A growing wave of co-location programmes promises to boost growth for entrepreneurs and young firms. Despite great public and policy interest we have little idea whether such programmes are effective. This paper categorises accelerators and incubators within a larger family of co-location...

This paper considers the impact of a major public sector relocation: the British Broadcasting Corporation's partial move from London to Salford, Greater Manchester starting in 2011. We identify effects of the move using synthetic control methods applied to plant-level data at Local Authority and...

In recent years, the economics of migration literature has shown a substantial growth in papers exploring host country impacts beyond the labour market. Specifically, researchers have begun to shift their attention from labour market and fiscal changes, towards exploring what we might call 'the...

This paper investigates how physical, organisational, institutional, cognitive, social, and ethnic proximities between inventors shape their collaboration decisions. Using a new panel of UK inventors and a novel identification strategy, this paper systematically explores the net effects of all...

A growing number of studies find linkages between workforce diversity and business performance, but key aspects of this relationship remain unclear. First, within the firm, the role of 'top team' demography on firm outcomes is surprisingly little understood. Second, urban location may amplify...

Governments around the world want to develop their ICT and digital industries. Policymakers thus need a clear sense of the size and characteristics of digital businesses, but this is hard to do with conventional datasets and industry codes. This paper uses innovative 'big data' resources to...

High levels of net migration to the UK have contributed to growing cultural diversity, and researchers are turning their attention to the long-term effects of diversity on productivity. Yet little is known about these issues. This paper asks: what are the links between the composition of firms'...

We take a fresh look at firms' innovation-productivity linkages, using novel data capturing new aspects of innovative activity. We combine UK administrative microdata, media and website content to develop experimental metrics – new product/service launches – for a large panel of SMEs....

This paper performs a mixed-methods analysis of place-branding strategies developed in the 'Tech City' cluster initiative in Inner East London, drawing on ethnographic material, semi-structured interviews and visual content. Using Jessop's concept of the spatial imaginary, we explore key...

Innovative, high-technology activities are seen as motors of development, with knock-on effects throughout their local economies. Such activities tend to organise networks that span beyond atomized firms, creating 'ecosystems' of mutual dependence as well as competition. However, such ecosystems...