This study seeks to take stock of where the LEPs are at and where they are heading by analysing their strategies and priorities, organisation and governance, resources, effectiveness and working relations, innovations, lessons learned, and future barriers and challenges.

This paper looks at the link between inter-regional mobility, innovation and firms' behavioural heterogeneity in their reliance on localised external sources of knowledge. By linking patent data (capturing inventors' inter-regional mobility) with firm-level data (providing information on firms'...

British cities are becoming more culturally diverse, with migration a main driver. Is this growing diversity good for urban economies? This paper explores, using a new 16-year panel of UK cities. Over time, net migration affects both local labour markets and the wider economy. Average labour...

London is one of the world's major cities, and one of its most diverse. London's cultural diversity is widely seen as a social asset, but there is little hard evidence on its importance for the city's businesses. Theory and evidence suggest various links between urban cultural diversity and...

British cities have a surprisingly long history of cultural diversity. Recently they have become significantly more multicultural, with 'super-diversity' emerging in many urban neighbourhoods. Public interest in these changes is high, but there has been little research assessing their impacts....

This report estimates housing-cost-earnings differentials across labour market areas in Britain. We show that quality-adjusted housing costs rise on average, one for one with the skill-adjusted earnings of the average working household. However, the relationship is Ushaped, with relatively high...

Ethnic inventors play important roles in US innovation systems, especially in high-tech regions like Silicon Valley. Do 'ethnicity-innovation' channels exist elsewhere? This paper investigates, using a new panel of UK patents microdata. In theory, ethnicity might affect positively innovation via...

This paper examines how high human capital in a locality is associated with the employment outcomes of individuals. A probit model is used to examine how the employment probability of otherwise similar working age males is associated with changes in the share of degree holders in the local area....

This paper analyzes the impact of agglomeration externalities on hourly earnings using longitudinal worker micro-level data from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings over the period 2002- 2006. We find that the effect of agglomeration externalities on wages is sensitive to the estimator used....

This paper examines the wage effects arising from changing local human capital in the labour market areas of Britain. Employing wage regressions, it is found that individuals' wages are positively associated with changes in the employment shares of high-paid occupation workers in the British...