Professor Karl Taylor
School of Economics
Professor of Economics
+44 114 222 3420
Full contact details
School of Economics
Room 519
9 Mappin Street
Sheffield
S1 4DT
- Profile
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Karl graduated from Staffordshire University with BA Economics, then gained his MA Economics from Staffordshire and PhD in Economics from the Open University under joint supervision with Cardiff University.
He worked at the University of Leicester from 2001 to 2005, where he was initially a Lecturer before being promoted to a Senior Lecturer. Karl was initially appointed to a Readership in September 2005 at the University of Sheffield and was subsequently promoted to a Personal Chair in January 2009.
Karl was the coordinator of the DWP-sponsored Work, Pensions and Labour Economics Study Group (WPEG) from 2010 until 2020 and remains a member of the WPEG Steering Group.
Karl has completed research projects funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Leverhulme Trust, the Home Office and the Department for Health.
He was a research associate at the Institute for Social and Economic Research (University of Essex) from 2006 to 2008 and a member of the Grant Assessment Panel C of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) from 2016 to 2020.
Karl is currently on the Advisory Board of Economic Issues and since 2022 is an Associate Editor of the Bulletin of Economic Research. He is also a member of the Department for International Trade ODI Advisory Group, a member of the Money and Pensions Service Research Evaluation Group, and since 2009 has been a research fellow at the IZA (Institute for the Study of Labour, Bonn).
- Research interests
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Karl's research interests lie in the area of applied microeconometrics focusing on labour economics, the economics of education and, household financial decision-making. His research has focused on individual, household and firm-level data including matched workplace-employee data.
Examples of research projects include empirical analysis of the reservation wages of the unemployed (ESRC) and empirical analysis of wage growth, human capital and risk aversion (Leverhulme Trust).
He has been involved in advisory reports for the Home Office and more recently the Department of Health looking at the minimum pricing of alcohol.
Karl is interested in supervising PhD students in applied microeconometrics.
- Publications
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Journal articles
- Financial advice and household financial portfolios*. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics. View this article in WRRO
- Modelling the composition of household portfolios: a latent class approach. Canadian Journal of Economics. View this article in WRRO
- Financial expectations and household consumption: does middle-inflation matter?. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking.
- Charitable behaviour and political affiliation: evidence for the UK. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 100.
- New evidence on disability benefit claims in Britain : the role of health and the local labour market. Economica, 89(353), 131-160.
- Mental health, reporting bias and economic transitions. Oxford Economic Papers, 74(2), 541-564.
- The protective role of saving: Bayesian analysis of British panel data. Journal of Empirical Finance, 63, 57-72.
- The internet and children's psychological wellbeing. Journal of Health Economics, 69. View this article in WRRO
- Corporate efficiency, credit status and investment. European Journal of Finance, 24(6), 439-457. View this article in WRRO
- Intra-Household Commuting Choices and Local Labour Markets. Oxford Economic Papers. View this article in WRRO
- Inflation convergence in Central and Eastern Europe vs. the Eurozone: Non-linearities and long memory. Scottish Journal of Political Economy. View this article in WRRO
- Early influences on saving behaviour: Analysis of British panel data. Journal of Banking and Finance, 62, 1-14. View this article in WRRO
- Household Finances and Social Interaction:Bayesian Analysis of Household Panel Data. Review of Income and Wealth. View this article in WRRO
- A Zero Inflated Regression Model for Grouped Data. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 77(6), 822-831. View this article in WRRO
- An inverse hyperbolic sine heteroskedastic latent class panel tobit model: An application to modelling charitable donations. Economic Modelling, 50, 228-236.
- Modelling household finances: A Bayesian approach to a multivariate two-part model. Journal of Empirical Finance, 33, 190-207.
- Employee trust and workplace performance. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 116(-), 361-378.
- Intergenerational Analysis of the Donating Behaviour of Parents and their Offspring. Southern Economic Journal, 82(1), 122-151. View this article in WRRO
- Who cares about stock market booms and busts? Evidence from data on mental health. Oxford Economic Papers, 67(3), 826-845.
- The Reservation Wage Curve: Evidence from the UK. Economics Letters, 126, 22-24. View this article in WRRO
- Household Finances and the ‘Big Five’ Personality Traits. Journal of Economic Psychology, 45, 197-212. View this article in WRRO
- The Existence and Persistence of Household Financial Hardship: A Bayesian Multivariate Dynamic Logit Framework. Journal of Banking and Finance, 46, 285-298. View this article in WRRO
- Intergenerational analysis of social interaction and social skills: An analysis of U.S. and U.K. panel data. Economics of Education Review, 40, 43-54.
- Reservation wages, expected wages and unemployment. Economics Letters, 119(3), 276-279.
- Business Ownership and Attitudes towards Risk. Applied Economics, 45(13), 1731-1740.
- Gambling and credit: An individual and household level analysis for the UK. Applied Economics, 44(35), 4639-4650.
- Modelling charitable donations to an unexpected natural disaster: Evidence from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 84(1), 97-110.
- Parental risk attitudes and children's academic test scores: Evidence from the US panel study of income dynamics. Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 59(1), 47-70.
- Household debt and attitudes toward risk. Review of Income and Wealth.
- The gender reservation wage gap: Evidence from British Panel data. Economics Letters, 113(1), 88-91.
- What will I be when I grow up? An analysis of childhood expectations and career outcomes. Economics of Education Review, 30(3), 493-506.
- Reservation wages, market wages and unemployment: Analysis of individual level panel data. Economic Modelling, 28(3), 1317-1327.
- Following in Your Parents' Footsteps? Empirical Analysis of Matched Parent-Offspring Test Scores. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 73(1), 40-58.
- Self-employment and attitudes towards risk: Timing and unobserved heterogeneity. Journal of Economic Psychology, 32(3), 425-433.
- Workplace performance, worker commitment, and loyalty. Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, 20(3), 925-955.
- Estimated effect of alcohol pricing policies on health and health economic outcomes in England: an epidemiological model.. Lancet, 375(9723), 1355-1364.
- Reservation wages, labour market participation and health. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A: Statistics in Society, 173, 501-529.
- Social interaction and children's academic test scores: Evidence from the National Child Development Study. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 71(2), 563-578.
- Productivity and labour demand effects of inward and outward foreign direct investment on UK industry. Manchester School, 77(2), 171-203.
- Bullying, education and earnings: Evidence from the National Child Development Study. Economics of Education Review, 27(4), 387-401.
- On the Validity of Long-Run Purchasing Power Parity: A look at Two Selected Caribbean Economies Exchange Rate. Journal of Money, Investment and Banking, 1, 33-48.
- Household debt and financial assets: evidence from Germany, Great Britain and the USA. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A, (Statistics in Society), 171, 615-643.
- Mortgages and financial expectations: A household-level analysis. Southern Economic Journal, 74(3), 857-878.
- Religion and education: Evidence from the National Child Development Study. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 63(3), 439-460.
- Business cycles and the role of confidence: Evidence for Europe. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 69(2), 185-208.
- Financial expectations, consumption and saving: A microeconomic analysis. Fiscal Studies, 27(3), 313-338.
- UK wage inequality: An industry and regional perspective. Labour, 20(1), 91-124.
- Wage growth, human capital and financial investment. Manchester School, 73(6), 686-708.
- Debt and distress: Evaluating the psychological cost of credit. Journal of Economic Psychology, 26(5), 642-663.
- Wage inequality and the role of multinationals: evidence from UK panel data. Labour Economics, 12(2), 223-249.
- Are foreign firms more technologically intensive? UK establishment evidence from the ARD. Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 52(1), 38-53.
- Debt and financial expectations: An individual- and household-level analysis. Economic Inquiry, 43(1), 100-120.
- The performance of the foreign-owned sector of UK manufacturing: Some evidence and implications for UK inward investment policy. Fiscal Studies, 24(4), 501-521.
- The impact of technology and trade upon the returns to education and occupation. Applied Economics, 34(11), 1371-1377.
- FDI and the labour market: A review of the evidence and policy implications. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 16(3), 90-103.
- Some tests on the long-run dynamics of black and official exchange rates: Evidence for four East European countries. Journal of Multinational Financial Management, 7(4), 317-332.
Working papers
- View this article in WRRO Financial advice and household financial portfolios. The Sheffield Economic Research Paper Series (SERPS), 2020009.
Preprints
- Financial Expectations and Household Consumption: Does Middle Inflation Matter?, SSRN Electronic Journal.
- The Effect of a Management Intervention on Firm Performance and Quality Defects.
- Teaching interests
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I currently teach postgraduate econometrics. Econometrics is an essential part of an economists toolkit and includes a fascinating set of techniques which enables the measurement and analysis of economic phenomena.
As economists we use econometrics to describe economic reality, test hypotheses about economic theory, and to forecast the future.
This can be at the micro level, e.g. estimating a demand function, or at the macro level, e.g. estimating a Keynesian consumption function. At both the undergraduate and postgraduate level students are introduced to Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), the main method for regression analysis.
I also cover the potential problems associated with OLS and possible solutions. In my postgraduate course in more advanced topics we also consider modelling discrete rather than continuous variables.
My approach to teaching is that concepts which initially students may find challenging are always taught via theory followed by examples in lectures and are subsequently reinforced via computer practicals where students have the opportunity to estimate models.
Throughout my teaching where possible I link to my research, e.g. estimating demand functions is explicitly linked to the research I have undertaken on alcohol.
- ECN6540 Econometric Methods