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As a postgraduate research student in Economics at Reading you will be part of a vibrant community, working alongside a thriving group of young and established researchers.

While we welcome research proposals on any economics topic, it is strongly recommended that your proposal lies within the research and supervision interests of one or more staff members.

Economics staff and students in a group photo in front of University of Reading library

Dr Steve Bosworth

Steven welcomes PhD applications in the field of behavioural and experimental economics, but has a particular interest in supervising proposals that investigate:

  • human cooperation within and between organisations and the institutions which support it
  • the economic determinants and consequences of social identity (e.g. gender, class, ethnicity, ideology

Applicants’ comfort with a range of quantitative methods is considered essential. These may include game theory, panel data econometrics, and survey/experimental design.




Professor Mark Casson

Mark's main interests are in multinational enterprise, small firm growth, and global market competition from a theoretical, empirical or historical perspective.


Dr Andy Chung

Andy is interested in supervising research in the fields of empirical family and labour economics, especially topics related to human capital. Some possible to topics include parenting and risky behaviour. I am also interested in other related research topics in applied microeconomics.





Dr Mark Guzman

Mark is interested in supervising research in the fields of Macroeconomics, Monetary Economics, Economic Growth, Immigration Theory.


Dr Hussein Hassan

Hussein is interested in supervising students interested in empirical macroeconomic models. More specifically: Time Series Econometric Modelling, Macroeconomics, Financial Markets and Monetary Policy.


Dr Neha Hui

Neha is willing to supervise students who want to do PhDs on the following:

  • issues of gender, intrahousehold bargaining and domestic violence
  • labour markets in developing countries, especially in the informal sector
  • the role of institutions in development
  • economic history of colonialism and development.

Dr Joo Young Jeon

Dr Joo Young Jeon is happy to supervise new PhD students in behavioural/experimental projects and empirical projects, especially in the following topics:

  • social preference/charity
  • gender
  • conflict
  • identity
  • industrial organisation/competition policy

Dr Sarah Jewell

Sarah is interested in supervising research in the fields of Human capital, Labour Economics, Economics of Higher Education.


Professor Uma Kambhampati

Uma supervises PhD students on a range of topics from Graduate returns to education in the UK to the impact of education and employment on female empowerment in Bangladesh.

She would be delighted to supervise doctoral students on any of her research interests (Child labour and schooling, especially in India; Impact of institutions on development; Individual well-being and life satisfaction; Productivity and competitiveness of manufacturing firms) and is excited to receive interesting proposals in a range of areas within Development Economics.

Dr Stephen Kastoryano

Stephen welcomes PhD applicants interested in causal inference methods, and applicants interested in empirical microeconomics, in particular in the fields of crime, environment, health, and labour. A strong background in microeconometric methods is important.


Dr Simonetta Longhi

Simonetta is interested in supervising empirical research on various aspects of internal and international migration, integration of migrants, wage and employment differentials across groups (e.g. by country of birth, ethnicity or disability), unemployment and on-the-job search.


Dr Stefania Lovo

Stefania is interested in supervising PhD students on issues that lie at the intersection between environmental and development economics including for example:

  • empirical analysis of environmental policies (e.g. decentralisation of environmental regulation, governance, political economy)
  • short and long term effects of pollution on development outcomes
  • deforestation and land use management
  • agriculture and climate change

Dr Christos Mavrodimitrakis

Christos main research interests lie in the areas of Macroeconomics, Monetary Economics, and Political Economy. In particular, Christos is interested in supervising (mainly theoretical) research that lies in the theory of economic policy in a strategic context research agenda, which analyses (macro-)economic policy with the use of game theory, hence becoming essentially a theory of conflict resolution, and deals with issues of policy conflict, coordination, and institutional design. In a world of many policymakers with many policy instruments and targets (e.g., inflation; unemployment; debt; income distribution; financial stability; climate change), actual outcomes result from the strategic interactions among those policymakers and with the private sector, where the role of institutions is crucial in determining those outcomes.

Specific examples of topics would be:

  • (i) strategic fiscal/monetary policy interactions;
  • (ii) strategic monetary/macroprudential policy interactions;
  • (iii) unconventional monetary policy – forward guidance;
  • (iv) central bank independence and alternative objectives;
  • (v) strategic monetary/wage policy interactions; in closed / (small) open economies and in monetary unions.

Dr Alexander Mihailov

Alexander is interested to supervise research students working on:

  • (i) international macroeconomics and finance;
  • (ii) monetary theory and policy;
  • (iii) political macroeconomics and socioeconomic dynamics; or (iv) bounded rationality, information and learning.


Dr Samantha Rawlings

Samantha is interested in supervising research on intergenerational transmission, child health, gender issues, or wider topics in applied development microeconomics.


Professor Giovanni Razzu

Giovanni is interested in supervising research in the areas of Labour Economics, the economics of gender, economic inequality with a particular focus on gender and the labour market, poverty and social mobility.

He is also interested in the applications of the capabilities approach as applied to inequality, particularly its operationalisation and measurement frameworks and issues of autonomy, particularly related to gender inequality.


Professor James Reade

James is interested in supervising research in applied economic areas, in particular applications in the area of sport. As sports are very well measured, and the incentives well understood, they can be ideal for the investigation of economic theories.

James has published research investigating a range of economic phenomena using sports data; for example, discrimination and market efficiency. Many aspects of labour market functioning (workplace productivity, the impact of immigration and changes in regulatory oversight) and managerial decisions can, and have been investigated.

Sport also enables classic economic issues to be analysed within the context of sport, for example, the demand for attendance at sport, and strategic decisions made on the field. Data on sport has been extensively collected for decades, even centuries, enabling economic history analyses over long periods of time, and studies of important periods of change in sports.



Dr Jade Siu

Jade is interested in supervising empirical research in the area of development microeconomics. This includes empirical work on informality, migration, social protection, conflict, and health.

Dr Nigel Wadeson

Nigel is currently interested in supervising microeconomic research on international business and on entrepreneurship.


Dr Shixuan Wang

Shixuan is interested in supervising research on functional data analysis in finance.


Dr Fangya Xu

Fangya is interested in supervising research in the areas of international trade/FDI, finance, sustainable economic development and in particular their intersections, and is also happy to supervise broader topics in applied economics.


Dr Minyan Zhu

Minyan is interested in applied industrial organisation, competition policy and regulation, performance/efficiency measurement and assessment.