Research Seminar: Tackling the UK’s Regional Economic Inequality: Binding constraints and avenues for policy intervention

The Growth Lab Research Seminar series is a weekly seminar that brings together researchers from across the academic spectrum who share an interest in growth and development.

Location: Weil Town Hall, Belfer, HKS/Zoom

Whether attending in-person or virtually, please register in advance. Room attendance is limited to the Harvard community. Seating availability is based on a first-come, first-served basis. The Zoom webinar is open to the public.

About the Seminar: The UK is one of the most regionally unequal industrialized economies. In this seminar, Ed Balls and Anna Stansbury will discuss the UK’s regional economic inequality from the perspective of productivity disparities between large regions, focusing on the gap between London/South East vs the rest, looking at four important economic inputs – education, infrastructure, innovation, and access to finance – for each one building up a collage of evidence to gauge the extent to which it is a binding constraint on regions’ productivity growth. They emphasize that economic opportunity for those from outside London and the South East is curtailed by London’s overheating housing market, which limits interregional mobility.

About the Speakers: Ed Balls is a broadcaster, writer and economist. He is Professor of Political Economy at King’s College, London and a Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. Ed, a former Member of Parliament, was UK Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer (2011-2015) and served in the UK Cabinet as Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (2007-2010). He was the UK Minister for Financial Services (2006-2007) and the Chief Economic Adviser to the UK Treasury (1999-2004) during which time he was Chair of the IMFC Deputies and UK G20 Deputy.

Anna Stansbury is an Assistant Professor of Work and Organization Studies at MIT Sloan School of Management. She is a labor and macroeconomist whose work focuses on inequality and productivity in industrialized economies. She has a PhD in Economics from Harvard, an MPP from the Kennedy School, and a BA in Economics from Cambridge – and was a former part-time Growth Lab RA before her PhD!

Read the full Research Paper: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/mrcbg/publications/awp/awp198
VoxEU summary link: https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/how-tackle-uks-regional-economic-inequality-focus-stem-transport-and-innovation