POID | Programme on Innovation and Diffusion

Featured

LSE Environment Camp | May 2026

We are now accepting submissions for papers from PhD students in all areas of environmental and energy economics. Applications should be submitted via the website by 6 March 2026 (Friday). Find out more...

Philippe Aghion awarded Nobel prize in economic sciences

Philippe Aghion has been awarded the 2025 Sveriges Riksbank prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel. He shares the prize with Peter Howitt and Joel Mokyr. (Illustration credit: Niklas Elmehed. Nobel Prize Outreach). Find out more...

About POID

The Programme on Innovation and Diffusion (POID) carries out cutting-edge research into how to improve productivity through nurturing innovation - ideas that are new to the world - and then diffusing these ideas across the economy. Read more...

Highlights

The Economics of Creative Destruction

John Van Reenen and Ufuk Akcigit assemble world-leading economists to consider how creative destruction can address today's most important political and social questions. Find out more...

Pathways to a productive and inclusive net zero

Pathways to productive and inclusive net zero brings together highlights of research carried out under the Productive and Inclusive Net Zero (PRINZ) programme. Find out more...

The Innovation and Diffusion Podcast

This biweekly podcast aims to generate easily accessible and engaging academic discussions on cutting edge research on innovation and diffusion. Read more...

Latest

Fortune

Remote employees have quietly unlocked one major workplace perk: Getting paid 12% more than their in-office colleagues, Fed study finds

Indeed, a 2024 study led by remote work expert and Stanford economist Nick Bloom found that of 1,614 employees working for a Chinese technology company between 2021 and 2022, hybrid work increased job satisfaction and de... Read more...

26 February 2026

Fortune

Stanford researchers have a fix for 'fertility president' Trump's baby boom anxiety: Remote work

"It seems like just such an obvious thing to do," remote work expert Nick Bloom said. "As an economist, I don't think I've ever seen the more obvious win, win, win policy...." Read more at Fortune. ... Read more...

14 February 2026

Bastille Post

Closer China-UK ties key to future prosperity in face of global challenges: Nobel laureate

Pissarides, a Nobel Laurette who is also the Regius Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, was speaking in an interview with the China Global Television Network (CGTN) on the sidelines of the recent Wo... Read more...

30 January 2026

El Comercio

Philippe Aghion, winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics, praised the reforms implemented by Milei's government

The French academic participated in the International Economic Forum organized by CAF in Panama and argued that eliminating corruption, competition policies and the elimination of some regulations are key to economic gro... Read more...

29 January 2026

Research Professional News

Nobel winner urges changes to 'inferior' European R&I system

"Our innovation ecosystem in Europe is inferior to that in the US, and Europe is in technological decline compared to the US and China…we have to do something about it," warned Philippe Aghion, who is a professor ... Read more...

20 January 2026

Financial Times

AI's impact on jobs is set to become more pronounced

"If you ask workers in a company [about their use of generative AI] they are in general very happy with it - it does the boring part of their work," says Sir Christopher Pissarides, a professor at the London School of Ec... Read more...

19 January 2026

BetaKit

How AI stands to dramatically change the future of work

"Why would it be different for AI?" asks Nobel Prize - winning economist Christopher Pissarides. Sir Christopher - who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2013 and has asked that we not call him by his formal name, but... Read more...

15 January 2026

The New York Times

Global Central Bankers Express Support for Fed Chair After Criminal Investigation

"It is in nobody’s interests for there to be worries and instability in the U.S.," said Jonathan Haskel, an economics professor at Imperial College Business School and former member of the rate-setting committee at... Read more...

13 January 2026

El Pais

Interview with Philippe Aghion, 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics winner (video)

Philippe Aghion, a French economist, professor at the Collège de France and 2025 Nobel Prize winner, argues that innovation is the driving force behind the development of countries. Watch the interview at E... Read more...

10 January 2026

New York Times

Welcome to the office. Now take off your shoes.

Nick Bloom, a Stanford economist who studies work culture, said the shoes-off trend was partly “the pajama economy in action”. That is, now that people who worked from home during the pandemic are back in the... Read more...

04 January 2026

CGTN

Obsession with China's trade surplus: A self-contradicting narrative

Research by economists Xavier Jaravel and Erick Sager shows that a 1.0 percent increase in U.S. imports from China leads to a 1.9 percent drop in American consumer prices. Read more at CGTN. ... Read more...

13 December 2025

Herald Glasgow

History shows importance of strong foundations as AI booms

On December 10, the Nobel Foundation will host its prize-giving ceremony in Stockholm. The three recipients of the 2025 prize in economics have each tackled a question first set down by Adam Smith 249 years ago: what are... Read more...

05 December 2025

ARTE.tv

Interview with a Nobel Prize winner (documentary)

At the core of Philippe Aghion's work and his theory of growth through "creative destruction" is a single key concept: innovation. Watch the documentary at ARTE.tv. ... Read more...

05 December 2025

Marketplace

Is remote work dying?

“And for companies, quits are hugely expensive,” said Nick Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University. The sweet spot for companies, he said, is hybrid work. “That seems to be ab... Read more...

02 December 2025

Financial Times

Ministers look to curb use of non-compete clauses in UK contracts

John Van Reenen, growth adviser to chancellor Rachel Reeves, is among economists whose research found use of the clauses to be more widespread in the UK than the US or Europe, with about one worker in four subject to the... Read more...

28 November 2025

Financial Times

Economist Philippe Aghion: ‘Macron’s legacy will be better than people think’

“Winning the Nobel Prize is very good,” says Philippe Aghion, as the recently crowned economics laureate eyes up the dim sum options at a quiet pan-Asian restaurant on Paris’s left bank. “But the ... Read more...

21 November 2025

The Hindu

Nobel Prize in Economics Honours Work on Technological Change and Growth

The current Nobel Prize in Economics has been given to three economists — Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt — who have studied the role of technological change and creative destruction in economic... Read more...

11 November 2025

The Independent

Nobel laureate Philippe Aghion says creative upbringing shaped his vision of innovation and freedom

French Nobel economics laureate Philippe Aghion reflects on the creative roots that shaped his award-winning ideas about innovation and growth. Click to open. ... Read more...

13 October 2025

The Economist

Bonfire of the middle managers

These too seem open to disruption. But in the interim AI may be the middle manager's friend. Raffaella Sadun of Harvard Business School notes that effective middle managers can boost the uptake of corporate t... Read more...

05 October 2025

Diario ABC

The global information crisis represents a serious threat to economic prosperity and human progress, as well as a unique opportunity

Eleven of the world's leading economists, including two Nobel laureates, urge governments to recognize and defend the economic value of public interest media in the age of AI. Philippe Aghion is one of the signatories. E... Read more...

28 September 2025

Public Senat

50 Shades of the Zucman Tax: What Other Options Are on the Table to Tax the Ultra-Rich?

In an interview with Les Echos, Xavier Jaravel, deputy president of the Council of Economic Analysis (CAE) and professor at the London School of Economics, develops similar arguments. The economist proposes in particular... Read more...

24 September 2025

EconomieMatin

In order to survive in France, large companies that are less and less French benefit from aid to compensate for exceptional costs

To fill the state's coffers, the European Tax Observatory led by Gabriel Zucman proposes a tax on billionaires and a tax on multinationals that could generate twenty billion according to the author and five billion accor... Read more...

24 September 2025

Fortune

Ray Dalio warns 'we're heading into very, very dark times' and says the solution comes from a Chinese proverb: 'A smart rabbit has 3 holes'

The London School of Economics revisited the subject earlier this year, calling it a "productivity puzzle" while concluding that the U.K. had "had the worst contraction in labour productivity after the financial crisis" ... Read more...

23 September 2025

La Vanguardia

France reopens the European debate on taxation of large fortunes

On the other front, conservative French media such as Le Figar or label the aforementioned rate as "delusional". Philippe Aghion, professor of economics at Insead and the London School of Economics and considered Macron'... Read more...

21 September 2025

The Times

How rich is the UK compared with the US? The growing gap, in charts

A recent report from the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics found that between 2011 and 2019 productivity grew by 0.5 per cent a year in the UK compared with 0.8 per cent in the US. Read m... Read more...

19 September 2025

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POID Working Paper

Firm data on AI

We present the first representative international data on firm-level AI use. We survey almost 6000 CFOs, CEOs and executives from stratified firm samples across the US, UK, Germany and Australia. We find four key facts. ...Read more...

Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Steven J. Davis, Kevin M. Foster, Aaron Jalca, Brent H. Meyer, Paul Mizen, Michael A. Navarrete, Pawel Smietanka, Gregory Thwaites, Ben Zhe Wang and Ivan Yotzov

23 February 2026

POID Working Paper

Mapping Technological Trajectories: Evidence from two centuries of patent data

We introduce a methodology to measure cross-country trends in innovation capability - "technological trajectories" and implement this on a new rich dataset covering patents between 1836 and 2016 across multiple countries...Read more...

Antonin Bergeaud, Ruveyda Nur Gozen and John Van Reenen

16 February 2026

POID Working Paper

What is the "right" geographic market definition?

This paper examines the "right" geographic definition of relevant markets by analyzing how excise tax pass-through varies with local competition in the retail gasoline market of a large metropolitan city. Using a natural...Read more...

Christos Genakos and Themistoklis Kampouris

16 February 2026

POID Working Paper

Ray of Hope? China and the rise of solar energy

Do industrial policies that promote clean energy offer a "ray of hope", increasing a country's growth and welfare, whilst simultaneously reducing carbon emissions? We study the impact of Chinese solar subsidies whose imp...Read more...

Ignacio Banares-Sanchez, Robin Burgess, David Laszlo, Pol Simpson, John Van Reenen and Yifan Wang

16 February 2026

CEP report

Pathways to a productive and inclusive net zero

The transition to net zero can bring economic benefits - improving productivity and living standards while tackling climate change and this collection of briefing papers shows how. Pathways to productive and inclusive ne...Read more...

Pia Andres, Chiara Cavaglia, Sam Fankhauser, Ilya Ilin, Francois Lafond, Fulvia Marotta, Ralf Martin, Sandra McNally, Viet Nguyen-Tien, Alice Owen, Emilien Ravigne, Maxwell Read, Xiyu Ren, Misato Sato, Aurelien Saussay, Arjun Shah, Trang Thu Tran, Anna Valero, Guglielmo Ventura, Dennis Verhoeven, Francesco Vona and Golvine de Rochambeau

13 February 2026

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...

David Autor and B.N. Kausik

9 February 2026

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...

David Autor, Andrew Caplin, Daniel J. Martin and Philip Marx

9 February 2026

Blog

VoxEU:

Why inflation may respond faster to big shocks: The rise of state-dependent pricing

Macroeconomic models distinguish time-dependent pricing, where firms change prices at fixed intervals, from state-dependent pricing, where firms change prices in response to changing demand or costs. This column presents...Read more...

Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Craig Menzies, Paul Mizen, Gregory Thwaites and Ivan Yotzov

6 February 2026

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...

Stephen Bond, Agnes Norris Keiller, Tim Obermeier, John Van Reenen and Aureo de Paula

4 February 2026

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...

Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Craig Menzies, Paul Mizen, Gregory Thwaites and Ivan Yotzov

4 February 2026

Journal article

International Journal of Industrial Organization:

What is the "right" geographic market definition?

Christos Genakos and Themistoklis Kampouris

29 January 2026

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...

Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Pawel Smietanka and Gregory Thwaites

23 January 2026

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...

Aniket Baksy, Daniel Chandler and Peter John Lambert

21 January 2026

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...

Robert Akerlof, Anik Ashraf, Rocco Macchiavello and Atonu Rabbani

19 January 2026

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...

Patrick Farrell, Rocco Macchiavello, Josepa Miquel-Florensa, Eric Verhoogen and Nicolas de Roux

19 January 2026

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...

Rocco Macchiavello, Andreas Menzel, Atonu Rabbani and Christopher Woodruff

19 January 2026

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...

Grabriele Cristelli

14 January 2026

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...

Antonin Bergeaud, Andre Loesekrug-Pietri and Jean Tirole

6 January 2026

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...

Agnes Norris Keiller, Tim Obermeier, Andreas Teichgraeber and John Van Reenen

6 January 2026

Blog

VoxEU:

A nonlinear Phillips curve helps explain the inflation overshoot

The recent high-inflation episode generated renewed interest about the slope of the Phillips curve and non-linearities in price-setting behaviour. This column uses survey data from US and UK firms to show that prices res...Read more...

Lena Anayi, Emily Barnes, Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Gregory Thwaites and Ivan Yotzov

23 December 2025

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...

Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Pawel Smietanka and Gregory Thwaites

5 December 2025

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...

Raffaella Sadun

19 November 2025

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...

Sabrina T. Howell, Jason Rathje, John Van Reenen and Jun Wong

1 November 2025

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...

Christos Genakos, Tobias Kretschmer and Ambre Nicolle

23 October 2025

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...

John Van Reenen

20 October 2025

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POID External Event

Bank of Portugal

Seminar

John Van Reenen will give a seminar.... Read more...

John Van Reenen (LSE)

Tuesday 10 March 2026

POID External Event

London Business School

CEPR

Conference on Public Policies for Innovation

London Business School, the Duke University Fuqua School of Business, and the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) invite submissions for a conference on Public Policies for Innovation at London Business School on ... Read more...

Philippe Aghion (Collège de France; INSEAD and LSE), John Van Reenen (LSE), Various speakers

Thursday 19 March 2026 - Friday 20 March 2026 00:00

POID External Event

University of Cambridge

Bennett School of Public Policy Annual Conference

Can governments deliver growth?

The programme includes expert discussions, a keynote speech, poster presentations, and opportunities to network with professionals from policymaking, academia, government, business, and the media. Throughout the day, ... Read more...

Various speakers , Anna Valero (CEP)

Thursday 26 March 2026 10:00 - 18:30

POID External Event

Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE)

Seminar

John Van Reenen (LSE)

Tuesday 14 April 2026 14:15 - 15:30

POID Research Seminar

TBC

Abhijit Tagade (LSE)

Tuesday 21 April 2026 11:00 - 12:00

POID External Event

NBER

NBER Productivity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Spring Meeting

The Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Program studies firm-level and economy-wide forces that determine productivity. It emphasizes the factors that affect innovation, patenting, entrepreneurship, and the cr... Read more...

John Van Reenen (LSE), Various speakers

Friday 24 April 2026 09:00 - 18:00

POID External Event

Kenneth C. Griffin Deparment of Economics, Chicago

Applications seminar

John Van Reenen (LSE)

Tuesday 05 May 2026 15:30 - 17:00

POID External Event

Becker Friedman Institute, Chicago

Coase Project Conference

The Coase Project Conference aims to deepen and elevate the fields of climate, energy, and environmental economics. During this two-day conference hosted at the University of Chicago David Rubenstein Forum, a leading gro... Read more...

John Van Reenen (LSE), Various speakers

Wednesday 06 May 2026 - Thursday 07 May 2026 00:00