MSc Dissertation Supervision 2014/2015 - Research interests and topics
Name
Akerlof, Robert
Almunia, Miguel
Research Interests
Behavioural economics
Contract theory/Organizational Economics
Cultural and Social Norms
Priority for MSFE students
Public Economics
Development Economics
Suggested Topics
Topic Descriptions
Firm size dynamics during the Great Recession
Using firm-level financial statements from the Amadeus database, study how the
recession has affected firm size (measured by turnover, number of employees, or assets)
in different European countries. How has the recession affected firm growth, firm
creation and firm closures? What has been the impact on profitability and other standard
metrics? Note: Amadeus is commercialized by Bureau van Dijk and is available through
the Warwick library.
Evaluation of public policies using the “synthetic control' method proposed by This method is very intuitive and there is a Stata command to implement it. The method is
Abadie, Diamond and Hainmuller (see full reference opposite).
ideally suited to study the impact of reforms taking. Reference: Alberto ABADIE, Alexis
DIAMOND, and Jens HAINMUELLER (2010): “Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative
Case Studies: Estimating the Effect of California’s Tobacco Control Program”, Journal of
the American Statistical Association, 105(490), 493-505.
Issues of international taxation: tax competition across countries, tax
harmonisation within the EU, financial taxes (eg, Tobin tax).
Some references: Michael Devereux (2012): “Issues in the design of taxes on corporate
profit”, National Tax Journal, 65 (3) pp. 709-730. Thomas Plümper, Vera Troeger and
Hannes Winner (2009): “Why is There No Race to the Bottom in Capital Taxation? Tax
Competition between Countries of Unequal Size, Different Levels of Budget Rigidities and
Heterogeneous Fairness Norms”, International Studies Quarterly, 53(3), 761-786.
Aquaro, Michele
Priority for MSFE students
Panel data econometrics (static and dynamic linear
models, cross-sectional dependence, heterogeneous
panels).
Robust Statistics
Arulampalam, Wiji
Applied Econometrics
Labour economics
Beker, Pablo
Theoretical explanations for the dynamics of asset prices Do markets favour (more) rationality?
Explanations for momentum and reversals in asset returns
Explanations for the dynamics of asset trading
Boero, Gianna
Evolution of rationality
Evolution of technologies
Production under incomplete markets
Priority for MSFE students
Brollo, Fernanda
Political economics
Public finance
Development economics
Buisseret, Peter
Political economy
Applied game theory
Do markets favour more efficient firms?
The role of cash constraints in procurement
The role of cash constraints in patent races.
Cave, Jonathan
Economic Theory
Industrial Economics
Financial economics
Game theory (esp. on networks) and complexity
Regulation (consumer protection and antitrust) and
standardisation
ICT-related issues (e.g. cloud computing, net neutrality,
telecom regulation, eCommerce, privacy)
Chen, Natalie
International trade
International macroeconomics.
Choy, James
Priority for MSFE students
Development Economics
Social and Political Institutions
International Relations
Coutto, Tatiana
Institutional Analysis
EU Politics and Policy-making
Brazilian Foreign Policy
Qualitative Methods
Crawford, Claire (joint topics Economics of Education, Labour Economics
with Jeremy Smith and
Robin Naylor)
New evidence on young people's behaviour, attitudes and outcomes from
LSYPE cohort data
The project will look at the first wave from the new LSYPE survey of young people starting
at age 14, which will include information on their attitudes and behaviours at age 14 (e.g.
attitudes to education and work, locus of control, experiences of bullying, smoking,
drinking) as well as self-reported health outcomes and some information about schools
and GCSE choices, plus detailed information on family background and prior attainment
(in primary school). Comparison could also be made to the previous LSYPE cohort (about
10 years ago) in which many of the same questions were asked.
Why do graduates from private school students outperform their state school This project would explore which types of private schools appear to confer the largest
peers in the labour market?
benefits, updating Naylor, Smith and McKnight (2002). The student would need to collect
information on private school characteristics over the last 10-15 years. We would also
need to secure access to Destination of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) data (for
which a fee needs to be paid) (unless they could run it on internal Warwick data only,
which may be suitable and is likely to be easily accessible).
Is there a grammar school premium in the labour market?
Do equivalently qualified state school pupils out-perform pupils from all
private schools?
This project would extend Crawford and Vignoles (2014) to examine whether graduates
who previously attended grammar schools earn more, on average, than their nonselective state school counterparts. Again, the student would ideally need to access DLHE
data (or, if not, internal Warwick data).
Previous research has found that, conditional on attainment, state school pupils go on to
outperform their private school counterparts once at university (Smith and Naylor,
2001a,b; Crawford, 2014). This project would investigate whether the same is true of
students from all private schools. It would require similar data on the characteristics of
private schools as project 1) – so the students could join forces to collect the data – and
would also necessitate access to linked schools and universities administrative data (the
NPD-HESA data). Again, this may be problematic in terms of access, but internal Warwick
data could be a viable alternative. (This project could also be split into two, with one
looking at drop-out/degree completion and the other at degree class.)
How effective are private secondary schools?
The government regularly publishes information on the “value-added” of state schools:
this is an indicator of how much progress pupils make between various education stages.
They do not publish information on the value-added of private secondary schools,
however, as a substantial minority of pupils in private secondary schools do not sit the
tests taken at the end of primary school which are used as the baseline measure of
attainment in these value-added calculations. This project would use data on the 60% of
private secondary school pupils for which we do observe this information to estimate the
value-added by private secondary schools between ages 11 and 16, and assess how this
compares to the value-added by state schools. This would require access to NPD data
(which should be relatively straightforward, in principle.) An extension of this project
could consider whether value-added differs by private-school characteristics (using
similar data to that collected for projects 1 and 3).
Is university performance differentially affected by KS4 and KS5 school
characteristics?
Previous research has variously used information on the school in which pupils sit their
GCSEs and the school in which they sit their A-levels when considering the link between
school characteristics and university participation and outcomes, sometimes with
differing results (e.g. the results by school performance in Crawford (2014) and HEFCE
(2014)). This project would systematically explore the extent to which this choice matters.
Again, access to NPD-HESA data would be ideal; but the project could possibly be done
using internal Warwick data if necessary (assuming we observe both KS4 and KS5 school
in our data; we would need to check this). (Again, this project could be split into two if
required, with one looking at drop-out/degree completion and the other at degree class.)
Does the benefit of attending a private school differ across the earnings
distribution?
This project would extend Crawford and Vignoles (2014) by using quantile regression
analysis to explore whether the effect of attending a private school varies when
comparing individuals at different parts of the earnings distribution. The student would
ideally need access to DLHE data, but the project could also potentially be carried out
using internal Warwick data.
How much does missing data matter for estimates of the link between school In some of the datasets used for previous research on this topic (e.g. the NPD), there is
characteristics and university outcomes?
only very limited information available on the characteristics of private school students.
In order to be able to control for such factors in regression analysis, one therefore needs
to “fill in” this missing data in some way. Many previous papers have used missing
dummies to do so, but there is growing evidence that this can lead to bias (e.g. Allison,
2009). This project would investigate the extent to which the results and conclusions of
the research would vary if alternative methods of dealing with this missing data were
used. This project would require access to NPD data (and preferably NPD-HESA data).
(Again, this project could be split if required, with students looking variously at HE
participation, drop-out/degree completion, and degree class.)
De Chaisemartin, Clement
Econometrics
Economics of Education
Doyle, Chris
Draca, Mirko
Competition policy topics (almost any)
IO models in relation to sports
Economic impact assessments of major sporting events
Regulation topics (esp. telecoms)
Spectrum auctions – empirical assessments
Firm-level productivity and innovation
Policy analyses in relation to addictive goods (e.g. illicit drugs)
Crime and drugs
Testing for mixed strategies using data from sporting contests (e.g. tennis
serves, penalty kicks.
1 and 2 are related whereas 3 is distinct
Projects related to financial market event studies, in particular those related
to political economy issues. For example:
Wage inequality (including discrimination)
Impacts of economic sanctions on firms
Applied political economy topics (especially US issues)
The returns to corporate crime
Economics of crime
Economic impacts of foreign policy interventions
Behavioural economics topics in applied micro settings
Dutta, Bhaskar
Natural language processing
Game Theory
Applications of Microeconomics
Epifanio, Mariaelisa
International and comparative politics
Political consequences of counterterrorist reforms
Garratt, Dean
Housing and mortgage markets
Macroeconomic schools of thought
Macroeconomics and household debt
Balance sheets and macroeconomic activity
Political business cycles
Glazer, Jacob
Health Economics
Theoretical Industrial Organization
Game Theory
Golson, Eric
Warfare economics
Transportation economics
Gozzi Valdez, Juan Carlos
International Finance
Banking and Financial Institutions
Corporate Finance
Gupta, Bishnu
Economic History of Developing countries
Economic Development
Economic Demography
Hammond, Peter
Economic theory,especially decision and game theory,
social choice, and mechanism design together with their
relationalship to maths, philosophy, probability and
statistics.
Effects of unconventional monetary policy
Dissertations on this topic analyze empirically the effects of unconventional monetary
policies, such as quantitative easing (QE), on asset prices, investment allocation, and/or
real outcomes. Dissertations on this topic would rely on micro-level data (e.g., individual
firm stock prices; portfolio allocations of institutional investors; firm-level accounting
data, etc.).
Capital controls
Dissertations on this topic analyze empirically the effects of capital controls
on capital flows to emerging markets. Work on this area could also analyze the effects
of capital controls on exchange rates, monetary policy independence, volatility, and/or
firm performance. Dissertations on this topic could rely either on aggregate data (e.g.,
country level) or micro-level data (e.g., industry or firm level).
International transmission of shocks
Dissertations on this topic analyze empirically how shocks are transmitted across
countries through financial markets and/or the role and determinants of financial
contagion. Dissertations on this topic could rely either on aggregate data (e.g., countrylevel stock market indices; interest rates, etc.) or micro-level data (e.g., individual stock
prices; portfolio allocations of institutional investors; firm-level accounting data, etc.).​
Harrison, Mark
Hughes, Niall
Jelonek, Piotr
Jones, Elizabeth
Applied Macro (not finance or trade)
Policy Making
Historical Economics of Development
I have interests in defence, conflict and security but
deficient background knowledge and data problems are
usually a fatal combination - students will not be
considered if they have no previous formal study of the
topic.
Political Economy
Coalition government formation
Game Theory
Committee decision-making
Information Economics
Voting and elections
Experimental Economics
Computational economics
Heavy-tailed econometrics
Systemic stability
Multi-agent systems
Stochastic differential equations
Education markets, the returns to education and
developments in educational policy – both school and
higher.
Healthcare markets, government intervention and
implications for policy. Not econometrics.
Karalis Isaac, Alex
Applied macro and econometrics, especially time-varying
and non-linear models of business cycles and monetary
policy.
Some experience of discrete choice models in health
applications
Kelishomi, Ali
Labour Economics, Macroeconomic Fluctuations (not
open economy)
Kremer, Ilan
Finance, game theory, general equilibrium theory,
auction theory, option pricing
Lavy, Victor
Labour Economics
Education Economics
Economic Development
Policy Evaluation
Macchiavello, Rocco
Development Economics
Industrial Organisation
Organisational Economics
Detailed case studies of value chains (e.g., cocoa, tropical fruits, garments,
etc.), in which products are followed from origin countries (typically low
income countries) until consumer/retailers in reach countries.
Theoretical topics in development (e.g., analysis of corruption, how
behavioural biases exacerbate / interacts with poverty)
Empirical topics in development, with a focus on market imperfections and
industrial organization topics.
Economics of organized crime, mafias – both empirical and theoretical work.
Mani, Anandi
McMahon, Michael
Martin, Tom
Economic Development - microeconomic issues
Applications and Experiments related to behavioural
economics (except those with a strict game theoretic
focus)
Priority for MSFE students
Macro-Business Cycles, Monetary policy & Fiscal Policy
(NOT exchange rates or open economy)
Development and applied microeconometrics
Economic history of Italy
The economics of reputation
The economics of herd behaviour
The economics of stereotypes
Determinants / consequences of trust (both empirical / theoretical)
The economics of languages (how languages diffuse)
Using game theory / economic models to analyse texts (and vice versa)
Does the fraction of minority group in political office matter for various public Is there a critical threshold fraction beyond which outcomes are influenced by such
good outcomes?
representation? In the Indian data from local government, for instance, there is random
variation in the fraction of 'scheduled caste/tribes' in political office because the rules
require that reservation of seats be linked to population shares in the local area. The
student will need to put together the data and gather all this information on his/her own.
Issues relating to central banking especially monetary policy
Empirical text analysis
Analysis of fiscal policy
Business cycle models
Economic poverty, inequality and mobility
Microfinance
Economics of Education
Miller, Marcus
Pecuniary externalities and boom/bust in asset markets
Sovereign Debt Restructuring
Economics of austerity in Europe and alternatives
Fiscal Austerity and Alternatives
Sovereign debt restructuring in Europe and Latin America Endogenous Financial Crises
Moav, Omer
Mukand, Sharun
Monetary policy issues including Forward Guidance and Collaboration
QE
Economic Growth
Development Theory
Political Economy
Development Economics
Economics of Globalization
Behavioural Economics
Muthoo, Abhinay
Any area of Economics
Household/Family/ Marriage
a)Divorce: Divorce rates have risen in many parts of the world over the past couple of
decades or so. Why? Empirical study of possible determinants. Choose the country of
your choice.
b) Intra-household distribution of welfare: Empirically study determinants of inequality in
consumption between spouses. Policy options. Focus on one or more countries.
c) Stability of Marriage: Empirically explore the role and extent of 'affairs' on marriage
outcomes.
Democracy and Prosperity
a)Empirically explore the role of democracy versus non-democracy on prosperity and/or
happiness.
b)How has the rise of social media affected the functioning of democracy.
c) China v India. Which model will survive, is sustainable?
a) Given the current situation, will there be a World War III in the next 25 years? The role
of economic growth, globalisation, technology: and similarities and difference to the 25
years before World War I.
b) Inequality and Conflict. Empirically study the role of economic equality or duration of
conflict (be it civil wars or international conflict)
a) Role that 'love' plays in long-term relationships especially economic outcomes such as
distribution of consumption across spouses.
b) Can love enhance productivity in the workplace? To empirically test this.
a) Role of Social media on social capital formation. Are we still 'Bowling Alone?
b) Role of religion in social capitol formation.
c) Role of Social capitol on economic development.
War and Peace
Economics and Love
Social Capitol and Economic Performance
Naylor, Robin
Noguera, Guillermo
Novy, Dennis
Returns to Education
Intergenerational Mobility
Educational Choice
Educational Attainment
International Trade
See Crawford, Claire for joint topics
Pollution content of trade
Use the World Input Output Database, data on pollution at the sector-level for many
countries, and standard gravity variables to analyze differences on the pollution content
of trade using gross versus value added trade data.
The effect of exchange rate of volatility on international trade
Study how the effect of exchange rate volatility on international trade may change before
and after the global 2008 trade collapse. Use data on bilateral trade and exchange rates
from standard sources and estimate a gravity model. Address the simultaneity problem
between the two variables using an instrumental variable approach.
Transmission of oil price shocks through the input-output structure of the
economy
Analyze whether the recent decrease in oil prices propagated through intersectoral
linkages. Use the World Input Output Database, data on sector-level price indices and a
multi-sector macro model subject to shocks in the price of oil.
Food Security
See: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/jmvanrens/msc for a list of
joint topics with Thijs Van Rens and Marija Vukotic
Should Caribbean form a Monetary Union/ Evidence
from Trade Flows
Has International Trade Become more Regionalized?
Evidence from OECD Countries, 1960-2007
Why Does Africa Trade So Little?
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Eastern Europe - Who
Invests and What are the Effects?
Is The European Union As Well Integrated as the United
States? Evidence from Intra-regional Trade
Trade in Services
Oswald, Andrew
Applied Economics and Quantitative Social Science
Pancrazi, Roberto
Quantitative and Applied Macroeconomics
International Macroeconomics
International Finance
Pascali, Luigi
Priority for MSFE students
Perroni, Carlo
Taxation & Income Distribution
Education Contracts
I/O & Development
Family Economics
Game Theory
Economic Theory
Mechanism Design
Auction Theory
Social Choice
Monopoly Pricing
Regulations
Market Failure
Perry, Motty
Pitt, Mike
Priority for MSFE students
Financial Time state
Seriesspace models
Non-Gaussian
Stochastic Volatility models
Financial Econometrics
Bayesian methodology and Markov Chain Monte Carlo
Polemarchakis, Herakles
Postel-Vinay, Natasha
Proto, Eugenio
Filtering and Smoothing
Time series with specified marginal densities
Borrowing : The Enforcement of Intertemporal Budget
Constraints
Information vs Communication
Partial Implementation
Comprehensive Monetary Policy: the Determination of
the Price Level (in an open economy)
Does Myopia Cause Business Cycles?
First Impressions
Economic history
Financial history and development
Financial crises and panics
The Great Depression
The Great Recession
Priority for MSc BES students
Rathelot, Roland
Labour Economics
Econometrics
Redoano, Michela
Scharf, Kim
Tax competition
Fiscal Federalism
Empirical political economy
Globalisation and government performance
Public Economics: Economics of the third sector
(including work on tax incentives for giving, economics of
charities, social cohesion, viable taxation, and the private
provision of public goods); Jurisdiction formation; Tax
competition; Tax evasion
Sgroi, Daniel
Priority for MSc BES students
Silva Junior, Daniel
Empirical Industrial Organisation
Applied Microeconomics
Applied Econometrics
Economic history, business history, trade, and political
economy, focusing on Britain and Latin America.
Sims, Peter
The theory of practice of monetary and fiscal policy
Financial markets and economic activity
Smith, Jennifer
Labour-Macro: Unemployment, Wages, Mismatch,
Migration
Unemployment/Employment/Nonparticipation: A comparative analysis by
gender, immigrant status, age or education.
What affects the
1. unemployment rate
2. employment rate
3. nonparticipation
(choose any one of these) among one of the following subgroups:
a) women vs men
b) immigrants vs natives (and immigrant subsets, subject to sample size)
c) young vs old
d) low education vs high education (and further education subsets, subject to sample size)
(choose any one of these).
These projects will use UK LFS data, which can be provided. Some extra data work might
be required depending on particular interest. Help learning Mathematica to a sufficient
level will be provided. STATA will be used for any further data work.
The focus will be on comparing the proximate determinants of unemployment or
employment or nonparticipation among the different labour market groups, namely job
finding, job loss, and transitions between employment, unemployment and inactivity.
Population growth and labour market dynamics
What is the role of population growth (including net migration, births and deaths) in the
dynamics of
1. unemployment
2. employment
3. nonparticipation
(choose any one of these).
a) Aggregate data and/or splits by
b) gender,
c) education, or
d) region of birth
are possible.
These projects will use UK LFS data, which can be provided. Some extra data work might
be required depending on particular interest. Help learning Mathematica to a sufficient
level will be provided. STATA will be used for any further data work.
The focus will be on assessing the role of new entry to the population (or labour force) on
the path of unemployment, employment or nonparticipation. Results should be
informative about the impact of migration and/or birth/death rates.
Wage Rigidity
1. How has the extent of nominal or real wage rigidity changed over the last few decades?
How has this varied by firm size / industry / occupation / region / gender / age / migrant
status / education level?
2. What has been the impact of composition changes on the evolution of wage rigidity,
compared to changes in “fundamentals”?
These projects could use LFS or BHPS+Understanding Society data, which can be
provided. Some extra data work might be provided depending on particular interest.
STATA will be used to analyse these data.
The aims of these projects are (1.) to understand ways of measuring wage rigidity and (2.)
to analyse composition changes via inverse probability weighting. Extensions using
variants of Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions may be undertaken.
Smith, Jeremy
Soegaard, Christian
Economics of Education
Applied time series (macro based topics as long as they
have a substantial applied aspect)
See Crawford, Claire for joint topics
I am available to supervise any topic requiring application of time series
econometrics, with particular interest on macroeconomic and financial
variables. I am open to discuss any topic of your own choice or interest,
which can be addressed with cointegration analysis, dynamic modelling, VAR
models, ARCH and GARCH types of models.
I am also willing to supervise work with a more specific focus on
macroeconomic forecasting, involving for example analysing surveys of
professional forecasters with applications to the Bank of England and the
European Central Bank Surveys.
Here are some representative readings in the macroeconomic forecasting area.
V. Zarnowitz and L. Lambros, (1987). Consensus and Uncertainty in Economic Prediction,
Journal of Political Economy, vol. 95(3), pp. 591-621.
G. Boero, J. Smith and K. F. Wallis, (2008), Uncertainty and disagreement in economic
prediction: the Bank of England Survey of External Forecasters. Economic Journal, 118
(July), pp. 1107-1127.
G. Boero, J. Smith and K. F. Wallis, (2015), The measurement and characteristics of
professional forecasters’ uncertainty. Journal of Applied Econometrics, forthcoming.
C.L. Chua, D. Kim and S. Suardi, S. (2011). Are empirical measures of macroeconomic
uncertainty alike? Journal of Economic Surveys, 25(4), pp. 801–827.
J. Groen, G. Kapetanios and S. Price. (2009). A real time evaluation of Bank of England
forecasts of inflation and growth. International Journal of Forecasting 25, pp. 74–80.
Food Security
See: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/jmvanrens/msc for a list of
joint topics with Roberto Pancrazi and Marija Vukotic
Food Security
See: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/jmvanrens/msc for a list of
joint topics with Thijs Van Rens and Roberto Pancrazi
International Trade
Industrial Organisation
Squintani, Francesco
Political Economy
Labour Economics
Political Economy Theory
Theoretical Models of Communication
Theoretical Models of Asymmetric Information.
Stovall, John
Decision Theory
Social Choice
Troeger, Vera
Comparative Political Economy
Quantitative Political Methodology
Macroeconomics (except banking and international
finance)
Labor economics
Applied econometrics (both time series and applied
microeconometrics)
Food security
Economic History
Religion Economics
Conflict Economics (empirics)
Long-run economic growth (empirics)
Macroeconomics, Real Business Cycles, Monetary
Economics
Van Rens, Thijs
Vidal-Robert, Jordi
Vukotic, Marija
Waldinger, Fabian
Waterson, Mike
Woodruff, Chris
Empirical projects in Labour Economics
Economics of Education
Economics of Innovation
Economics of Science
Supermarket Pricing Behaviour
Energy Storage
Pricing Practices
Empirical projects in the following broad research areas:
Economics of Science and Innovation
Economics of Education
Economic History
Contractual relationships in the London bus market and competition
Supermarket pricing behaviour from a macroeconomic viewpoint
Microenterprise
Microfinance
Productivity dispersion in low-income countries
Informality
Arulampalam, Wiji. Topic
suggested by Jonathan
Portes, Director National
Institute of Economic and
Social Research NIESR.
Impact of austerity on mortality
There have been a number of cross-country or top-down studies, but nothing in the UK
looking at geographical variation in mortality and seeing if it is correlated with anything.
There is excellent quality geographically disaggregated data on mortality. So the exercise
would be to construct some variable designed to proxy for the impact of spending cuts at
the same geographical level and see whether there was any correlation (controlling for
other obvious things). There is, for example, local authority level data on spending (and
probably on adult social care - looking at whether areas where social care was cut more
did worse would be interesting).
Muthoo, Abhinay. Topic
suggested by Lord
O’Donnell, Chairman of
Frontier Economics.
Muthoo, Abhinay. Topic
suggested by Lord
O’Donnell, Chairman of
Frontier Economics.
Oswald, Andrew. Topic
suggested by Lord
O’Donnell, Chairman of
Frontier Economics.
Smith, Jennifer. Topic
suggested by Lee-Rose
Jordan, Coventry City
Council.
Dealing with financial incompetence
The Chancellor has given new pensioners the right to do whatever they want with their
lump sum saving, instead of being forced to buy an annuity. How can we use behavioural
insights to help such people to use this new freedom to improve their financial situation?
The T-shirt problem
Councils improved the energy efficiency of the house and flats they owned . On returning
to ask the occupants how their energy use had changed they found many of them in T
shirts. They were very "cosy" but had not reduced their energy consumption. How can we
improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions?
The Treasury considered implementing a tax scale such that the amount of tax would fall
when prices were above the long term equilibrium level and rise when the price was
below, thereby reducing the volatility of petrol prices and consumer prices overall. Were
they right not to go ahead?
Low Emission Vehicle Taxi Scheme
The purpose of this topic is to investigate the taxi industry within Coventry, and the
possibility of replacing current taxis with ultra-low emissions vehicles. This would involve:
surveying and analysing data on existing Coventry taxi networks, mapping out their home
locations against current charging points locations, investigating where customers are
mainly dropped off, mapping drivers' taxi ranks, rest areas and frequency of use.
Smith, Jennifer. Topic
suggested by Jonathan
Portes, Director National
Institute of Economic and
Social Research NIESR.
Impact of recent immigration flows
Make use of the National Insurance number new registration data. We used it here:
http://niesr.ac.uk/publications/examining-relationship-between-immigration-andunemployment-using-national-insurance to look at unemployment impacts - but that's
quite well trodden territory now. But in principle there's lots of other variables you could
use to look at migration impacts - wages, crime, really anything for which you have
decent LA or constituency level data.
Moderating the impact of fluctuating oil prices