One of CEP's core research themes is the impact of trade openness on countries, firms, regions, communities and sectors.Two recent studies confirm the gains from opening up trade - but recognise that addressing the uneven outcomes of globalisation is as big a challenge as pursuing liberalisation...

Guy Michaels and colleagues show how new technologies are polarising the labour market, with the middle-skilled losing out most

We analyse the role of financial sector workers in the huge rise of the share of earnings going to those at the very top of the pay distribution in the UK. Rising bankers' bonuses accounted for two-thirds of the increase in the share of the top 1% after 1999. Surprisingly, bankers' share of...

Until some political mechanism creates incentives to elect moderate representatives who can reach across the ideological divide, the US seems destined to heightened levels of policy uncertainty for many years to come. Some research suggests that such uncertainty, particularly over economic...

John Van Reenen sketches the evolution of CEP research on the drivers of productivity growth - and its impact on policies to foster competition.

Since a speech by the Prime Minister in January 2013 , the Conservative party has been committed to holding a referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union (EU) in 2017. So this is a good moment to consider what would be the likely economic effects on the UK from such a move...

In the last CentrePiece, John Van Reenen stressed the importance of competition and labour market flexibility for productivity growth. His latest in CEP's 'big ideas' series describes the impact of research on how policy-makers can influence innovation more directly - through tax credits for...

The UK's rate of unemployment has just hit 8 per cent and the number of people unemployed has risen to 2.5 million. According to researchers at the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), while these figures are bad, they are not as bad as might be expected given the large fall in output in the...