ESRC RCUK Innovation Fellowships

Lead Research Organisation: London School of Economics and Political Science
Department Name: Centre for Economic Performance

Abstract

As outlined in the Government's White Paper on the Industrial Strategy, and its Digital Strategy, the world is becoming increasingly digitalised, and digital connectivity has rapidly become an essential requirement for the way people live and do business.

Over the course of the three-year fellowship I plan to investigate technology-driven growth in the UK, and expect to produce work on the following three areas:

- Prices, wages and the labour market;
- Productivity, IT uptake and supply chain management;
- International comparisons.

Planned Impact

The aim would be three major workstreams aligned with the themes I have identified. Each one would have a peer-reviewed journal paper at its core. But I will also put together short-term multimedia outputs (blogs, videos, tweets) and short 3-4 page articles. I am used to presenting at BEIS, HM Treasury and the Downing Street Policy Unit, and this fellowship will allow me to build on these relations. I will provide briefings for policymakers at key institutions (as set out in Pathways to Impact).

The fellowship rightly emphasises corporate engagement and international comparisons. I would take this seriously and have investigated the idea of setting up a secondment / knowledge exchange with Chief economists at various potential partners in the UK including Spotify, Google Deepmind, LinkedIN, Public, and KMPG. In terms of corporate collaboration, out scoped partners the CBI and KMPG may be useful here in that both of these institutions hold information on significant networks of companies.

In terms of international links it is going to be vital for the UK to learn from other countries. As with the above I will seek knowledge exchange with other countries seeking answers to these questions including academics in America, Japan and Estonia.

Publications

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Besley T (2020) Formulating Industrial Policy in National Institute Economic Review

 
Description A new data set on micro - level pricing for the UK has been built. This allows an anlaysis of real i.e. inflation-adjusted wages at a regional level, and by age group.

In a second paper, new facts on birth death, growth and productivity rates have been genearted. These are important part of the UK productivity puzzle.
Exploitation Route The price data has been uploaded to a public repository so that other researchers can look at the data, to answer their own questions on localised UK inflation rates.

The results have been reported in the Times (of London) and the Financial Times.

The data have already been used as a teaching aid at the LSE, UCL, Bristol and Imperial universities.

Students have used the data as part of a ONS competition on using resarch data sets.

The results from the research are now being used by a number of groups, including the LSE/Resultion Foundation Economy 2030 project, and a pan-EU project (UK lead is Prof Neil Lee) looking at wage inequlaity.
Sectors Creative Economy

Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)

Financial Services

and Management Consultancy

Retail

URL https://www.niesr.ac.uk/publications/formulating-industrial-policyhttps://richarddavies.io/research/prices
 
Description The findings have been used in policy settings, the press, and by companies: Policy. As reported in previous submissions I have been in regular contact with key policymaking bodies that would use my results, principally the Bank of England and HM Treasury, both of which reported they would use results in their future research and policy making. Press. The results of the research have been used in reporting by the Financial Times and The Times of London. Firms. A number of independent companies seeking to understand inflation have also been in touch, asking for access to the data. In line with the stated aims of the resarch I have made this open source. It is important to note that my projects are still "live" as I update the data regularly.
First Year Of Impact 2019
Sector Financial Services, and Management Consultancy,Government, Democracy and Justice
Impact Types Economic

Policy & public services

 
Title UK CPI micro data 
Description I have built a new database of corrected UK consumer prices. The price data come from monthly records of prices known as 'price quotes' that are recorded by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The price quote files contain information on the item sold, its location, the shop and shop type (the size of the establishment) it is sold in, and whether it was offered at a sale or regular price. The files cover the months between January 1988 and July 2020. After appending the historical files the final raw dataset has 40m price observations. Extensive preparatory work on the data has been undertaken to make it useful for research purposes. This includes cleaning and manually amending the data where errors were found. I also impose assumptions and assertions in order to improve the time-series properties of the data (in practical terms I 'knit together' many items that the ONS regards as different but I asset are the same, in order to create longer time series). These steps have been discussed with the ONS who concur that these data are now corrent. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2019 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact The data provide number steps forward in our understanding of inflation. In particular, local CPIs for the UK region allow for an improved assesment of real wages. Because the data is updated monthly, I update the file monthly and provide this via my web site. 
URL https://richarddavies.io/research/the-uk-consumer-basket