Research Grants

I founded The Decision Maker Panel (DMP), Management and Expectations and Working From Home surveys in collaboration with Nick Bloom, which have shaped the discipline. Deputy National Statistician Jonathan Athow described the DMP as ‘a game changer for business surveys’ and an inspiration to setup the ONS BICS survey during Covid-19. 

I currently have ESRC-funded teams comprising four professors, three associate professors, a full-time manager, five postdocs and 20 research analysts and PhD students. under  three major funded research grants funded by the ESRC UKRI:

Decision Maker Panel

I am currently engaged in a major research project with the Bank of England and Nick Bloom of Stanford University on economic uncertainty (Decision Maker Panel) and economic uncertainty. The project has recruited over 9,500 firms and recruited over 120 researchers.

Funding: Supported by the ESRC. and other contributing institutions such as the Bank of England, the University of Nottingham and Stanford University  with £1.3m. This has been supplemented with extension funding of £265,000 2020-21, £440,000 2021-22 and a UKRI Covid-19 grant of £804,000.  In 2023 we received a three year grant for £1.8m from ESRC.  The website www.decisionmakerpanel.co.uk has had 28,127 users and 63,963 page views  since July 2019.

In 2021, the Decision Maker Panel was a Prize Finalist in the ESRC Celebrating Impact Awards, for which  ESRC sponsored the production of a short introductory film. 

Brexit 

With respect to Brexit,  the results show that greater economic uncertainty has subdued investment in the UK particularly among the most productive of UK firms. The results have been used extensively by the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee including in the official assessment of the Withdrawal Agreement presented to Parliament (Nov 2018).  We have an assessment of the effects on UK investment, employment and productivity growth from EU referendum in june 2016 to the Windsor Agreement in February 2023. 

Covid

With respect to Covid, there has been the largest increase in economic uncertainty by any  metric since measurement began, and the effects on businesses are only just being investigated (see our results in VoxEU). The effect on productivity is calculated in a forthcoming research paper.   

Inflation 

The surge in inflation during 2022 led to a sharp increase in interest rates around the world, and a jump in business uncertainty.  We organised a special session at the American Economic Association meetings in New Orleans, January 2023. View webcast online.  The effect on inflation dynamics is shown in this NBER working paper and VoxEU blog, while the response in firms' inflation expectations is documented in this VoxEU blog. The uncertainty surrounding the war in Ukraine is discussed in this VoxEU blog. 

Media

The DMP findings to date have been reported in The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Times,  The Times, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Economist and Harvard Business Review. Visit the DMP website. 

Decision Maker Panel. Jointly with the Bank of England and Nick Bloom of Stanford University we aim to gather survey data on economic uncertainty, expectations and Brexit. I head up a 50 strong team of researchers supported by the ESRC. and other contributing institutions .The survey has been extensively referenced in the minutes of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, Inflation Report, Quarterly Bulletin, and reports to the Treasury  Select Committee in Parliament. The results have been used extensively by the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee including in the official assessment of the Withdrawal Agreement presented to Parliament (Nov 2018).The findings to date have been reported in The Financial Times, The Sunday Times, The Times, The Independent, The Guardian and the Harvard Business Review. 

A joint Bank of England-ONS-UKRI Covid-19 grant for £1.1m has been awarded in 2020 to address the The Impact of Covid-19 on UK Businesses.  See the UKRI Covid Hub for more information.  We joined the Campaign for Social Science, which promotes the vital role of social science in improving decision-making, society and lives, by producing a contribution here Campaign for Social Science.  Our latest publications on Covid and uncertainty in the Journal of Public Economics, NBER working paper and VoxEU.  Our assessment of productivity under Covid-19 is reported in a Bank of England working paper,  NBER working paper and VoxEU.

Here is a ProPEL Hub webinar with Paul Mizen, Nick Bloom, John Van Reenen and Rebecca Riley giving different takes on productivity using recent survey data. 

The NBER Digest features our latest research on how ‘At-Home Capital’ Attenuated COVID-Related Output Losses. This was featured in a Sunday Times article on 9th January 2022 by the economics editor David Smith. 

Blogs:


VoxEU Post 8 Dec 2022 Firm inflation Expectations in Quantitative and Text Data


VoxEU Post 26 August 2022 Firming Up Price Inflation


VoxEU Post 16 April 2022 The Impact of the War in Ukraine on Economic Uncertainty


VoxEU Post 10 Jan 2022 “Potential Capital”, Working From Home and Economic Resilience 


VoxEU Post November 2021 A Tale of Two Tails 


VoxEU Post, October 2021, Covid-19 and structural change 


Economic Observatory May 2021  Update: Which firms and industries have been most affected by Covid-19?


ESRC April 2021  Measuring the effects of COVID-19 on businesses and the economy


Campaign for Social Science, June 2020: Social Science Provides An Essential Evidence Base For The Policy Response To COVID-19

 

University of Nottingham, Vision, June 2020: Integrated, Agile Evidence From Social Scientists is Helping Policymakers Respond to COVID-19

 

Economics Observatory, May 2020: Which Firms and Industries Have Been Most Affected by Covid-19?

 

VoxEU Post, May 2020: Coronavirus Expected To Reduce UK Firms’ Sales By Over 40% In Q2

 

VoxEU Post, March 2020: The Economic Impact of Coronavirus on UK Businesses

 

VoxEU Post, February 2020: Brexit Uncertainty Has Fallen Since the UK General Election


VoxEU Post,25 September 2019  The latest on Brexit from the Decision Maker Panel

VoxEU, 4 September 2019 The impact of Brexit on UK firms

VoxEU 16 November 2018,  Rising Brexit uncertainty has reduced investment and employment 

VoxEU, 5 October 2017 New survey evidence on the impact of Brexit on UK firms



Management and Expectations Survey 

Our novel approach to surveys was embedded in a second large research project delivering the Management and Expectations Survey of 25,000 UK firms in 2017 by the Office for National Statistics, in collaboration with Nick Bloom (Stanford) and John van Reenen (MIT) and ESCoE. The results were used to inform a 2018 call for evidence for the British Productivity Review.  We are exploring the links between management practices score and indicators of business performance such as productivity, the ability to produce accurate business forecasts, readiness to innovate and engage in R&D. 

Funding : The ESRC has awarded £1,1m in 2019 to conduct a second wave and analysis of the results which have revealed relationships between management practices and productivity in the UK. A report on the progress of the ESCoE project is here.

The results of the MES survey were used to inform a 2018 call for evidence by BEIS and HM Treasury relating to the British Productivity Review. Data on UK productivity have been shared with the Industrial Strategy Council Chair, Andrew Haldane. Evidence suggests that firms that make greater use of management practices are more productive than firms that do not. More details can be found in a summary report here.  The Office for National Statistics has produced research on the relationship between management practices scores (MPS) firm performance e.g.  MPS and productivity and MPS and R&D and MPS and Covid resilience . 

NBER working paper on 'Do Well Managed Firms Make Better Forecasts?' NBER working paper 29591, December 2021.


Working From Home Survey 

Awarded £50,000 in ESRC IAA funding to develop a UK working from home survey initially piloted on the Prolific survey platform using seedcorn funding of £60,000 from Research England.  This project is aligned with the US Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes (SWAA) hosted on WFH Research.  US Respondents are working age persons in the United States who report having earned at least $20,000 in 2019. The first survey wave was conducted in May 2020 and data collection continues on a monthly basis as of 2021. Each survey wave collects between 2,500 and 5,000 responses.  The UK WFH survey has similar questions, ~2500 participants per month working age adults, online, earning more than £10,000 in 2019 and reweighted to population.  Our data have been used in briefings for the Cabinet Office, HM Treasury, Department for Transport. 


CEPR discussion paper 2022 Remote Working and the New Geography of Local Service Spending with Gianni De Fraja, Jesse Matheson, James Rockey, Shivani Taneja, Greg Thwaites.

Here is a ProPEL Hub webinar in 2021 with Paul Mizen, Nick Bloom, John Van Reenen and Rebecca Riley giving different takes on productivity using recent survey data. 

Here is an interview in December 2021 by Delphine Strauss of the Financial Times with Nick Bloom: ‘It is becoming pretty clear now that hybrid working is here to stay’


Blogs


VoxEU Post 17 Nov 2022 Remote Working and New Geography of Local Services Spending


VoxEU Post  Jan 2022, Comparing online versus in-person meetings,


VoxEU Post June 2021, Returning to the office will be hard, Nicholas Bloom, Paul Mizen, Shivani Taneja 

 

Economic Observatory May 2021, What is the future of commuting to work? Shivani Taneja, Paul Mizen, Nicholas Bloom 

 

Economic Observatory April 2021 Working from home is revolutionising the UK labour market, Shivani Taneja, Paul Mizen, Nicholas Bloom 

 

Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), June 2020: How Working From Home Works Out

 


Media


Online versus in person meeting efficiency


Reallocation of spending with WFH

A new study has calculated the long-term economic impact of Covid-19 on city centres and found that as the shift towards working from home moves businesses to suburban areas, city centres stand to lose £3 billion in 2022.This was widely picked up by the media at the start of a new period when workers were encouraged to work from home if they were able to on 10 December 2021. It featured in London's Economic Outlook: Autumn 2021. London Mayor Sadiq Khan referred to the work in a Radio 4 Today programme interview on 10 December 2021.  


Media coverage ·  BBC News , ITV,  BBC Radio 4 Today Programme (item starts 0:16:42),   BBC Radio 2 (item starts 1:31:04), BBC Look North (starts 0:09:24),  BBC Radio Sheffield (item starts 1:16:12), BBC Radio Leeds (starts 0:01:19),·  BBC Radio London (item starts 1:01:39), ·  BBC Radio Leicester (item starts 2:02:27), ·  BBC Radio Derby (item starts 2:02:47),  LBC (link unavailable), The Times - page 2,  The Telegraph (also in print on page 4),  Daily Mail, Daily Express - page 5, ·  Yahoo News, ·  Yorkshire Post - (also in print on page 7),   Yorkshire Evening Post,  Sheffield Telegraph, Sheffield Star

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