Neil Lee
neillee.bsky.social
Neil Lee
@neillee.bsky.social
Professor of Economic Geography, LSE
Ooof

Pension fund allocations into UK equities, 1997-2022

From the very interesting select committee report on scaling
November 6, 2025 at 1:03 PM
EVENT!

How Progress Ends 🖥️🧠😵

Innovation megastar @carlbfrey.bsky.social will be
talking about his superb new book

Delighted with great respondents: Jane Gingrich and Michael Storper

LSE, 21st October, 6.30 at LSE
September 12, 2025 at 9:16 AM
Results using 1990 PPPs much less oil and gas driven, but not sure I believe London was top region in 2015.

Any views?
September 9, 2025 at 7:16 AM
With apologies for poor data visualisation, using the Rosés-Wolf database to see the richest 5 regions in Europe, by year

Using 2011 PPPs and GDP per capita, you basically get oil / gas producers since 1980
September 9, 2025 at 7:14 AM
GDP per capita in UK cities over time, relative to national average

Milton Keynes stands out

(OECD, FUA data)
September 1, 2025 at 7:23 AM
Could be all of these - also FUA so might include some richer areas, Ridings etc. This is all the growth accelerations experienced by British cities, 2000 - 2021 which started with above national average GDP per capita (so not convergence)
August 29, 2025 at 6:28 PM
convergence? Doesn't look like a coding error
August 29, 2025 at 6:20 PM
Doing some work on growth accelerations

These are UK cities which grew faster than the national average in GDP per capita terms for the longest time spells
August 29, 2025 at 5:46 PM
While we’re discussing inflation: people have higher faith that the NHS (!) will bring down inflation than politicians
August 15, 2025 at 8:04 AM
We've peaked
July 23, 2025 at 9:22 AM
US science vs. European science
June 26, 2025 at 3:04 PM
👌
June 12, 2025 at 11:12 AM
UK commonly seen as having a scaling problem and too little late stage VC.

Compared to the US, absolutely. But we do pretty well amongst the also-ran (after Canada, Estonia).
May 20, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Is the US tech boom overdone relative to the US oil boom?
May 20, 2025 at 4:00 PM
A lot going on in this excellent Resolution Foundation report on UK-US productivity differentials.

One stand out finding for me (post-Draghi): Much of the recent US productivity lead concentrated in tech using, not tech creating sectors
www.resolutionfoundation.org/app/uploads/...
April 10, 2025 at 12:17 PM
If nothing else, it should mean another couple of thousand citations for @paulnightingale.bsky.social and Alex Coad's now classic 'Muppets and Gazelles"
March 13, 2025 at 7:35 PM
Bigger cities are richer cities (on average)

Partial regression plot of city size on GDP per capita (controlling for country fixed effects), using OECD met area database

Tech hubs and, er, Cork and Antofagasta outperform
January 24, 2025 at 8:25 PM
Hard to overstate the importance of tradeables in local economies
January 20, 2025 at 7:43 AM
Strong agree with this point in this year's Cities Outlook
January 20, 2025 at 7:39 AM
Our ESRC funded work, on wages, shows the US much higher than the UK as you would expect (and likely Canada)
January 9, 2025 at 1:38 PM
This is from the paper actually cited to make the claim - a partial measure, but UK comes third
January 9, 2025 at 1:36 PM
The (otherwise excellent) English devolution white paper repeats the common claim that the UK is the most regional unequal country

I don’t think this is true - unequal yes, but you have to really massage the stats to make us the worst
January 9, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Missed this in the devo White Paper - a Small Business Strategy to be published this year

Traditionally these are rich in “lifeblood of our economy” style-cliché, but graveyards of sensible policy
January 6, 2025 at 10:59 AM
Interesting paper in JoEG

Foreign investment in local housing markets increases prices, does little on construction

Unsurprising really given supply constraints doi.org/10.1093/jeg/...
December 11, 2024 at 9:00 PM
Your weekend reading - this superb Jane Gingrich paper on spatial inequality

ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid...
December 6, 2024 at 7:19 PM