This paper examines how the geography of UK international trade has changed since the UK¿s accession to the European Economic Community using a newly constructed data set that gives a detailed breakdown of the UK¿s imports and exports by both port of entry and exit and commodity. Our results...

In this bold, exciting and readable volume, Paul Cheshire, Max Nathan and Henry Overman illustrate the insights that recent economic research brings to our understanding of cities, and the lessons for urban policy-making. The authors present new evidence on the fundamental importance of cities...

type="main" xml:id="obes12043-abs-0001" <title type="main">Abstract</title> <p>This article considers methods for decomposing wage variation into individual and group specific components. We discuss the merits of these methods, which are applicable to variance decomposition problems generally. The relative magnitudes of the...</p>

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 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...

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 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...

All governments are concerned with tackling the problems of areas that experience sustained decline and underperformance. In the UK, several factors have combined to raise profound questions about future government policy in this area. First, it is becoming increasingly clear that the recession...