Publications

STICERD brings together world-class academics to put economics and related disciplines at the forefront of research and policy.

Featured

Image: the facade and main door of an old house; Source: Photo by Yasin Hoşgör on Unsplash, https://unsplash.com/photos/MUjep_e-YuY

The limits of microfinancing

Microfinance has helped millions of the world's poor build better lives. But can it help the world's poorest people, who spend most of their lives growing food to feed their families, to diversify into other jobs? Jack Thiemel tells Tim Phillips about the impact of one of these projects (with Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Erika Deserranno, Ricardo Morel, Imran Rasul, and Munshi Sulaiman), and what it tells us about the best ways to help the ultra-poor.Read more...

Image: Plant Growing In Savings Coins; Source: Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash, https://unsplash.com/photos/joqWSI9u_XM

The hidden costs of incentivising later retirement

Over the past two decades, many countries have reformed their public pension systems in pursuit of desirable fiscal effects, often by introducing or strengthening incentives for later retirement. Using Swedish administrative data, Jonas Kolsrud, Camille Landais, Daniel Reck, and Johannes Spinnewijn uncover significant redistributive costs of pension reforms that incentivise later retirement.Read more...

Pillars of Prosperity

Using the tools of modern political economics and combining economic theory with a bird's-eye view of the data (now updated for 2021), Timothy Besley and Torsten Persson reinterpret Adam Smith's pillars of prosperity to explain the existence of development clusters--places that tend to combine effective state institutions, the absence of political violence, and high per-capita incomes. Read more...

Latest

Social Policies and Distributional Outcomes Research Paper

Going backwards? The slowdown, stalling and reversal of progress in reducing child poverty in Britain during the second decade of the 21st century, and the groups of children that were affected.

Polly Vizard, Polina Obolenskaya and Kritty Treebhoohun

This paper has been written as part of the Social Policies and Distributional Outcomes (SPDO) research programme and provides an in-depth assessment of the slowdown, stalling and reversal of progress in reducing child po...Read more...

13 March 2023

CASEreport

Community Responses to the Cost-of-Living Crisis

Ellie Benton and Anne Power

The cost-of-living crisis is affecting households across the UK, many of whom are increasingly struggling to meet day-to-day costs, including energy, food, transport, and other essentials. With limited state support to a...Read more...

13 February 2023

Econometrics Paper

Regression adjustment in randomized controlled trials with many covariates

Harold D Chiang, Yukitoshi Matsushita and Taisuke Otsu

This paper is concerned with estimation and inference on average treatment effects in randomized controlled trials when researchers observe potentially many covariates. By em- ploying Neyman’s (1923) finite population pe...Read more...

9 February 2023

CASEpaper

The sins of the parents: Conceptualising adult-oriented reforms to family policy

Kitty Stewart, Ruth Patrick and Aaron Reeves

A core element of a welfare state is the support that is provided to families with children, in recognition of the additional needs that dependent children create. Variation in the design, generosity and implementation o...Read more...

31 January 2023

Social Policies and Distributional Outcomes Research Paper

Public and private welfare activity in England, 1979 to 2019.

Mary Reader and Tania Burchardt

This paper offers an empirical account of the changing landscape of private and public welfare activity in England over the forty years prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. It forms a part of the Social Policies and Distribut...Read more...

4 January 2023

CASEreport

Cost-benefit analysis of extending support to domestic abuse victims with NRPF: A technical report for the Domestic Abuse Commissioner

Kath Scanlon, Bert Provan, Ria Ivandic, Mariña Fernández-Reino, Fanny Blanc and Christine Whitehead

This report provides the technical underpinning to the report by the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s Report1 laid before Parliament in December 2022. That report was in response to the Home Office request that she set out ...Read more...

13 December 2022

Development Discussion Paper

The demand side of Africa's demographic transition: desired fertility, wealth, and jobs

Céline Zipfel

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) accounts for around 40% of projected global births over the next 80 years. To investigate the roots of persistently high fertility rates across the region, I assemble micro data from 192 Demogr...Read more...

1 December 2022

Econometrics Paper

Regression discontinuity design with potentially many covariates

Yoichi Arai, Taisuke Otsu and Myung Hwan Seo

This paper studies the case of possibly high-dimensional covariates in the regression discontinuity design (RDD) analysis. In particular, we propose estimation and inference methods for the RDD models with covariate sele...Read more...

31 October 2022

Econometrics Paper

GLS under monotone heteroskedasticity

Yoichi Arai, Taisuke Otsu and Mengshan Xu

The generalized least square (GLS) is one of the most basic tools in regression analyses. A major issue in implementing the GLS is estimation of the conditional variance function of the error term, which typically requir...Read more...

27 October 2022

Econometrics Paper

Conditional likelihood ratio test with many weak instruments

Sreevidya Ayyar, Yukitoshi Matsushita and Taisuke Otsu

This paper extends validity of the conditional likelihood ratio (CLR) test developed by Moreira (2003) to instrumental variable regression models with unknown error variance and many weak instruments. In this setting, we...Read more...

11 October 2022