54  Hidalgo and Hausmann (2009) for international comparisons and Mealy, Farmer and Teytelboym (2019) for regional comparisons. 39  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  39  Chart 24: Local authority-level ECIs and hourly earnings Hourly earnings, £ per hour  35  R² = 0.4466 30  25  20  15  -0.1  -0.05  0  0.05  0.1  0.15  0.2  10 0.25  ECI Sources: ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), ONS Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) and Bank calculations. Notes: Data available for Great Britain only (i.e. excluding Northern Ireland). Mean hourly earnings excluding overtime against economic complexity indices calculated using BRES. Chart 25 plots a cartogram of local authority level ECIs for the UK, at the NUTS 3 level. It shows a remarkable degree of difference across areas of the UK. This matches regional differences in income and pay. These metrics could help when designing the Local Industrial Strategies currently being developed by Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) and the devolved nations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Table 1: Top 10 local authorities by ECI City of London  Camden  Tower Hamlets  Hammersmith & Fulham  Southwark  Kensington & Chelsea  Westminster  Hackney  Islington  Cambridge  Sources: ONS Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) and Bank calculations.
Patterns in these systems often self-replicate at different resolutions; they are “fractal”. 7 One interesting question is whether economic systems also exhibit self-replicating patterns. If so, this has implications for how we understand and model them. We consider these questions using a sequence of maps. Many of these maps are not new. For example, Philip McCann from the University’s Productivity Insights Network (PIN) has published an excellent book setting out a range of fascinating regional facts and maps. So too have others.8 These maps provide useful context when testing the Tip O’Neill hypothesis and when modelling and managing the economy. To provide the clearest visual guide, these maps are scaled by economic rather than geographic size – so-called cartograms.9 Each region is initially scaled to have the same geographic area and then rescaled in line with economic differences. This means some areas shrink (such as Scotland) while others expand (such as London) even without differences between them. This helps when visualising local differences. (a)  Differences between regions  To fix ideas, Charts 1a and 1b plot a map and an accompanying cartogram of population by region in the UK and, by way of comparison, Germany. It uses a resolution one-level below the national – administrative “regions” in England and each of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Comparing the map and cartogram suggests the UK has a significant demographic skew towards London and the South-East.