CASA Academic Leads £1.1 million ESRC Research on Urban Diversity and UK Firm Performance

Dr Max Nathan is leading a three-year research project exploring the relationship between diverse firms, workplaces and cities and entrepreneurship and productivity in the UK, alongside Dr Jon Reades (CASA), Prof Steve Gray (CASA), Dr Guido Pialli (CASA), Mateo Sere (CASA), Dr Tom Kemeny (University of Toronto), Dr Ceren Ozgen (University of Birmingham), Dr Anna Rosso (University of Insubria) and Dr Anna Valero (LSE).

The research, titled ‘Diversity and UK Firm Performance’, will develop a new data platform that will allow the team to test causal effects of migrant, gender and other diversities on firm and urban economic performance. The team aims to make a version of the platform available to other researchers through the UK Data Service. In addition to the data platform, the project will deliver at least three research papers and a range of wider outputs.

Since 2007, the UK has experienced stagnant productivity, falling behind comparable economies such as France, Germany and the USA by up to 20%. Productivity growth is central to the UK’s ‘levelling up’ agenda which aims to improve living standards across the country. While the causes of the UK’s productivity slowdown are debated, existing research flags human capital and management quality as major factors. Both issues are hard to explore in existing data.

The team will look at the roles diverse, skilled teams can play in ideas generation, new firm formation and growth, deploying frontier data science methods to combine data from the public web with a range of rich administrative microdata. The team will use a mixture of instrumental variables and policy shifters to identify causal effects.

The project is one of seven grants funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) through its £11 million productivity research programme. It aims to contribute to productivity policy in the UK, inform business decision-making, and enhance the global discourse about drivers of economic growth. Max’s project, which received £1,141,406, is one of two grants awarded to UCL academics. Professor Richard Blundell, David Ricardo Professor of Political Economy in the UCL Department of Economics, received funding of £1,743,979 for research on productivity, wages and the labour market.

More information

• Find out more about ‘Diversity and UK Firm Performance’ 
• Visit Dr Max Nathan’s profile
• Visit Dr Jon Reades’ profile
• Visit Prof Steve Gray’s profile
• Visit Dr Guido Pialli’s profile
• Visit Mateo Sere’s profile
• Discover more research at CASA
• Read more about ESRC’s £11 million investment in productivity research

Recent papers from Dr Max Nathan

• Creative Clusters and Creative Multipliers
• Innovative Events: Product Launches, Innovation and Firm Performance
• Incubators, Accelerators and Urban Economic Development

Image: King’s Cross office block. Photo by Dylan Nolte on Unsplash.