Work-in-progress
Spending in the City (with Steve Gibbons).
Abstract: Cities are celebrated for the variety of consumption opportunities they offer, yet little is known about how this is manifest in household spending. In this paper we investigate how households spend their money in Britain’s cities and how consumption patterns vary with city size and location within cities. Our headline result is that city size and central city location tend to reduce variety in consumption expenditure shares, conditional on income, even after adjusting for housing expenditure. Income is by far the dominant factor affecting consumption shares and their variety across goods. The shares of expenditure in some categories are sensitive to city size and household location, but the patterns are complex. There are some categories of expenditure where city living unambiguously shifts choices in the same direction as income: food and alcohol outside the home, adult clothes, education, and transport services - for which shares increase with income and urban location; and the share of expenditure on entertainment at home, for which the share decreases with income and urban location.
Outside Wage Dynamics, Turnover and Hospital Performance - Evidence from the English NHS (with Alistair McGuire, Victoria Serra-Sastre and Jannis Stockel).
Abstract: Centralized pay setting in the National Health Service (NHS) generates substantial disparities between NHS wages and local “outside” wages. While staff turnover linked to these disparities has been associated with poorer care quality, evidence on the underlying wage–turnover mechanism remains limited. This study examines this relationship using panel data on turnover among doctors, nurses, and support staff in English acute care trusts from 2010 to 2019, combined with trust-specific measures of local labor market wages derived from individual-level earnings and hours data. We document a growing divergence between public and private sector wage growth that amplifies regional wage inequalities. Exploiting variation over time and across trusts, we find that higher “outside” wages are linked to increased staff turnover, with effects concentrated among nurses and particularly in Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments. These relationships are driven by private sector wage dynamics rather than public sector wage movements.
The impact of Business Improvement Districts on crime. [PowerPoint slides] [City working paper]
Abstract: This study evaluates the impact of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) on crime using a novel data set on the total number of BIDs established in England and Wales between 2012-2017. Results indicate that BID areas are, on average, affected by higher levels of crime than other commercial areas, but they experience a drop of 10-11 crimes per quarter following BID formation. The reduction in crime is stronger for shoplifting, anti-social behaviour and public order-related crimes. Effects depends on the intensity of the approach adopted as well as on the amount of resources devoted to crime prevention. The study also provides evidence of diversion effects. As crime declines in BID areas, criminal activity diverts in neighboring commercial areas. Diversion effects are smaller than deterrence effects so that aggregated crime declines.
Economic Impacts of Business Improvement Districts: The London Experience.
Abstract: This paper examines the impact of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) on the composition and number of local businesses in London. Focusing on all BIDs established in the capital between 2005 and 2025, I study how the adoption of BID governance affects local economic activity at a fine spatial scale. Using a staggered difference-in-differences research design, I compare areas that chose to organise as BIDs to comparable areas that did not adopt BID status, exploiting variation in the timing of BID adoption across locations. The analysis evaluates both changes in the total number of businesses and shifts in the composition of local establishments across sectors. The staggered design allows for heterogeneous treatment timing and controls for time-invariant local characteristics as well as common shocks. The findings provide new evidence on the role of place-based business governance in shaping urban commercial landscapes and contribute to the broader literature on local economic development policies and urban governance.
Working papers
Spatial wage disparities within cities: Sorting and agglomeration economies (with Clément Bosquet). [online appendix] [PowerPoint slides]
Publications
Faggio, G., Schlueter, T., & vom Berge, P. (2025). Interaction of Public and Private Employment: Evidence from a German Government Move, Regional Science and Urban Economics, Vol. 111, 104084, 2025.
[doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2025.104084] [open access]
featured on LSE Business Review.
Faggio, G., Silva, O., & Strange, W. C. (2020). Tales of the City: What Do Agglomeration Cases Tell Us About Agglomeration in General? Journal of Economic Geography, 20(5), pp.1117–1143.
[doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbaa007] [open access]
Faggio, G. (2019). Relocation of public sector workers: Evaluating a place-based policy, Journal of Urban Economics, 111, pp. 53-75.
[doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jue.2019.03.001] [open access]
featured on The Economist, The Daily Telegraph and Britain in 2015 (Nicholas Stevens, Ed.).
Faggio, G., Silva, O., & Strange, W. C. (2017). Heterogeneous agglomeration. Review of Economics and Statistics, 99(1), 80-94.
[doi:10.1162/REST_a_00604] [open access]
Faggio, G., & Silva, O. (2014). Self-employment and entrepreneurship in urban and rural labour markets. Journal of Urban Economics, 84, pp. 67-85.
[doi:10.1016/j.jue.2014.09.001] [open access]
Faggio, G., & Overman, H. (2014). The effect of public sector employment on local labour markets. Journal of Urban Economics, 79, pp. 91-107.
[doi:10.1016/j.jue.2013.05.002] [open access]
featured on Centre for Cities, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, Financial Times, Britain in 2013 (Nicholas Stevens, Ed.), Danish media (Politiken, 11 October 2015; TV Ost, 11 October 2015; Borsen, 14 December 2015) and contributed to the debate on the dispersal of public sector workers out of Copenhagen to other smaller cities via social media (Facebook, 10 July 2015).
Faggio, G., Salvanes, K. G., & van Reenen, J. (2010). The evolution of inequality in productivity and wages: Panel data evidence. Industrial and Corporate Change, 19(6), pp. 1919-1951.
[doi:10.1093/icc/dtq058]
featured on VoxEU and CentrePiece.
Faggio, G., & Nickell, S. (2007). Patterns of Work Across the OECD. The Economic Journal, 117(521), pp. F416-F440.
[doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0297.2007.02062.x]
Faggio, G., & Nickell, S. (2005). The responsiveness of wages to labour market conditions in the UK. Labour Economics, 12(5), pp. 685-696.
[doi:10.1016/j.labeco.2004.02.008]
Faggio, G., & Konings, J. (2003). Job creation, job destruction and employment growth in transition countries in the 90's. Economic Systems, 27(2), pp. 129-154.
[doi:10.1016/S0939-3625(03)00036-0]
Haaland, J. I., Wooton, I., & Faggio, G. (2002). Multinational Firms: Easy Come, Easy Go?. FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, 59(1), pp. 3-26.
Book Chapters
Faggio, G., & Nickell, S. (2003). The rise in inactivity among adult men. In The Labour Market Under New Labour: The State of Working Britain 2003 (pp. 40-52).
[doi:10.1057/9780230598454_4]
featured on BBC News Online.
Faggio, G., Gregg, P., & Wadsworth, J. (2011). Job Tenure and Job Turnover. In The Labour Market in Winter: The State of Working Britain (pp. 97-107).
[doi:10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199587377.003.0008]
Pre-print
Faggio, G. and Peracchi, F. (2020) “The Covid-19 epidemic in the UK”, medRxiv preprint (21 pages).
[doi: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.19.20135517v1] [open access]
featured on 51 national and regional newspapers (story lead for 8) including The Times, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Daily Star, The Sun, The Scottish Sun and This is Money (UK).