Department of Economics
The department is ranked 5th among all UK economics departments for research excellence (REF 2014). The University of Essex is ranked in the top category for teaching excellence (TEF 2017). The Department of Economics provides a vibrant research environment and has a strong collegial culture. It is a growing department, currently comprising 47 full-time academics, with distinctive clusters in microeconomics, macroeconomics, applied economics and econometrics. Applied researchers based in the Economics Department have typically strong research collaboration with other economists in the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER). The University of Essex is located 60 miles northeast of London. For more information about the department and its programs see www.essex.ac.uk/economics.
Appointment to this post will be made as Senior Research Officer and will be referred to by this title in the supporting job pack.
Duties of the Role
The main duty of the post it to deliver the research objectives defined by the “The impact of COVID-19 on unemployment and earnings inequality” (ES/V016970/1) grant and research project. As a Postdoctoral Researcher, you will be involved in all aspects of the project. On the data side, you will help to build and analyse our datasets. The datasets will mainly comprise of Understanding Society and the UK Labour Force Survey, and you will use advanced econometric techniques in analysing them. Ideally, on the theory side, you will also be able to provide support for the computation of structural heterogeneous agent models of the labour markets, which are used to evaluate the impact of labour market policies during the pandemic recession and its aftermath. This work would concern taking (existing) baseline version of the model, possibly making adaptations to the code, running these programs, and interpreting its output.
A full list of duties and responsibilities can be found within the job pack (see below)
Qualifications and Skills required
Applicants are expected to hold a PhD in Economics or be close to completion of this. As part of your studies, we would expect you to be able to conduct research independently, provide research ideas, and to communicate coherently research results verbally and in writing.
You will have experience with statistical software, with a strong preference for an ability to work with STATA. In addition, experience cleaning, analysing and visualising data is essential, whilst experience with the “Understanding Society” survey would be greatly welcomed.
The successful candidate will possess advanced training in statistics, econometrics or economics, and will ideally have an advanced knowledge of MATLAB, FORTRAN, C++, Python, Julia or similar software.
Please read this section carefully:
• Please note that you must complete your personal details via the link http://jobs.essex.ac.uk, job reference REQ04286. You will not be prompted to attach any other supporting documents on the University’s online system.
• At the same time and in addition your Job Market paper and three letters from referees must be submitted at https://econjobmarket.org.
You must complete the above steps; otherwise your application will be incomplete and cannot be considered by the Recruitment Committee.
This is a fixed-term, full-time post until 30/04/2022. The post is fixed-term due to funding.