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Doctoral Researchers
Find out more about some of the doctoral researchers within the Economics group:
Ruoxi Cao
Thesis Title: Are Technology Improvements Contractionary? UK evidence and OECD Countries Analysis
This paper is inspired by Basu, Fernald and Kimball (2006). I follow the augmented growth-accounting approach, and examine UK data between 1970 and 2005 to address the following research questions: what are the effects of technology shocks on inputs and on outputs?
Are technology shocks the key driving factor behind UK business cycles? To what extent do technology shocks play a role in explaining economic fluctuations in the UK? Are the results from the analysis of UK data consistent with standard RBC models? If not, what alternative models can provide better explanations? I also conduct analysis for 13 OECD countries and compare the results.
1st Supervisor: Dr Lin Liu
2nd Supervisor: Dr Alessandro Marchesiani
Email address: ruoxi.cao@liverpool.ac.uk
Satyam Goel
Thesis Title: Intergenerational Distributional Impact of Monetary Policy
Monetary policy may influence the short-run dynamics of income and wealth inequality. While the economy is susceptible to such an influence, the unprecedented ways in which central banking and monetary policy have changed post the financial crisis of 2007-08 and COVID-19 make it critical to perceive the size and direction of these distributive effects.
This research proposes to study these distributional impacts in a life cycle framework to strengthen the central banks’ approach to interventions.
1st Supervisor: Professor Oliver De Groot
2nd Supervisor: Dr Yavuz Arslan
Email address: satyam.goel@liverpool.ac.uk
Asif Iqbal
Thesis title: Uncertainty, risk aversion and the instability of money demand
Monetary theory suggests a stable negative relationship between money demand and interest rates. However, the behavior of money demand began to change substantially at the beginning of the 1990s. The focus of my research is to develop a framework which can identify what accounts for this instability of money demand.
The research focuses on producing a search-theoretic model of money where frictions like aggregate demand shocks, heterogeneous risk preferences and asymmetric information will be applied to explain the unconventional behavior of the money demand curve for the leading economies like the US. This approach belongs to the ‘New Monetarist Economics’ Literature.
1st Supervisor: Dr Alessandro Marchesiani
2nd Supervisor: Dr Seon Tae Kim
3rd Supervisor: Dr Shalini Mitra
Email: asif.iqbal@liverpool.ac.uk
Zhi Yin
Thesis Title: Transformed Diffusion Models with Application to VIX and VIX Futures
Transformed diffusion models are nonlinear transformations of tractable underlying linear diffusion models that usually have closed transition density functions. Consequently, transformed diffusions are more flexible than linear diffusion but at the same time remain analytically tractable.
In this project, we extend the work of Bu et al. (2020a) and Bu et al. (2020b) by introducing a semiparametric transformed diffusion with astochastic central tendency. It is expected that the proposed model has the advantage of having an unspecified marginal density but at the same time enjoys the benefit of a latent stochastic central tendency parameter. We apply the proposed model to the VIX and VIX future data.
1st Supervisor: Dr Ruijun Bu
2nd Supervisor: Dr Yuyi Li
Email address: z.yin11@liverpool.ac.uk
Carol Zihan Yin
Thesis Title: Terms and Conditions Apply: An Empirical Analysis of Contractual Terms in the U.S. household finance market.
My research interests are focused on Applied Microeconomics and Empirical Industrial Organization. In my doctoral thesis, I am utilizing unstructured data to create new measures of economic activity and behaviour. Specifically, I am exploring the US prepaid card market, with a focus on contract design and pricing.
Through my research, I aim to provide empirical evidence that can inform economic decision-making and contribute to the development of innovative solutions in organizational economics and household finance.
1st Supervisor: Dr Balazs Murakozy
2nd Supervisor: Dr Juan De Dios Tena Horrillo
Email: z.yin7@liverpool.ac.uk
Antara Mandal
Thesis Title: Female Labour Market Participation in India
My research, primarily in the area of Development and Feminist Economics, talks about the discrepancies and consequent decrease in women’s labour market performance in India despite increasing education levels and lower levels of fertility reported in recent years. At present, I am working on a subsection of the project that explains the history, contribution and impact of contraception usage on female labour market participation.
Societal and patriarchal bodies have a large impact on the personal and professional lives of Indian women, and it is my hope that my project brings to light many such lesser-known problems that impact female labour force participation in the country with an added, urgent need to tackle them. My project also talks about the under-spoken effects of Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) and its impact on women’s fertility, health as well as labour force participation in the Indian subcontinent.
1st Supervisor: Dr Supriya Garikipati
2nd Supervisor: Dr Shalini Mitra
Email address: antara.mandal@liverpool.ac.uk
Boju Li
My research focuses on the areas of how government policies affect economic growth and other macroeconomic variables, such as wealth distribution, income inequality and unemployment.
The project aims to combine theoretical and empirical analysis of economic growth models.
1st Supervisor: Professor Angus Chu
2nd Supervisor: Dr Rui Bu
Email: bojuli@liverpool.ac.uk
Panagiotis Veneris
Thesis Title: Debt Deleveraging, Stagnation Traps, and the Optimal Design of Monetary, Fiscal, and Exchange Rate Policy.
In the aftermath of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, many advanced economies engaged in a process of debt deleveraging followed by a sustained plunge in economic activity, the Great Recession. Some of these economies experienced a long-lasting slump in key macroeconomic variables, such as employment and growth, despite the fact that policy rates were set at the lower bound.
Episodes of low growth, high unemployment and a binding ZLB are referred to as Stagnation Traps, that is, the combination of a liquidity and a growth trap. The aim of my research is to uncover how deleveraging in one part of the globe is likely to induce deleveraging in another part of the globe, and what is the underlying transmission mechanism. Next, I will try to understand through which channels stagnation traps could spread across countries.
After attacking these questions, the focus will be shifted to the design and implementation of optimal policies. In particular, I will try to welfare-rank optimal alternative policies, including monetary, fiscal, and exchange rate policies as well as a mix of them. Being able to identify optimal policies that prevent stagnation from spreading among countries is going to have several policy implications and will be of great interest to policymakers.
1st Supervisor: Professor Oliver Dr Groot
2nd Supervisor: Dr Lu Han
Email: Panagiotis.Veneris@liverpool.ac.uk
Website: https://sites.google.com/view/panagiotisveneris
Safa Basabreen
Thesis Title: The Effect of Subjective Well-being on Saving Behaviour
The level of subjective well-being is at the heart of our understanding of what drives individual decision-making. Recent developments in self-reported welfare measures have heightened the need to investigate the financial decision-making of those who have rated themselves as more satisfied with their subjective well-being. In order to better understand why people do not always approach saving decisions rationally, it would be interesting to investigate how saving behaviour would respond to changes in subjective well-being.
In my project, I utilise UK panel data methods to examine the effects of subjective well-being on personal saving behaviours. By examining the role of subjective well-being in saving behaviour, my research combines insights from happiness research and economics. The findings from my research so far indicate that subjective well-being is positively related to active saving behaviour. I am currently looking into this association in-depth, including passive savings, as part of my current study.
1st Supervisor: Dr Olga Gorelkina
2nd Supervisor: Dr Ian Burn
Email: Safaa@liverpool.ac.uk
Tien Nguyen
Thesis Title: What can we know from Game Theoretic applications in Cryptocurrency and Blockchain?
I am interested in researching and understanding the intersection of microeconomics, game theory and cryptocurrency. The research focuses on addressing and answering the following question: What exactly is cryptocurrency? What economic value can it provide? How do we, as participants, interact in a cryptocurrency environment?
This is alongside how efficient and sustainable is the current mechanism of some common cryptocurrencies (i.e Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc) in facilitating transactions or being an asset? What else can blockchain provide? To what extent can we apply monetary theory to understanding, building and improving the decentralized platform run by tokens?
1st Supervisor: Dr Christian Bach
2nd Supervisor: Dr Olga Gorelkina
Email: t.p.c.nguyen@liverpool.ac.uk
Yevhenii Skok
Thesis Title: Optimal Monetary Policy and Financial Stability
After the global financial crisis, the role of monetary policy in ensuring financial stability increased considerably. Alongside this, the interrelation between monetary policy and financial stability has become a hotly debated and widely researched topic. The issues mentioned above contributed to the formulation of the core question of my research, which is how changes in monetary policy interest rates affect the stability of the banking sector.
Examining this issue, the study intends to develop monetary policy, a new-Keynesian DSGE framework with heterogeneous banks and the possibility of their default. In addition to its macroeconomic content, this modeling approach allows one to assess the impact of monetary policy on the bank default risk under the application of different monetary policy rules. Hence, this research aims to provide a cutting-edge theoretical and empirical foundation for optimal monetary policy and to be of great use to monetary authorities for monetary policy, financial stability, and macroprudential policy.
1st Supervisor: Professor Oliver De Groot
2nd Supervisor: Dr Alexey Gorn
Email: Yevhenii.Skok@liverpool.ac.uk
Davidmac O. Ekeocha
Thesis Title: Essays on Household Energy Poverty in the Global South
Broadly, my research intersects between International Development and Energy Economics. Pivotal to the Sustainable Development Goals is energy access. However, in developing countries, the lack thereof predominates. Hence, my research focuses on experimental pathways of energy poverty interventions and life-cycle outcomes with gender implications in the Global South.
1st Supervisor: Dr Supriya Garikipati
2nd Supervisor: Dr Yining Geng
Email: davidmac.ekeocha@liverpool.ac.uk
Google Scholar: Davidmac O. Ekeocha - Google Scholar
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7098-0874
Yuchen Su
Thesis Title: The welfare-increasing of financial transaction tax in Asian.
The financial transaction tax is a proportional tax on financial transactions, which was first proposed by Tobin (1978). Due to the financial transaction tax, agents cost more to readjust their portfolios of liquid and illiquid assets in response to liquidity shocks.
Financial transaction taxes might be against the market, but many countries have introduced them. Why did those countries introduce the financial transaction tax? Does the transaction tax benefit those countries?
The research aims to address whether financial transaction tax in the secondary bond market can be welfare-increasing. My research is based on Lagos and Wright (2005). My studies analyse the welfare implications of financial transaction tax and offer the underlying frictions that give rise to the need for financial transactions.
1st Supervisor: Dr Alessandro Marchesiani
2nd Supervisor: Dr Timothy Jackson
Email: Yuchen.Su@liverpool.ac.uk
Zining Huang
Thesis title: Essays in contest theory
A considerable number of important economic activities and social phenomena can be modelled as group contests. Group contests can be explained as a type of interaction in which players (also known as contestants) expend costly resources to increase the win probability of their groups. The focus of my research is to build models to investigate players’ behaviours under differing settings.
1st Supervisor: Dr Alessandro Marchesiani
2nd Supervisor: Dr Ritesh Jain
3rd Supervisor: Professor Yiquan Gu
Email: pszhua13@liverpool.ac.uk
Jonathan Rae
Thesis Title: An Empirical Examination of Risk-Seeking Behaviour and Managerial Change
My research is concerned with the drivers of managerial change, with a particular focus on the degree to which senior decision makers allow behavioural factors to affect their decision-making processes when considering whether or not to replace a manager. I am using the setting of professional football to examine this phenomena.
1st Supervisor: Dr Juan de Dios Tena Horillo
2nd Supervisor: Dr Balazs Murakozy
Email: jonnyrae@liverpool.ac.uk
Hao Xu
Thesis Title: A Robust Approach for Estimating and Testing Stock Return Predictability
In the econometrics area, there have been a lot of discussion on predictive regression. I propose a robust estimation and inference approach for stock return predictability with multiple predictors and non-normal innovations.
In the presence of persistent predictors with innovations that are highly correlated with the return's innovation, I also allowed the predictors' residuals to be serially correlated.
1st Supervisor: Professor Abderrahim Taamouti
2nd Supervisor: Dr Yuyi Li
Email: Hao.xu@liverpool.ac.uk
Shoumeli Das
This research lies at the intersection of gender and development economics, with focus on marginalised socio-economic groups in India. My project aims to explore notions of intersectional empowerment for women around microfinance and labour in India.
1st Supervisor: Dr Noemi Mantovan
2nd Supervisor: Dr Patrick Bennett
Email: shoumeli.das@liverpool.ac.uk
Victoria Biagi
Thesis Title: The impact of organized crime on Italian economic social mobility patterns: education, labour market patterns and quality of institutions.
My research aims to contribute to the creation of an analytical framework capturing the overall impact of organized crime on social mobility patterns of the population living in an infiltrated environment, starting from the Italian context.
This research addresses the following questions: what is organized crime’s impact on the opportunities of the population affected by its presence? How does organized crime affect educational pathways and job aspirations? How does it impact local governments’ development funds?
1st Supervisor: Professor Giuseppe De Feo
2nd Supervisor: Dr Jakub Lonsky
Email: vbiagi@liverpool.ac.uk
Jingwen Chen
Thesis Title: The Influence of Sharing Economy on the Traditional Industries
The impact of the sharing economy on traditional industries mainly focuses on tourism, the hotel industry, transportation and ecological protection. The paper will explore Airbnb's influence on hotels in England by estimating monthly hotel room revenue before and after Airbnb's entry in the market. Economic research methods will be used and machine learning will also be the main part of this research.
1st Supervisor: Dr Gareth Liu-Evans
2nd Supervisor: Dr Jacopo Bregolin
Email address: Jingwen.Chen@liverpool.ac.uk
Luke Walsh
Thesis Title: Pay Information Disclosure: Does Wage Transparency Affect the Gender Pay Gap?
This research uses modern advances in micro-econometric techniques to analyse the impact of pay secrecy reforms in the US. These reforms prevent employers from disincentivising workers from discussing their pay both inside and outside the workplace.
This project focusses on whether wages increase for all workers as a result of pay transparency policies, as well as whether these policies can be used as a tool to reduce the gender pay gap by highlighting pay discrimination.
1st Supervisor: Professor Giuseppe De Feo
2nd Supervisor: Dr Ian Burn
Email: l.walsh7@liverpool.ac.uk