GEAR Research Areas and PhD Students

Key research areas at present

  • Monetary and labour market institutions and the environment
  • Strategic fiscal/monetary policy interactions in monetary unions
  • Optimal (un-)conventional monetary and macroprudential policies and strategic policy interactions
  • Theory of economic policy in a strategic context
  • Green quantitative easing and intergenerational climate justice: the role of the global network of central banks
  • Community inclusion currencies as liquidity provision mechanisms to enhance local trade and alleviate poverty
  • Debt-neutral fiscal policy reallocations to reduce inequality in middle-income countries
  • The implications of the COVID-19 pandemics: macro, micro, and econometric dimensions
  • Internal rationality and learning in small open economies
  • Monetary policy, labor market institutions, unemployment, and gender gaps
  • Cryptocurrencies and community currencies: possible uses and failures
  • Equilibrium determinacy and optimal policy in New Keynesian models of small open economies with credit-constrained consumers
  • Analysis of ‘big data’ from social media from a microeconomic and macroeconomic perspective
  • Better use of qualitative data to gain a fuller understanding of economic events
  • Efficiency of banks in an international context
  • Modelling inflation and monetary policy design: international perspectives
  • Formulation, estimation and simulation of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models
  • Political macroeconomics and socio-economic dynamics
  • Bounded nonstationarity: theory and applications to financial markets
  • Forecasting in sport

Earlier research areas

  • History of econometric thought
  • Economic analysis of the National Health Service
  • Household decisions on debt and default
  • Determinants of illegal immigration
  • Econometric analysis of non-stationary time series
  • Implications of different banking structures for economic growth and credit rationing
  • Empirical support for the small open-economy New Keynesian Phillips curve
  • Alternative methods to estimate exchange-rate pass-through on prices in macrodata
  • Economic growth in the very long run

Current PhD students affiliated with GEAR and their topics

  • Weaam Amira: Analysis of energy consumption and economic growth in Jordan
  • Jack Green: Sovereign default risk and banking crises in an endogenous regime-switching framework
  • Alwyn Jordan: Currency union convergence measures and prospects in the Caribbean region
  • Liuwa Liuwa: Fiscal consolidation in a commodity-export dependent small open economy
  • Minko Markovski: Stock-market prices by sector and monetary and fiscal policies during the COVID-19 pandemic
  • Jose Raisey-Skeats: The green bond market in Nordic countries

Recent PhD students affiliated with GEAR, their first post-PhD job and their PhD topics

  • Hamed Alaidarus, Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Exchange-rate pass-through into domestic prices in Saudi Arabia
  • Dr Edward Anyaeji, Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, United Kingdom: Modelling and forecasting the energy mix
  • Dr Seyhan Aygul, Department of Economics, Zonguldak Bulent Ecevit University (BEU), Turkey: Imported inputs and exporters’ optimal choice of invoicing currency
  • Dr Andrew Clark, Monitaur – Cofounder and CEO: Exchange rates in a historical perspective and the role of digital currencies
  • Dr Abdulaleem Isiaka, Lecturer, Kingstom University, London, United Kingdom: Debt-neutral inequality reduction in middle-income countries
  • Dr Remmy Kampamba, Ministry of Commerce, Trade and Industry, Lusaka, Zambia: Monetary policy transmission in three post-liberalisation Sub-Saharan African economies
  • Dr Harun Nasir, Department of Economics, Zonguldak Bulent Ecevit University (BEU), Turkey: Optimal international reserves for small open economies
  • Dr Kaelo Ntwaepelo, Central Bank of Botswana: Interactions between monetary and macroprudential policies
  • Dr Stephen Opata, Central Bank of Ghana: Modelling of monetary policy and forecasting inflation in African inflation targeters
  • Dr Alina Spiru, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom: Inflation convergence in the new EU member states
  • Dr Nathaniel Urama (visiting), University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria: Quantifying the macroeconomic effects of sizeable international remittances in a DSGE framework
  • Dr Duo Xu: Modelling the determinants and effects of sovereign credit default swap spreads
  • Dr Zhe Wang, School of Economics, University of Surrey: Monetary policy, labour market institutions, and the unemployment gender gap in the Euro Area

Taking your PhD in Economics

Please see further information on postgraduate research opportunities.