Stefan Speckesser

I am an applied economist aiming to understand the effects of education (further education, apprenticeships, university and lifelong learning) on economic outcomes such as life-time earnings, labour productivity and social mobility. I am also studying whether social policy programmes, which support disadvantaged people in the labour market (e.g. young people, single parents or disabled people) are effective and help improve life chances and reduce inequality. 

My research is mainly based on large scale unstructured ("big") data, including government registers. In order to test hypotheses of economic relationships and evaluate their magnitude using such empirical material, I combine data science techniques with econometric analysis, which relates the statistical analysis to models/hypothesis derived from economic theory.  

Most of my work has been published in scientific journals, discussion papers and government reports. Some studies have been discussed in national media, including The Times, The Guardian, and The Financial Times. I also publish blogs and pieces for non-specialists and make submissions to Parliament and Government to summarise scientific evidence in my field of research if relevant to Parliamentary debate and legislation on education issues. 

A complete list of my research publications can be found on Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=MeWDVYYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao