Economics research

The group has contributed significantly to interdisciplinary research with national and international reach. It leads the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre and the University’s Centre of Research Excellence (NUCoRE) on Healthier Lives.

In applied microeconomics, our research has looked at the evaluation of benefit reforms, immigration, industrial relations, procurement, the impact of terrorism, education policies, labour, and development.

Research in macroeconomics has investigated the role of monetary and fiscal policy, banking and financial stability, and open economy macroeconomics.

Our international economics research has contributed to the debate on firm heterogeneity, trade policy and foreign direct investment location.

 For further information, please contact Dr Smriti Sharma.

ESHER is an applied welfare economics research group. We focus on individual choices and behavioural changes in the context of public sector provision of public goods within the broad areas of environment, health, transport, and safety. The group’s research has a long-standing international reputation and a strong policy impact in mortality and morbidity risk valuation. The research provides the reference values for publicly funded project appraisals (HM Treasury; DEFRA – Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs).

Our research relies on the most up to date techniques (some of which we are personally responsible for developing) in terms of methodology, experimental design techniques and analysis. Care is taken to ensure that our data can be interrogated, analysed and interpreted for both academic and policy purposes. Ensuring methodological advancement is the guiding principle behind our research.

Publication in academic journals provides both us and user bodies with an independent quality assurance of the rigour, robustness and relevance of the research.

Impact

Much of this research has translational impact.

Perhaps the strongest example is the inclusion of the Newcastle approach in HM Treasury’s ‘Green Book’. Most recently, a new research report from the UK Health and Safety Executive (2016) outlines the updated method for valuing risks of cancer fatality, based on our research.

The impact has been extended internationally to the European Commission (air pollution), and more recently we have worked with the European Chemicals Agency and OECD.

In 2014-15, one of our group members was awarded a Visiting Research Fellowship at the Treasury, New Zealand. A current, ongoing initiative following on from this involves developing a new, theoretical framework for environmental risks.

Interdisciplinary research

Mixed method approaches have been applied in our mortality and morbidity valuations projects in which the team has often comprised psychologists as well as economists.

We also have a growing expertise in behavioural economics, of importance going forward, given the increasing interest in designing public health programs to incentivise behavioural change. Research into health and most recently oral health inequalities has been carried out in collaboration with medics.

Recent examples in the environmental domain include sustainable deltas through the GCRF Living Deltas Hub, a current application of water resilience to NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) and health effects of climate change in collaboration with the Department of Health and Social Care.

For further information about this theme, please contact:

Professor Susan Chilton

Dr Jytte Seested Nielsen

Dental Care Preference Elicitation: An Application to NHS Dental Contract Reform (DEPEND)

Funder: NIHR - National Institute for Health Research

Start date: May 2020

End date: April 2023

Co-investigators: Jytte Nielsen, John Wildman

Centre of Excellence for Policy and Evidence in the Creative Industries (CEPEC)

Funder: Arts & Humanities Research Council-AHRC (formerly AHRB)

Start date: September 2018

End date: July 2023

Co-investigators: Giorgio Fazio (Economics), Jonathan Jones (Economics), Sara Maioli (Economics), Jonathan Sapsed (Innovation, Enterprise and Digital Business)

Visit the project website.

GCRF Hub 'Living Deltas'

Funder: Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)

Start date: February 2019

End date: February 2024

Co-investigators: Sue Chilton (Economics), Darren Duxbury (Accounting and Finance), Smriti Sharma (Economics)

Visit the project website.

Estimating the Influence of Headteachers

Funder: Nuffield Foundation

Start date: January 2020

End date: March 2023

Principal investigator: Nils Braakmann

Find out more about this project.

Enhancing the Effectiveness of Vocational Education in Vietnam

Funder: Danida Fellowship Centre

Start date: April 2021

End date: March 2023

Principal investigator: Smriti Sharma

Find out more about this project.

Empowering women’s craft collectives in Rajasthan (India)

Funder: International Initiative for Impact Evaluaiton

Start date: July 2021

End date: June 2024

Principal investigator: Smriti Sharma

Find out more about this project.

Public perceptions of the health risks of climate change and priorities for action

Funder: NIHR Public Health Policy Research Unit

Start date: April 2020

End date: September 2022, currently ongoing

Investigators: Susan Chilton and Jytte Nielsen

Find out more about the project.

The effect of terrorism on public attitudes and individual well-being in Great Britain

Funder: ESRC Secondary Data Analysis Initiative

Start date: June 2021

End date: May 2023

Investigator: Harry Pickard

Visit the project website.

Internationalisation of rural firms

Funder: Research England (through the National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise)

Start date: March 2021

End date: August 2023

Investigator: Sara Maioli

Public preferences for multi-cancer early detection tests (MCED)

Funder: NIHR Applied Research Collaboration North East and North Cumbria 

Start date: December 2021

End date: December 2023

Investigator: Jytte Nielsen

ASEAN COP26 Policy Report

Funder: British High Commission Singapore

Start date: March 2021

End date: November 2021

Principle investigator: Atanu Ghoshray

Co-investigator: Marco Lorusso

Household economics in three-generation families. The role of intra-household altruism in the distribution of common resources for health care.

Funder: Polish Research Council

Start date: February 2017

End date: February 2020

Investigators: Susan Chilton and Jytte Nielsen

Fiscal Policy, Labour Market and Inequality: Diagnosing South Africa's Anomalies in the Shadow of Racial Discrimination

Funder: United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER)

Start date: April 2020

End date: November 2020

Investigators: Marco Lorusso

Find out more about this project.

The price of bogus self-employment: Analysing the impact of the individualisation of risks on working lives

Funder: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

Start date: June 2021

End date: August 2021

Principal investigator: Sara Maioli

Mental Health Costs of Flooding (consultancy)

Funder: Environment Agency (Bristol)

Start date: January 2020

End date: January 2020

Principal investigator: Susan Chilton

Offer Matching and Wage Dispersal (PDF: 0.5mb)

Francis Kiraly, Newcastle University, UK

October 2023

Marriage, Divorce, and Reservation Wages (PDF: 1.2mb)

Roberto Bonilla, Newcastle University, UK.

Francis Kiraly, Newcastle University, UK.

Miguel Á. Malo, Universidad de Salamanca, Spain.

Fernando Pinto, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain.

September 2023

The Emotional Effect of Terrorism - Evidence from Twitter Data (PDF: 1.0MB)

Vincenzo Bove, University of Warwick, UK

Georgios Efthyvoulou, University of Sheffield, UK

Armine Ghazaryan, University of Sheffield, UK

Harry Pickard, Newcastle University Business School, UK

May 2023

Luck in a Flat Hierarchy: Wages, Bonuses and Noise (PDF: 1.2MB)

John G. Sessions, Newcastle University Business School, UK

John D. Skåtun, University of Aberdeen Business School, UK

April 2022

Marriage Wage Premium with Contract Type Heterogeneity (PDF: 0.5 MB)

Roberto Bonilla, Newcastle University, UK

Miguel Á. Malo, Universidad de Salamanca, Spain

Fernando Pinto, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain

November 2021

Economic consequences of follow-up disasters: lessons from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake* (PDF: 1.7 MB)

Anastasios Evgenidis, Newcastle University

Masashige Hamano, Waseda University

Wessel N. Vermeulenx, Newcastle University

August 2020

A New Economic Framework: A DSGE Model with Cryptocurrency (PDF: 2.2 MB)

Stylianos Asimakopoulos, University of Bath

Marco Lorusso, Newcastle University Business School

Francesco Ravazzolo, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano and CAMP, BI Norwegian Business School.

July 2020

November

NUBS hosts inaugural Experimental Economics workshop

Newcastle University Business School hosted the inaugural Newcastle Experimental Economics Workshop on 10 and 11 November 2022.

The workshop featured keynote lectures by Friederike Mengel (University of Essex) and Matteo M. Galizzi (London School of Economics). It also featured fifteen submitted talks by researchers in the field of Behavioural and Experimental Economics.

The workshop was organised by the following academics in the Economics subject group:

• Irene Mussio
• Melanie Parravano
• Matt Walker
• Till Weber

August

Dr Matt Walker published in Management Science

Dr Matt Walker has published a paper titled 'Trust and Trustworthiness in Procurement Contracts with Retainage' in Management Science 

Abstract: In complex procurement projects, it is difficult to write enforceable contracts that condition price upon quality. Supplier nonperformance becomes an acute risk, particularly when there is intense competition for the contract. An established incentive mechanism used to mitigate the problem of supplier nonperformance is retainage, in which the buyer sets aside a portion of the purchase price. After project completion, the buyer determines the amount of retainage that is released to the seller, considering any defects that arise. Although generally a feasible contract form to implement, the practical difficulties in assessing completion introduce a moral hazard for the buyer. We develop a structurally new game and experimental design to offer managerial insights on how retainage principles mediate trust and trustworthiness in competitive procurement settings with moral hazard. The experimental results suggest that if trust in the procurement relationship is strong enough, then retainage can mitigate the seller-side moral hazard problem and substitute for reputation in a fragmented supply chain at the cost of inflated tender prices. In high retainage structures, there is a tradeoff between trade efficiency and supplier participation in request for bids. We further develop a model of fair payment norms and offer managerial insights on how to design the retainage mechanism, conditional on prevailing levels of trust and beliefs about fairness.

Prof John Wildman joins Health Economics as Associate Editor

Professor John Wildman, Peter & Norah Lomas Chair in Economics, has recently joined Health Economics as an Associate Editor. The journal seeks articles related to the economics of health and medical care.

July

Dr Irene Mussio joins Editorial Board of the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics

Dr Irene Mussio, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Living Deltas Hub, has recently joined the Editorial Board of the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics.

The journal welcomes submissions that deal with various economic topics but also involve issues related to other social sciences, especially psychology, or use experimental methods of inquiry.

June

Smriti Sharma joins Bulletin of Economic Research as Associate Editor

Dr Smriti Sharma has joined the Bulletin of Economic Research as an Associate Editor. She will be mainly handling papers in development economics and applied microeconomics. 

May

Economics academics recognised at NUBS Research and Scholarship Festival

Three academics from the Economics Research Community were awarded prizes at the NUBS Research and Scholarship Festival 2022.

Outstanding Researcher of the Year Economics: Early Career Researcher

Two researchers were awarded prizes in this category:

Bahadir Dursun has published in top journals in his field and is on a rising trajectory in terms of his publications and the quality of research. One of our colleagues praised his “particularly proactive approach when it comes to supporting postgraduate research students”, attending seminars given by doctoral students and supporting them through their doctoral journal.

Matt Walker has had two papers accepted in world-leading journals since joining us in September. He has embarked on several collaborative projects with colleagues in Economics and other subject groups; has successfully secured internal funds for research and impact activities; and has been working hard to rebuild the subject pool for the Experimental Lab after a long hiatus due to the pandemic. As one colleague put it: “Matt is an excellent academic citizen. We value his academic contributions to the group and the School as well as his collegial attitude, and look forward to seeing him flourish”.

Outstanding Researcher of the Year Economics: Established Researcher

Nils Braakmann is an outstanding researcher who has made hugely significant contributions to empirical microeconomics and has established a new applied micro research cluster. He investigates important, policy-relevant issues in labour economics, the economics of crime, health economics, international economics and urban economics – and has had some excellent publications in the last two years. Beyond his own research, Nils has acted as a research mentor to new members of staff, early career colleagues and PhD students – actively helping colleagues in both formal and informal settings to pursue their own research agendas. In the word of one of our colleagues: “We are lucky to have him. We must keep him."