Experts

Leigh Sparks is Professor of Retail Studies at the University of Stirling. I undertake research into spatial-structural change in retailing. My research has been funded by local authorities, governments, retail organisations and most of the research councils. I have published over 160 refereed journal articles and books. I have been an expert advisor to the Scottish Government on retail, town and place matters since 2012 and am currently chairing a review of the Town Centre Action Plan for

Mairi Spowage is Deputy Director of the Fraser of Allander Institute. Areas of expertise include economic policy, regional economic statistics, and economic & fiscal forecasting.

Mairi leads on the Institute’s work with various partners, including those in business, the public and third sector.

Previously, she was Deputy Chief Executive of the Scottish Fiscal Commission and Head of National Accounts at the Scottish Government, and has 15 years of experience in different

Stefanie Stantcheva is a professor of Economics at Harvard University.

Her research focuses on how to improve the tax and transfer system for firms and individuals. She combines theory and empirics to study the effects of taxes and transfers on human capital, capital, migration, and innovation and how to incorporate these effects into our tax models. She also explores what drives people’s social preferences, attitudes, and perceptions using large-scale online surveys and

Bethan Staton is a reporter for the Financial Times, covering education. She has recently written about the UK’s skills gap, the politics of intergenerational inequality, government funding for higher education, and the impact of the pandemic on schools. She also writes about economics and other areas of public policy, and before joining the FT was a reporter at Sky News, and a freelance journalist in the middle east.

Jakub Steiner is an economic theorist and has made contributions to the economics of information acquisition and to a theory of economic coordination. He is now pursuing and ERC consolidator grant within which he develops micro-foundations to stylized facts of the behavioural economics. Recently, during the covid crisis, he tries to apply economic theory to issues ranging from optimal test allocation to safe organization of a workplace, or management of uncertainty over the effectiveness of

Sam Stephenson is currently a PhD student at the University of Cambridge with a focus on the economics and politics of climate change. His work looks at political barriers to action on climate change and works to develop policy solutions that are in keeping with the latest scientific research
on technology deployment rates and the future availability of zero carbon electricity.