Ted's current research agenda examines the forces that shape the economic, cultural, and social characteristics of communities over the short and  long run. A central theme is how past shocks — such as wars, large-scale infrastructure investments and disinvestments, economic disruptions — can leave persistent legacies on local economies that in some cases can last generations. His recent work has shown that the large-scale mid-twentieth century rail cuts in Britain caused lasting declines in local population, employment, and skills (Gibbons, Heblich, and Pinchbeck, 2024, Journal of Urban Economics). A second study with Carozzi and Repetto traces how the memorialisation of WWI sacrifice led communities to develop greater civic and social capital in subsequent generations (forthcoming, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics). Finally, a related working paper shows how a lost generation of young and skilled workers led to a persistent decline in innovation at very local scales that spanned over 70 years.   

Building on these foundations, Ted has embarked on a new programme of research that broadens his earlier work to focus on questions of culture and morality. Moral values are a cornerstone of how societies operate and function, yet surprisingly little is known about how they have evolved over recent history. Recent polarisation over immigration, redistribution, and environmental protection challenges the widespread view that humans are progressively expanding their circle of moral concern. Drawing on Large Language Models and historical big data, Ted's work is building a unique evidence base to measure and track moral values in Britain across distinct domains of social life — including charitable activity, local news, parliamentary speeches, and public policy — over 125 years. This infrastructure will then be used to quasi-experimentally test foundational social science theories about how moral values are shaped by historical shocks, political leadership, and exposure to out-groups.

A parallel strand of Ted's research examines how housing markets, property taxation, and housing policy shape individual and community welfare. Work on leasehold property markets provides some of the first rigorous estimates of the long-run discount rates households apply to future costs and benefits (Bracke, Pinchbeck, and Wyatt, 2017, Economic Journal), findings directly relevant to the appraisal of long-horizon public policies. A study of property tax variation generates further evidence on household discounting behaviour and its implications for policy design (Koster and Pinchbeck, 2022, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy). His most recent work examines the welfare effects of the privatisation of UK social housing though the Right to Buy, generating new evidence on the welfare costs of in-kind transfers relative to unconstrained alternatives (Koster and Pinchbeck, R&R, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy).

Methodologically, Ted's research draws on causal econometrics, spatial data science (GIS), and, increasingly, natural language processing and Large Language Models applied to large historical textual corpora. He is an Affiliate of the Institute for Data Science and AI at Birmingham and co-leads the Trade, Environment, Development and Energy (TEDE) Research Group.