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The current health crisis, with its long-term repercussions on the political structure of countries, offers new avenues for researchers to understand how political systems interact with financial actors. The topic was recently discussed in the first London Political Finance (POLFIN) workshop, which reached an international audience of more than 200 scholars interested in the topics at the intersection of […]

An important message throughout the COVID-19 crisis has been to “stay home”. Our analysis based on debit card purchase data until 15 June shows that this has a profound impact on where consumers spend their money. Cities have been hit hard, while in peripheral commuting zones, consumption expenditures have been even higher than in 2019. An interesting side-effect of staying […]

The UK is largely seen as a ‘service-based’ economy, which means that services – such as financial, legal, research & development (R&D), real estate and so on – account for the bulk of economic output and employment. Manufacturing, on the other hand, only formally accounts for around 10% of the economy and 9% of employment.

However, manufacturing’s importance for the […]

The Covid-19 lockdowns brought a huge drop in demand for goods and services and unprecedented levels of excess productive capacity – idle factories, machines, and workers. Excess capacity is normally harmful, but there can be a silver lining. When machines and workers are idle, their time can be put to alternative uses. In a healthy economy, time spent on […]