TrackTheEconomy

During the period of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK, together with Neil Stewart (Warwick Business School) I was awarded a UKRI Covid-19 Rapid Response grant for a project on "Real-time evaluation of the effects of Covid-19 and policy responses on consumer and small business finances", beginning June 2020 and running through to December 2021. 

We created a real-time dashboard of local economic activity, tracktheeconomy.ac.uk, which was provided to policymakers to aid their decision making in real-time.

We also conducted research on the effects of Covid-19, and policies designed to address it, using the granular economic data collated through the project.

The English Patient: Evaluating Local Lockdowns Using Real-Time COVID-19 and Consumption Data (with Ben Guttman-Kenney) Covid Economics 64 (Jan 2021) Centre for Economic Policy Research, also see Twitter thread

Levelling Down and the COVID-19 Lockdowns: Uneven Regional Recovery in UK Consumer Spending (with Fabian Gunzinger, Benedict Guttman-Kenney, Edika Quispe-Torreblanca and Neil Stewart) Covid Economics 67 (Feb 2021) Centre for Economic Policy Research, also see Twitter thread

Writings for the Economics Observatory, a UKRI funded collective initiative by the economic research community to answer questions from policy-makers and the public about the economics of the Covid-19 crisis and the recovery:

Will the Edinburgh Reforms help boost UK consumer spending?

Where are the UK's levelling up funds most needed?

What will be the impact of the crisis on household finances?

How should the government support households with unpayable debts? 

Might coronavirus bring a lasting shift to online spending?

How can authorities control coronavirus without killing the economy? 

How uneven is the recovery in consumer spending across UK regions?

Writings with Nest Insight on the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on retirement saving behaviours:

The impact of Covid-19 on low and moderate income savers

These blog pieces are the first outputs from  a new project joint with David Laibson (Harvard University) Neil Stewart (University of Warwick) which seeks to understand the effects of auto-enrolment into pensions on household finances.

As part of the project, we introduced data providers to the statistics authority in the UK, the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Some of the data providers involved in our project are now providing data to the ONS for use in creation of national statistics.