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...

This paper is concerned with methods for analysing spatial data. After initial discussion on the nature of spatial data, including the concept of randomness, we focus most of our attention on linear regression models that involve interactions between agents across space. The introduction of...

This policy paper is concerned with rural policy. It spells out the lessons for rural policy that emerge from recent SERC research.

This policy note spells out lessons for rural policy that emerge from recent SERC research. It summarises a SERC policy paper available at http://www.spatialeconomics.ac.uk/textonly/SERC/publications/download/sercpp008.pdf

This note is concerned with the role of cities and urban policy in growth. Decentralisation from central to local government may help city leaders raise economic performance. It also generates new policy choices for central government - especially in policy areas where local leaders are...

This note discusses the UK government's proposed reforms to the land use planning system. It considers the case for reform and the extent to which the reforms are likely to meet their objectives. It then makes some suggestions on how the National Planning Policy Framework could be improved. It...

This note considers the impact of land use planning on economic performance. Specifically, we discuss some of the economic and social costs of the current English system, some of which have been underplayed in public debate. Our aim is to provide evidence to better inform discussions of the...

This paper considers the impact of public sector employment on local labour markets. Using English data at the Local Authority level for 2003 to 2007 we find that public sector employment has no identifiable effect on total private sector employment. However, public sector employment does affect...

We argue that identification problems bedevil most applied spatial research. Spatial econometrics solves these problems by deriving estimators assuming that functional forms are known and by using model comparison techniques to let the data choose between competing specifications. We argue that...

This paper investigates wage disparities across sub-national labour markets in Britain using a newly available microdata set. The findings show that wage disparity across areas is very persistent over time. While area effects play a role in this wage disparity, most of it is due to individual...