Gordon Brady

I am most grateful for Robert Wright and Klaus Beckmann’s support of my candidacy for the SES Council. Although, I live in Virginia, U.S.A., I will faithfully attend all meetings of the Council and participate as called upon. Throughout my career as an economist, I have held strong personal and professional admiration for the many contributions of Scottish economists ranging from Adam Smith, Alan Peacock, Duncan Black, and Andrew Hughes-Hallett.  In 2010, I became a close personal friend of Andy and worked closely with him until his death in 2019.  I submitted a proposed paper on Andy’s contributions for the upcoming SES conference. Attending the SES meetings in Perth reenforced my love of Scotland and the Scottish Economic Society.  In addition to my friendship with Andy, I have greatly enjoyed meeting colleagues at the meetings and have visited Perth many times with my family.

It is well known that Duncan Black and Ronald H. Coase had their first academic posts at the Dundee School of Economics and Commerce in the early1930s. In December 1993, I received a telephone call from Prof. Coase asking that Gordon Tullock and I organize Black’s voluminous papers newly moved to the University of Glasgow. Over the next three years, Tullock (coincidentally Clan Ross) and I (of more humble Scottish heritage) had numerous enjoyable visits to Glasgow, Edinburgh, and frequent walks in the Highlands.

My academic appointments include Virginia Tech (1974 -76); Univ. of Miami Law School (1976-7);  Florida International Univ. (1977-8); Yale (1980-1); Sweet Briar College (1990-95); George Mason Univ. (1995-2003); GMU Public Choice Center (1995–8; 2000-03); Director, GMU Law School’s Law & Economics Center (1995- 98), Ottawa Univ. (Wayne D. Angell Distinguished Chair in Economics 2003-07), and adjunct appointments (2015-20) at UNC-Greensboro, Elon Univ.; Florida Southern College, and High Point Univ.

My applied work in economics, law, and regulatory policy includes four years as senior economist on the U.S. Senate Joint Economic Committee (2008-12) focusing on monetary and fiscal policy. My work at Brookings and senior policy appointments in four administrations focused on market-based alternatives to direct regulation, the cost of government, and economic development issues. My public choice work focuses on history of thought, fiscal consolidation,  the role of rent seeking in regulatory reform, and emission trading programs.

I have jointly authored three books and over 80 publications in refereed journals.  Recent publications include Brady & Forte (2020) in a New Palgrave book on George Stigler ISBN 978-1-137-56815-1); and papers in the Southern Economic Journal (2019);  Atlantic Economic Journal;  Journal of Infrastructure, Policy, and Development; and Journal of Quantitative Economics. 

 

Jeanette Findlay

I am a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Glasgow where I have been employed for almost 34 years. I am an applied microeconomist with a research and publishing record in a number of policy-relevant, impactful areas. These include labour markets, volunteering, education, sport and ferry transport. In this regard, I have experience in dealing with civil servants and with politicians and Ministers and the various committees of Parliament.

I am currently researching and publishing on class bias in education and labour markets with particular emphasis on the class pay gap. I presented a paper on this issue at the 2019 Scottish Economic Society conference and am a co-author of a paper submitted by my PhD student to SES for this year’s conference. I am currently co-supervising three PhD students all in the area of education and the labour market.

I have a long-standing interest in inequality and in widening participation in education specifically. My teaching interests include inequality, economics of sport and heterodox economics. I have been a strong supporter at my own institution of student bodies such as the Real World Economic Society which argues for a more pluralist approach to teaching in economics. I see a strong role for the SES in supporting this kind of activity.

 

Patricio Massa

I am a Research Associate at The Centre for Energy Economics Research and Policy (CEERP) for the team of Professor Mark Schaffer at Heriot-Watt University.

I am an applied econometrician with work on intergenerational economic mobility in the UK, focusing on differentials between socio-ethnic groups with particular interest on the white working-class boys. My work also touches on the intergenerational transmission of obesity in the UK analysing the impact of the socioeconomic gradient between gender and age groups and machine learning applications for predicting obesity in adults. I am also involved in projects related to education inequality in Peru. Since my involvement in CEERP I have been part of the team that elaborates the British Petroleum Statistical Review.

I did my undergraduate studies in Economics and postgraduate studies in Corporate Finance in Peru, in 2015 I travelled to Scotland to pursue an MSc in Economics at the UoE and then a PhD in Economics at the UoA, which I successfully finished in 2020.

Before returning to academia, I had 10 years of experience in the private sector working for transnational companies, which allows me to understand both the private sector and academic perspective.

More details about myself and my complete CV can be found in my personal website: www.patriciovaldivieso.com.

 

Hector Gutierrez Rufrancos

He is Lecturer in Economics at the University of Stirling School of Management.  He obtained his Ph.D from the University of Sussex in 2017.  He is currently serving as the PhD coordinator in the Economics Division at SMS and Co-Director for the undergraduate Economics Programme.  Hector is currently a Research Fellow at the Global Labor Organization.  Prior to coming to Stirling Hector was Research Fellow in Historical Economics in the Global Income Inequality Project, a £1.2m ESRC funded research Project headed by Co-Is Profs Gazley (LSE) and Newell (Sussex), where in conjunction with Economic Historians was involved in digitising some of the first household surveys run worldwide.  Hector received his MSc in Development Economics at Sussex where he also did his undergraduate studies. He was previously the Amiel and Melburn Research Fellow at the Equality Trust, where he worked with Profs Pickett and Wilkinson.

Hector is an applied microeconomist whose particular interests lie in the crossroads of labour, development,  political economics,  and inequality.  My work often uses historical sources in analysis,  and  large  datasets,  and  in  some  occasions,  ‘big  old  data’. The  type of  research question which has guided Hector’s work tries to analyse the interplay between formal and informal institutions on ordinary people’s life.  From the working of labour institutions in the presence of weak  legal  institutions,  to  their  ramifications  for  workers themselves. Hector’s work covers a variety of topics:  has featured in journals such as the British Journal of Industrial Relations, the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (Statistics in Society),and the Economic History Review.

 

Gill Wyness

I am an Associate Professor of Economics, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities (CEPEO) at the UCL Institute of Education. I am also a Research Associate at the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE.

I am an applied economist specialising in quantitative methods. My main research area is the economics of higher education, and I am particularly interested in inequalities in university participation and attainment, and the drivers of it – including higher education finance, information advice and guidance, and school factors.

Ongoing research is focused on student mismatch in further and higher education, understanding the extent to which students attend courses that are more or less selective than might be expected, given their academic attainment. This project looks at both the drivers of mismatch, and the labour market consequences of mismatch.

My work has been published in the Economics of Education Review, the Oxford Review of Economic Policy, and the Journal of Human Capital.