CVER Research Team

Dr Gavan Conlon is a Partner at London Economics. He has an extensive understanding of economics of vocational education and training having spent the last two decades researching the area using quantitative analysis.

Gavan has provided expert evidence to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) Select Committee enquiry into higher education fees and funding and is an OECD expert on methodologies for assessing the economic impact associated with education and skills proficiencies. He is also a named Research Associate at the UK Commission for Employment and Skills; a technical advisor to the BIS and HM Treasury on the valuation of income contingent student loans and has provided advice to BIS on data matching across the public sector. He also provides specialist advice to the Department of Education on evaluation methodologies and cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis.

Working with Gavan at London Economics:

• Pietro Patrignani
• Rohit Ladher
• Marguerita Lane
• Dr Annette Harms
• Daniel Herr
• Sophie Hedges

Prof Steven McIntosh is a member of the Department of Economics at the University of Sheffield. He is an applied labour economist, with a particular focus on education issues and how they relate to labour market outcomes.

Steven has produced a large body of work looking at the wage returns and rates of return to qualifications, particularly vocational qualifications and apprenticeships. A second body of research has considered the match between the demand for and supply of skills, and the extent to which employees work in jobs appropriate for their skills and abilities. This work has looked at the wage effects of being in mismatched employment, but also tried to establish the reasons why an individual ends up in mismatched employment.

Working with Steven at the University of Sheffield:

• Prof Andy Dickerson
• Dr Damon Morris
• Konstantina Maragkou
• Jim Chen

Stefan is an inter-disciplinary social scientist by training (M.A. in Political Science from Berlin and Doctor in Economics from Mannheim) and a specialist in evaluation methodology and the impact of public policy. He makes use a wide range of experimental and non-experimental econometric methods to learn more about the effectiveness of policy programmes and institutions, i.e. whether specific micro and macroeconomic interventions are effective to help people make better decisions and have better long-term economic outcomes.

He is specifically interested in education and labour market institutions as a skilled workforce and productive labour market participation is fundamental to achieve the full productive potential of the economy and highest possible quality of life in the long-term. This interest includes education policy (and the creation of a workforce having access to specific technical skills), the coordination of wage setting in the aggregate economy and the impact of labour market regulation

Working with Stefan at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research:

• Matt Bursnall
• Augustin De Coulon
• Hector Espinoza
• Vahe Nafilyan

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Jenifer is research coordinator at the Centre for Vocational Education Research. She received her PhD in Economics from the European University Institute in Florence. She started working at the LSE as a Research Economist in August 2014, in the Education and Skills group. She previously worked as consultant for the Economics directorate of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and as a Junior Economist at the Bank of Spain.

Together with Sandra McNally, she is currently involved in a project that evaluates the effect of small group teaching assistance on reading outcomes at early ages. A second project, joint with Sandra McNally and Stephen Machin, looks at the importance of getting a 'good grade' in core subjects for later educational outcomes. A third project with Claudia Hupkau, looks at the effects of university capacity constraints on student outcomes. As part of her PhD, she has studied the impact of parental job loss and parental job insecurity on the educational outcomes of their offspring.

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Alice Battiston is an Economic Analyst at London Economics. She completed her M.Res in Economics at University College of London (UCL) in September 2017. She also holds an MSc in Economics from University of Turin and a MA in Economics from Collegio Carlo Alberto. Throughout her studies, she has mainly focused on empirical micro-econometric analysis and has become familiar with a variety of econometric techniques. Over the course of her research career, she has developed strong quantitative and analytic background as well as solid computing and software. She has experience in analysing data from both primary and secondary data sources, including surveys and administrative records. Since joining London Economics, she has been involved in a project aimed at analysing the relevant costs and benefits associated with apprenticeship training across the Home nations of the United Kingdom. Further, she has worked on a project aimed at matching the EPS and IDBR records. Recently, she has been involved in a data linking exercise for the Welsh Government aimed at identify learners across different datasets to reconstruct the education history of students in Wales. Her research interests include education and labour economics as well as policy evaluation.

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Matt is a statistician specialising in economic and econometric analysis of policy impacts. He worked for the Department for Education (DFE) for 15 years before moving to the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) in 2017 and the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) in August 2017. While working in the DfE, Matt's experience includes empirical estimates of the returns to vocational education, Cost Benefit Analysis of Further Education in England, youth transitions and the measurement of Apprenticeship pay. During his time at IES, in addition to the CVER research programme, Matt's experience includes the design and analysis of Randomised Control Trials and labour mobility of the engineering workforce.

Chiara joined CVER as research economist in September 2016. Her research at the Centre focuses on vocational education. In particular, she is involved in research projects investigating the labour market outcomes of apprentices, the role of minimum wage, and the implications of apprenticeships in terms of social mobility. Chiara is also a PhD candidate at the University of Essex. Her thesis is about intergenerational mobility and job polarization.

Augustin's main interest is in applied micro-econometrics. He moved to King's in 2009 from the Institute of Education. Previously, he was at Queen Mary, University of London. He studied at the London School of Economics and the University of Geneva, where he obtained his PhD in economics. His PhD work focused on the labour market assimilation of immigrants. Beside immigration, he also works in the fields of the economics of education (basic skills and vocational training) and health economics (risky behaviours).

Hector is a Research Economist at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR). His interests include policy evaluation, technological change, human capital, productivity, economic performance and growth. He is completing a Ph.D. in Economics at King's College London Business School, and holds an MSc in Economics from University College London and an MRes in Sociology (Economic Sociology) from the London School of Economics. He has over 4 years of experience teaching econometrics and core economic subjects at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and has worked as an economic consultant - in particular within the mining industry - in Chile and the UK.

Annette is employed at London Economics as a Senior Economic Consultant after obtaining a PhD in economics from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. She specialises in labour market economics and behavioural economics. During her PhD, as well as in previous research positions at the Bocconi University and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, she acquired extensive experience in the econometric analysis of large panel data sets, the design of behavioural experiments and randomized controlled trials, as well as in propensity score matching. Her recent work on the impacts of internships on early labour market success has received particular public attention through an invited talk at the European Central Bank and a citation in The Economist.

At London Economics, Annette has recently been involved in report writing for the European Parliament on the integration of the European Single Market, as well as in the design and implementation of behavioural experiments in the insurance and financial sectors. Currently, Annette is working on a project relating to the possible consolidation of the Employer Skills Survey and Employers Perspectives Survey, which will feed into the work being undertaken by London Economics in respect of Project 1.3.

Sophie is an Economic Consultant at London Economics, working mainly within the Education and Labour Markets team. She is comfortable with a range of econometric techniques and the use of statistical software such as Stata. She is also experienced in working with various UK and EU datasets, from survey data to large-scale administrative datasets such as the National Pupil Database (NPD), the Individualised Learner Record (ILR), and the National Client Caseload Information System (NCCIS). Sophie holds both MSc and BSc degrees in Economics from the University of Sussex, where she specialised mainly in microeconomics with a particular application in labour economics.

Daniel is an Economic Analyst at London Economics. He is involved in all aspects of research including literature reviews, data collection and cleaning, statistical analysis and modelling, as well as report writing. Daniel holds a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of York and an M.Phil. in Economics from the University of Cambridge. In addition to his economics knowledge, he has strong technical skills, including programming, data-cleaning and data-manipulation gained by working as a software developer and quality assurance tester for several years prior to joining London Economics.

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Claudia is a Research Economist at CVER and the Education and Skills Programme at CEP. She is a PhD candidate at the Catholic University of Louvain. Before joining CEP Claudia was part of the Poverty, Resource Equality and Social Policies (PoRESP) programme at the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics in Louvain, Belgium. She has co-authored various policy reports on education in England and educational inequalities among adults for the Social Market Foundation (London). Her research focuses on the economics of education, behavioural economics, the economics of poverty and labour economics. She is currently working on the determinants of access to apprenticeships, trying to understand the role pf pupil, school and geographical characteristics in further education choices.

Rohit is a Senior Economic Consultant at London Economics. Rohit's main role at London Economics includes detailed quantitative and qualitative analysis using MS Excel, Stata and R, as well as research and the drafting of reports. He has worked on numerous projects requiring an in-depth understanding of advanced econometric methods and techniques. He is currently working on an intensive econometric model assessing the impact of the bite of the NMW on productivity and wage differentials at a sector level for the Low Pay Commission. He also contributed on the previous study assessing the impact of the minimum wage on labour market outcomes for young people since the freeze in the youth rates relative to the adult rate.

Konstantina is a PhD Student at the University of Sheffield whose research is focused on Vocational Education. She holds a BSc degree in Economics from the University of Essex and an MSc degree in Applied Economics and Data Analysis from the University of Essex jointly with the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER). She is mainly interested in Labour and Education Economic research, including administrative data analysis using applied econometric techniques and quantitative methodologies. The project she is currently working on is principally focused on the decision to enter Vocational Education.

Dano Meiske is an Economic Analyst at London Economics, working on a wide range of topics with a particular interest in Education and Labour Markets. His role at London Economics comprises detailed qualitative research as well as economic modelling and statistical analysis using Stata and MS Excel. Currently, he is working on an impact study assessing the effect of recent policy changes on vocational education in the UK. Dano holds two degrees in Economics and in Business Administration from the University of St. Gallen as well as an M.Phil. in Economic Research from the University of Cambridge. Before working at London Economics, Dano has gained experience working with large-scale business and survey data and conducting econometric analyses for an economic research institute. His previous research focuses on school and labour outcomes in developing countries, for which he employed complex household and survey data.

Damon recently completed his PhD which was on the subject of wage inequality in the UK and its relationship with firm performance. He is currently involved in a project examining the role of pensions in executive pay as well as working on CVER projects, where current research includes the private returns to vocational qualifications. His research interests are in areas of empirical labour economics, and he is experienced in the analysis of a variety of large scale firm and individual level datasets.

Vahé is a PhD student at King's College and statistician at the Office for National Statistics (ONS). His research interests are in applied labour economics, with a particular focus on health and education. He is familiar with a wide range of statistical and econometric techniques and is experienced in analysing complex survey and administrative data, having undertaken a number of studies using large scale data for various UK Government departments (BIS, DfE, DWP, Welsh Government) and EU agencies (Eurofound, CEDEFOP, EU Parliament). Vahé also worked at the OECD and IES. He holds a Masters of Research in Economics from the Paris School of Economics

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Pietro is a Senior Economic Consultant at London Economics, and holds an undergraduate and two postgraduate degrees in economics from the University of Rome and University College London. Pietro has extensive experience in empirical methods, including the collection, manipulation and analysis of international, national and EU data, at both macro and micro levels. Since joining London Economics 6 years ago, Pietro has played a key role in a series of education-related projects requiring complex data management and modelling, the application of various econometric techniques and statistical analysis as well as report drafting. Pietro is an approved researcher at the ONS' Virtual Microdata Laboratory and has extensive experience in working with the ILR and firm-level datasets.

Camille Terrier is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the MIT, and a Research Associate at CVER and at the CEP, London School of Economics. She completed her PhD in Economics at the Paris School of Economics. Camille is currently working on two research projects in the UK: one aiming at evaluating the effectiveness of University Technical Colleges, the other focusing on principals of Further Education colleges in the UK. Camille is also working on the centralized process used to assign teachers to schools, on the grading practices of the teachers, and on the impact of economic shocks on the quality of the civil servants recruited.

Guglielmo is a Research Assistant at the Centre for Vocational Education Research and for the Education and Skills programme at CEP. He holds a Master in Economics of Public Policy from Barcelona Graduate School of Economics. His main research interest is education with particular reference to the effects of education on later life outcomes and inequality.