Matthew Robson
PhD Student

Profile

Biography

Matthew is a PhD student in the Department of Economics and Related Studies, supervised by Mr John Bone. His current research is concerned with estimating inequality aversion and social preferences. He will primarily use economic laboratory experiments and questionnaire-based survey data, drawing upon the fields of Behavioural Economics, Welfare Economics and Health Economics.

Matthew has been awarded the ESRC Advanced Quantitative Methods (+3) studentship. He holds a MSc in Health Economics from the University of York, and a BA(Hons) in History and Economics from Bangor University.

Research

Overview

Inequality Aversion and Self-Interest; An Experimental Approach

The main focus of my research is estimating inequality aversion and other-regarding preferences.  My research delves into the gap between the streams of literature surrounding Distributional Preferences and Social Welfare Functions. By combining the two I aim to better explain individual behaviour and estimate both individual and social preferences. This will primarily be done using Experimental Economics, testing behaviour and preferences in an incentivised laboratory experiment. My first experiment tests between multiple experimental designs and alternative perspectives. The core of the experiment is the decisions that individuals make concerning income distributions amongst groups of three.

Further to this, I aim to conduct run further experiments in rural Uganda. Running parallel experiments within the lab to test for potential disparities between two distinct samples. Analysis will also be conducted on Questionnaire-Based survey data, which is concerned with eliciting health inequality aversion.

Interests

• Experimental Economics
• Behavioural Economics
• Welfare Economics
• Health Economics
• Applied Microeconometrics
• Microeconomic Theory

Projects

Thesis Title:  “Inequality Aversion and Self-Interest; An Experimental Approach”

Research group(s)

• Microeconomic Theory
• Applied Microeconometrics

Supervision

PhD Supervisor:

• John Bone                                                      

TAP Members:

• John Hey 
• Richard Cookson                                                    

External activities

Invited talks and conferences

• Robson, M., Asaria, M., Cookson R., & Ali, S., (2015), Estimating Health Inequality Aversion in England.  Working paper accepted at the Health Economists Study Group Conference, in Leeds January 2015.
• Robson, M. (2015), Estimating the Level of Inequality Aversion and the Degree of Self-Interest. Presentation at the IRNEP First PhD Conference, University of Reading October 2015.

Attended Conferences and Workshops

• WRDTC Induction Event, Leeds, October 2014.
• ESRC 1st Year Conference, Cardiff, January 2015
• Course in Programming Economic Experiments in Z-Tree, Konstanz University, Germany, March 2015.
• Lab-in-the-Field Workshop, London (University of East Anglia), April 2015.
• R User-Day, University of York, April 2015.
• Experimetrics PhD Summer School, University of East Anglia, May 2015
• CEAR-CSAE; Eliciting Subjective Beliefs and Risk and Time Preferences in Developing Countries, University of Oxford, September 2015.

Teaching

• Microeconomics 1, 1st Year Undergraduates, John Hey and John Bone, 2015-2016.

PhD Modules

• Microeconomics for Research, Anindya Bhattacharya
• Experimental Economics (MSc), John Hey
• Applied Econometrics for Research (audit), Emma Tominey
• Research Seminar in Health Econometrics (audit), Andrew Jones
• Mathematics for Economists (audit), Subir Chattopadhyay

Work

• Part-Time Research Assistant at the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI), 2014-Present.

Crowd Funding

• Raised funds for Experiments through Crowdfunding, a novel approach for raising funds for research. The crowdfunding Platform, YuStart was used; the first university based crowdfunding platform in the UK, ran by the University of York. The project was the first one to raise money specifically for research, and can be seen here: https://yustart.hubbub.net/p/Inequality-Research

Awards

• William and Myfanwy Eames Prize for the Best Performance in Economics, Bangor University, 2013
• Charles Mowat Memorial Prize for the Most Meritorious Student in History, Bangor University, 2013