During the pandemic, many parents have had to cope with losing their jobs or part of their income at the same time as they are obliged to manage home schooling. Claudia Hupkau, Ingo Isphording, Stephen Machin and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela look at the effects on children's outcomes and families' mental health.
In CEP's first anniversary lecture marking 30 years since the Centre began, founder director Richard Layard outlined the science of wellbeing and its implications for public policy. As society tries to recover from the coronavirus crisis, he concludes that in seeking to 'build back better', our fundamental aim should be to 'build back happier'.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games have been rescheduled to take place in July and August this year. Christian Krekel uses tools from the new science of wellbeing to assess whether the event should still go ahead and how likely it is to have been a worthwhile investment.
The politics and economy of the antebellum American South were dominated by those who practiced forced enslavement. Research by Luna Bellani, Anselm Hager and Stephan Maurer, which examines a database of Texas legislators from 1860 to 1900, reveals that the power of slave-owners continued long after the Civil War.
Big cities thrive because of the economic and social benefits of proximity - but proximity also helps to spread Covid-19. Does this mean an end to the urban revival of recent years - or do vaccines herald a return to normality? According to Henry Overman and Max Nathan, much will depend on how far the forced experiments of lockdown translate into new norms.
As has been much discussed since the election, economic performance varies widely among the towns, cities and regions of the UK. Henry Overman argues that policies to address these spatial disparities should be judged on whether they improve individual opportunities, not whether they narrow the gaps between different parts of the country.
Josh De Lyon and Swati Dhingra show that the UK sectors suffering less during lockdown are those most exposed to damage from leaving the European Union.
Can we teach people to live happier and more pro-social lives? Are there cost-effective and scalable interventions? And could the effects be sustained over time? Christian Krekel and colleagues have evaluated the impact of Exploring What Matters - a local community course that aims to promote mental wellbeing.
Ralf Martin and John Van Reenen explain how taxing emissions could help to meet the costs of the crisis and encourage investment in clean innovation.
Guglielmo Ventura outlines the challenges for England's apprenticeship system as economic and social activity resumes
One in seven people in the UK workforce is now in self-employment – but this is a very diverse community. Jack Blundell is developing a typology of self-employed workers, which can then be used to assess differences in how satisfied they are with their working lives and to identify vulnerable groups who may benefit from policy support.
Children's chances of doing well at school, going to university, getting a good job and owning a house are strongly influenced by their parents' education, occupation and home ownership - but what about the impact of where they grow up? Brian Bell, Jack Blundell and Stephen Machin explore the geography of intergenerational mobility in England and Wales.
Crime economists Ria Ivandic and Tom Kirchmaier look at data on domestic abuse calls to the police in London.
Covid-19 has shifted attention away from day-to-day matters to a question that is more fundamental, yet rarely asked by economists: how can we ensure resilience in the most pressurised times imaginable? Richard Davies draws lessons for responding to the pandemic from his experiences in nine extreme economies.
Frank Pisch analyses 'just-in-time' production networks to assess the prospects for world trade after Covid-19
Despite scepticism among researchers, policies to promote geographical clusters of firms in the same sector remain popular. Max Nathan evaluates a flagship programme set up a decade ago to accelerate the growth of Tech City in East London. While the cluster has increased in size and density, the outcomes for firm performance are - at best - mixed. That raises some bigger questions for future cluster policies.
Businesses have rapidly adopted new technologies and new ways of working in response to the massive disruptions caused by the pandemic. A CEP report by Capucine Riom and Anna Valero suggests that if such innovation continues, it could boost the UK economy in the long term.
Higher education has long been thought of as a tool to equalise opportunities. But according to research by Gill Wyness and colleagues, if we really want to improve the life chances of disadvantaged students, we need to pay much more attention to the types of universities and subjects in which they enrol.
Many tall buildings appear to be out of scale given contemporary perceptions. But according to Gabriel Ahlfeldt and Jason Barr, the vast majority have a solid economic case for their construction.
