Experts

Helen is the Director of the Centre for Evidence-based Public Services, and a Research Affiliate of CEPR. She has given policy advice at HM Treasury, HMRC, BEIS, DfT, DIT, the European Commission and the OECD. She was previously Director of Productivity and Innovation Research at the IFS. Her research covers urban economics and the effects of place-based policies, productivity, innovation and foreign direct investment.

Carl Singleton is Lecturer in Economics at the University of Reading. His research mainly focuses on macroeconomics and labour economics, with particular interests in understanding business cycle fluctuations, wage determination and issues of economic inequality. He also carries out research in sports economics and betting markets as part of the University of Reading’s Football Research Centre.

Cian is a researcher at the Wales Governance Centre, Cardiff University. Having graduated from the University of Warwick and University of St Andrews, he joined the centre’s Fiscal Analysis programme. His current research focuses on devolved taxes, local government and public finance in Wales.

Pawel is a Research Economist analysing structural issues at the Bank of England. His research interests include analysing effects of economic uncertainty and factors driving corporate decisions, in particular investment and cash holding decisions. Pawel specialises in analysing firm-level and survey data. He is part of the team that developed the Decision Maker Panel with academics from Stanford and Nottingham University. The panel is the largest timely source of firm-level data in the UK.

Kevin T. Smiley is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Louisiana State University. Dr. Smiley is an environmental and urban social scientist who focuses on disaster vulnerability and resilience from an environmental justice perspective. This work on disasters often centres on analysing race, climate change, spatial inequalities, health, and social capital. Smiley is also the author of Market Cities, People Cities (NYU Press 2018).

Kate is an Associate Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and a PhD student at the Department of Economics, University College London. Her research interests span public economics, household finance and empirical industrial organisation. She has published research on the effectiveness of public policy in retail markets and on how to tax small businesses.