3rd Essex PhD Conference in Applied Economics

Imran Rasul is Professor of Economics at University College London, Director of the Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and Co-Director of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Centre on Wealth Concentration, Inequality and the Economy. His research interests include labour, development and public economics and his work has been published in leading journals such as the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Econometrica and the Review of Economic Studies. He is past managing editor of the Journal of the European Economic Association (2016-22), and co-editor and director of the Review of Economic Studies (2009-17). He was awarded the 2007 IZA Young Labour Economist Prize, the 2008 CESIfo Distinguished Affiliate Award, an ERC-starter grant in 2012, and a British Academy Mid-career Fellowship in 2018. He is President-elect for the Royal Economic Society for 2024 (to serve as President in 2025), and Vice-President for the European Economic Association in 2024 (to serve as President-Elect in 2025 and President in 2026). In 2019 he was jointly awarded the Yrjö Jahnsson Award in Economics (with Oriana Bandiera). He is an elected Fellow of the British Academy, the Academy of Social Sciences and the Econometric Society. He was awarded the Order of the British Empire for Services to Social Sciences in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2020.

Dr. Ben Etheridge is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of Essex, and a research associate at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and the Centre for Micro-Social Change (MiSoc). His primary research areas include labour economics, inequality, and the dynamics of household income. He is currently exploring changes in the nature of work, alongside broader determinants of inequality and poverty measurement. His research has been published in leading academic journals, such as the European Economic Review, Economic Journal, Labour Economics, and Health Economics. His recent works include studies on worker productivity and adaptation during Covid-19, policy uncertainty and information flows, and the impact of gender on mental well-being during the pandemic. He has also contributed to the analysis of income inequality, job polarization, and the relationship between house prices and consumption inequality.