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

CASEreport

Keeping Communities Together: How smaller social landlords and community-led housing can provide affordable, secure, low cost accommodation for communities in need

Ellie Benton, Anne Power and Ruby Russell

This report sets out the potential for small, community-based housing organisations to deliver homes for people in housing need, within their own communities. It uncovers innovative examples and models for how this can b...Read more...

21 April 2022

CASEreport

Social Cost Benefit Analysis of the no recourse to public funds (NRPF) policy in London

Ellie Benton, Jacob Karlsson, Ilona Pinter, Bert Provan, Kath Scanlon and Christine Whitehead

This report estimates the monetised social and economic gains (benefits) of removing of the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) condition for certain household in England. It compares this to the costs of allowing them to...Read more...

23 March 2022

CASEreport

Climate Crisis/Housing Crisis: How can social landlords reconcile safety and energy saving?

Ellie Benton, LSE Housing and Communities and Anne Power

Econometrics Paper

Minimax Risk in Estimating Kink Threshold and Testing

Javier Hidalgo, Heejun Lee, Heejun Lee, Jungyoon Lee and Myung Hwan Seo

We derive a risk lower bound in estimating the threshold parameter without knowing whether the threshold regression model is continuous or not. The bound goes to zero as the sample size n grows only at the cube root ra...Read more...

3 March 2022

Econometrics Paper

Nonparametric prediction with spatial data

Abhimanyu Gupta and Javier Hidalgo

We describe a (nonparametric) prediction algorithm for spatial data, based on a canonical factorization of the spectral density function. We provide theoretical results showing that the predictor has desirable asymptot...Read more...

3 March 2022

Econometrics Paper

Bandwidth selection for nonparametric regression with errors-in-variables

Hao Dong, Taisuke Otsu and Luke Taylor

We propose two novel bandwidth selection procedures for the nonparametric regression model with classical measurement error in the regressors. Each method is based on evaluating the prediction errors of the regression us...Read more...

25 January 2022

SPDO Research Note

distoutc and svydistoutc: Help file to accompany Stata programmes for undertaking distributional analysis of categorical outcome variables

Eleni Karagiannaki

Downloadable STATA programmes and accompanying help files for estimating a range of distributional statistics for any categorical variable (e.g. employment status, poverty status etc) overall and for each of the groups i...Read more...

25 January 2022

SPDO Research Note

distout and svydistout: Help file to accompany Stata programmes for undertaking distributional analysis of continuous outcome variables

Eleni Karagiannaki

Downloadable STATA programmes and accompanying help files for estimating a range of distributional statistics for any continuous variable (e.g. earnings, equivalised household disposable income) overall and for each of t...Read more...

25 January 2022

CASEbrief

Poverty and parenting in the UK: Patterns and pathways between economic hardship and mothers' parenting practices

Kerris Cooper

This research examines to what extent there are differences in parenting across income groups, and whether these differences are unique to low-income parents. When comparisons are made across all income groups, rather th...Read more...

11 January 2022

Econometrics Paper

Estimating density ratio of marginals to joint: Applications to causal inference

Yukitoshi Matsushita, Taisuke Otsu and Keisuke Takahata

In various fields of data science, researchers often face problems of estimating the ratios of two probability densities. Particularly in the context of causal inference, the product of marginals for a treatment variable...Read more...

7 January 2022