In this paper we study the causal impact of police on crime by looking at what happened to crime before and after the terror attacks that hit central London in July 2005. The attacks resulted in a large redeployment of police officers to central London boroughs as compared to outer London - in...

There is a growing body of research that measures employment effects of the minimum wage by using longitudinal data on individuals to compare job loss of workers affected by a minimum wage increase with those who are not directly affected. This sort of study requires good quality wage data in...

Washington's "revolving door"––the movement from government service into the lobbying industry––is regarded as a major concern for policy-making. We study how ex-government staffers benefit from the personal connections acquired during their public service. Lobbyists...

We survey the micro and macro literature on the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on productivity. The “Solow Paradox” of the absence of an impact of ICT on productivity no longer holds, if it ever did. Both growth accounting and econometric evidence suggest an...

The terrorist attacks of 7 July 2005 resulted in a very large redeployment of police officers to central London boroughs. New research by Mirko Draca, Stephen Machin and Robert Witt looks at the impact of this increased security presence on criminal activity in the weeks and months after the...

Research by Mirko Draca and colleagues on Washington's 'revolving door' lobbyists gives an indication of the value of political connections in the UK.

We study the impact of minimum wages on firm profitability, exploiting the changes induced by the introduction of a UK national minimum wage in 1999. We use pre-policy information on the distribution of wages to implement a difference-in-differences approach. Minimum wages raise wages, but also...

We examine the impact of Chinese import competition on patenting, IT, R&D and TFP using a panel of up to half a million firms over 1996-2007 across twelve European countries. We correct for endogeneity using the removal of product-specific quotas following China's entry into the World Trade...

We examine the impact of Chinese import competition on broad measures of technical change - patenting, IT, R&D, TFP and management practices - using new panel data across twelve European countries between 1996-2007. We correct for endogeneity using the removal of product-specific quotas...

We examine the impact of Chinese import competition on patenting, IT, R&D and TFP using a panel of up to half a million firms over 1996-2007 across twelve European countries. We correct for endogeneity using the removal of product-specific quotas following China’s entry into the World Trade...