Research

My research is in applied microeconomics, with a focus on labour markets, crime, policing, and urban change. Across these areas, I am interested in how individuals, institutions, and neighbourhoods respond to shocks, incentives, and local economic change. Much of my work asks how behaviour adjusts when established economic relationships are disrupted, when local environments change, or when institutional settings alter the costs and returns associated with different choices.

One strand of my research examines labour markets and worker adjustment. In this work, I study how workers and local labour markets respond to adverse shocks and institutional change, including mass layoffs, workplace unionisation, and the labour-market consequences of COVID-19. These projects are linked by an interest in adjustment: how people respond when employment conditions change, how risks are transmitted through labour markets, and how disruption can reshape inequality and longer-run economic outcomes.

A second major strand of my research focuses on crime, policing, and neighbourhoods. Using highly disaggregated spatial and administrative data, I examine the geography of crime, public responses to policing, and the incentives that shape criminal behaviour. This work is motivated by an interest in how offending responds to changing local opportunities and constraints, and in how interactions with the state are experienced and interpreted by civilians. More broadly, it connects questions in economics with concerns that are central to criminology and public policy, including deterrence, neighbourhood disorder, and unequal exposure to policing.

A third strand of my research studies urban change and local economies. Here I am interested in how neighbourhoods evolve in response to economic decline, changing amenities, and shifts in the commercial and social life of local areas. This includes work on neighbourhood composition, housing markets, high street decline, and the wider consequences of local economic change for communities. A recurring theme is that neighbourhoods are not simply passive settings for economic activity: changes in local institutions, services, and amenities can have broader effects on behaviour, wellbeing, and social outcomes.

Although these strands span several fields, they are connected by a common empirical and conceptual approach. Empirically, my work relies on applied microeconometric methods and often combines survey, administrative, and geospatial data. Conceptually, it is unified by an interest in how people and places adjust to changing incentives and environments. This often places my research at the boundary of labour economics, urban economics, and the economics of crime, while also speaking to wider debates in sociology, criminology, and public policy.

My current research continues to build on these themes, with particular emphasis on local economic shocks, neighbourhood change, crime, policing, and the consequences of institutional withdrawal or disruption in local areas.

Current Projects

  • The death of the “High Street”? Main street closures, social disorder and urban change (with Diego Zambiasi), revised and resubmitted
  • Juvenile courts and recidivism (with Bahadir Dursun and Diego Zambiasi), revise and resubmit
  • How New Housing Changes Neighbourhoods: Economic and Social Effects of Local Supply Expansions (with Edward Lee), revise and resubmit
  • Football matches and policing: Evidence from London (with Andy Chung, James Reade, and Gennaro Rossi), revise and resubmit
  • Temperature, crime and policing: Evidence from UK geocoded data, under review
  • Regional employment effects from mass lay-offs across European regions (with Wessel Vermeulen), under review
  • Local Crime Without Electoral Sanction: Neighbourhood Public Safety and Incumbent Support in England and Wales, under review
  • Gangs of London: What Online Gang Territory Maps Reveal About Crime and Policing (with Diego Zambiasi), under review

Selected Papers

Note

Current and older working papers are available through the IDEAS/RePEc author page.