The UK's main political parties have all pledged to combat climate change whatever the result of the general election. Yet according to a new report from the CEP, much of the discussion is largely rhetoric, with limited focus on actionable policy commitments. The report's authors explain how UK...

As the people of Scotland consider their vote in next year's referendum, what evidence is there that the nation can succeed 'on its own'? Gill Wyness and colleagues explore how Scotland compares with the rest of the UK in education, an area of public policy that is already highly devolved.

Education is an area that is highly devolved in the UK, and the fact that all four constituent countries have pursued very different policies in the recent past provides a good testing ground to undertake a comparative review of the merits or otherwise of the education reforms that have taken...

Can directed technical change be used to combat climate change? We construct new firm-level panel data on auto industry innovation distinguishing between "dirty" (internal combustion engine) and "clean" (e.g. electric and hybrid) patents across 80 countries over several decades. We show that...

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...

Labor's share of GDP in most OECD countries has declined over the last two decades. Some authors have suggested that these changes are linked to deregulation of product and labor markets. To examine this we focus on a large quasi-experiment in the OECD: the privatization of many network...

Since the abolition of the Wages Councils in September 1993, agriculture is the only sector in the UK economy covered by any form of minimum wage legislation. This paper investigates the impact of the system of minimum wages on the level and structure of earnings in agriculture and the level and...

UK productivity stagnated after the Great Recession of 2008-09 and remains about 15 percent below historical trends. This 'productivity puzzle' is due to a mixture of cyclical and structural effects - the fall is not entirely permanent; and has led to a widening of the longstanding gap with...

Sandra McNally and colleagues report the results of a 'light-touch' information campaign about the value and affordability of going to university.

We analyze the effects of Brexit on the UK economy. The most important economic consequence of Brexit would likely be reduced trade with EU countries. We consider an optimistic scenario with relatively small increases in trade barriers between the UK and the EU and a pessimistic scenario with...