There has much recent academic and policy interest in the issue of spatial clustering of economic activity, with most attention paid to the geographic concentration of high-tech industries. This paper describes patterns of geographic and industrial concentration in UK production industries at...

We analyse a puzzle in the UK corporation tax: by both historic and international standards, corporation tax revenues have been high while the statutory rate has been reduced. We consider explanations based on changes in the tax law and in economic factors. Changes in the tax law, such as...

This paper investigates a set of strategic decisions facing US firms. We develop a simple theoretical framework in which firms choose whether or not to serve a foreign market, and if so whether by exporting, or by becoming a multinational. The model is applied to a sample of US firms choosing...

Food purchases differ substantially across countries. We use detailed household level data from the US, France and the UK to (i) document these differences; (ii) esti- mate a demand system for food and nutrients, and (iii) simulate counterfactual choices if households faced prices and...

This paper investigates the relationship between product market competition and innovation. We find strong evidence of an inverted-U relationship using panel data. We develop a model where competition discourages laggard firms from innovating but encourages neck-and-neck firms to innovate....

This paper presents a single unified framework that integrates the theoretical literature on Schumpeterian endogenous growth and major strands of the empirical literatures on R&D, productivity growth, and productivity convergence. Starting from a structural model of endogenous growth following...

Food purchases differ substantially across countries. We use detailed household level data from the US, France and the UK to (i) document these differences; (ii) esti- mate a demand system for food and nutrients, and (iii) simulate counterfactual choices if households faced prices and...

The theoretical effects of labor regulations, such as employment protection legislation (EPL), on innovation is ambiguous. EPL increases job security, and the greater enforceability of job contracts may increase worker investment in innovative activity. But EPL increases firms' adjustment costs,...

This paper investigates the economic impact of the government's proposed new UK R&D tax credit. We measure the benefit of the credit by the effect on value added in the short and long_run. This is simulated from existing econometric estimates of the tax_price elasticity of R&D and the effect of...