UK voted to leave the European Union and growth in UK manufacturing investment ground to a halt. This paper uses administrative trade data to investigate the causal relationship between these events. We expl...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

The speed of firm response to inflation

Firm inflation expectations are a key driver of future price growth. This column uses a large economy-wide business survey to understand the response of firms to monthly CPI inflation releases in the UK. Firms' CPI infla...Read more...

POID Working Paper

When trade drives markup divergence an application to auto markets

When firms sell in multiple markets, estimates of markups from the demand-side will generally diverge from estimates based on the supply-side (e.g. via production functions). The empirical examination of the importance o...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Organizational capacity and profit shifting

Good organizational capacity drives productivity and potential taxable profits, but may also enable multinationals (MNEs) to more efficiently re-allocate profits across tax jurisdictions, lowering actual taxable profits....Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Open Economics:

Firms and inequality

We review the existing literature on falling business dynamism and present a new analysis using comprehensive UK firm-level panel data. Since the mid-1990s, there has been a large increase in UK firm-level inequality (es...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Open Economics:

Innovation and inequalities

Innovation is a key source of sustainable growth, but it can affect inequalities in many ways—increasing some inequalities and decreasing others. The impact of any particular innovation on inequalities will depend import...Read more...

POID Working Paper

Production function estimation using subjective expectations data

Standard methods for estimating production functions in the Olley and Pakes (1996) tradition require assumptions on input choices. We introduce a new method that exploits (increasingly available) data on a firm's expecta...Read more...

Blog

Harvard Business Review:

Designing a Successful Reskilling Program

In this article, written as a follow up to the award-winning "Reskilling in the Age of AI", the authors report the results of a reskilling survey that they conducted with chief human resource officers from approximately ...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economics and Statistics:

A Year Older, A Year Wiser (and Farther from Frontier): Invention Rents and Human Capital Depreciation

We look at how the arrival of an invention affects wage returns and the probability of moving out of employment for white- and blue-collar co-workers of the inventor. First results suggest that older workers are hurt by ...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

The effect of productivity growth on within-firm inequality

Wage inequality has increased dramatically in the US since the 1970s, largely driven by within-firm earnings inequality. This column uses combined data from three large micro datasets to study the drivers and implication...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Energy and climate change

The scale of change and investment required for net zero is challenging, but early action is the most cost-effective way to achieve the 2050 target and could bring opportunities....Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

What an LSE-CBI survey found about AI adoption in UK firms

The crises and changes of the 2020s have provided many challenges for UK firms, and these occurred against a background of stagnant productivity since the financial crisis. But crises can also force productivity-enhancin...Read more...

POID Working Paper

An Engine of (Pay) Growth?: Productivity and wages in the UK auto industry

When labour market competition is imperfect, positive industry (and firm) productivity shocks can be passed through to workers in the form of higher wages. We document how the UK auto industry, following a period of decl...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Personnel Management and School Productivity: Evidence from India

This paper uses new data to study school management and productivity in India. We report five main results. First, management quality in public schools is low, and -2 standard deviations below high-income countries with ...Read more...

POID Working Paper

When GenAI increases inequality: Evidence from a university debating competition

This paper evaluates the impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) on productivity and work inequality. While existing literature has focused on the impact of GenAI on writing tasks, I exploit a unique setting...Read more...

POID Briefing Paper

Management matters in an era of disruption

The Covid-19 pandemic, military tensions and associated supply chain stress have meant that the past few years have been an era of high disruption. How can management help firms through such turbulent times?...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Growth and productivity

The collapse in productivity growth underlies many of the problems of the UK economy – from squeezed public services to stagnant living standards. Productivity growth in the UK has been weak relative to its own past and...Read more...

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

How to grow the UK's dwindling productivity

The UK economy is stuck. GDP growth per person has been anaemic over the last 14 years, and last year it actually fell. The cause behind these concerning figures is the collapse in the growth of productivity. If the next...Read more...

Journal article

Nature:

Hybrid working from home improves retention without damaging performance

Working from home has become standard for employees with a university degree. The most common scheme, which has been adopted by around 100 million employees in Europe and North America, is a hybrid schedule, in which ind...Read more...

POID Working Paper

Disaster management

Climate change is making natural disasters more frequent, yet little is known about the capacity of firms to withstand such disasters and adapt to their increased frequency. We examine this issue using the latest wave of...Read more...