Business support policies designed to raise productivity and employment are common worldwide, but rigorous micro-econometric evaluation of their causal effects is rare. We exploit multiple changes in the area-specific eligibility criteria for a major program to support manufacturing jobs...

Theory predicts that optimal effective corporation tax rates will be negatively related to industry specific sunk costs, and hence industry concentration. Governments should tax industries with monopolistic power softly. Evidence suggests that this Schumpeterian (1942) principle of corporate...

This paper studies the effects of a country’s regulatory setting and competitive environment on the performance of second-generation (2G) mobile telecommunication. We consider three dimensions of sector performance: entry time, service prices and diffusion. We address the question of...

The digital industries cluster known as 'Silicon Roundabout' has been quietly growing in East London since the 1990s. Now rebranded 'Tech City', it is now the focus of huge public and government attention. National and local policymakers wish to accelerate the local area's development: such...

Using administrative employer-employee data from Germany, I exploit two reductions of tax breaks for commuting in 2003/4 and 2006/7 to estimate commuting costs’ effect on the decision to switch job and move house. Standard theory predicts that higher commuting costs should lead to increased...

Subjective wellbeing data is becoming increasingly popular in economics research. The wellbeing valuation approach uses wellbeing data instead of data gleaned from preferences to attach monetary values to non-market goods. This method could be an important alternative to preference-based...

Successive British governments have committed substantial public resources to apprentice training, but far too few young people benefit and not enough high value skills have been developed. That is the central conclusion of a new report published by the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP). The...

This paper examines the impact of the Working Families Tax Credit (WFTC) on employment retention and advancement. The WFTC, which replaced Family Credit in October 1999, supplemented earnings of low paid workers living in low income families. It was designed to increase the financial incentive...

This paper examines the impact of the Working Families Tax Credit (WFTC) on employment retention and advancement. The WFTC, which replaced Family Credit in October 1999, supplemented earnings of low paid workers living in low income families. It was designed to increase the financial incentive...