Contact Details

• Tel: 0116 252 3909
• Email: defraja@le.ac.uk
• Office: AC106, Astley Clarke Building
• Office Hours: 

Biography

Personal Page (External Link)

Curriculum Vitae

Research Interests

• Public Economics
• Economics of Education
• Regulation
• Game Theory

Supervision Interests

A search model for the university labour market. A very important motivation for researchers is the quality of the institutions they join. This suggests path dependence in the allocation of staff to institutions: good universities can attract good staff today because they attracted good staff in the past. This may be a virtuous or a vicious circle: on the one hand, it implies that today’s funding makes tomorrow’s funding more productive, but on the other hand it may tempt institutions to rest on their laurels safe in the knowledge that they need little effort to attract good staff. Search models are the natural tool for the study of this problem, and a student with good mathematical skill would be able to develop a technical advanced thesis. (joint with C. Carrillo-Tudela)

Co-operation and voluntary environment standard. For many goods (white goods such as washing machines fridges, tvs, cars, central heating systems, even houses, but not pianos, clothes, etc), running costs are a substantial proportion of the overall cost of using them. Co-operation in product design is a collusive practice that is generally outlawed on competition grounds. However, it may have positive effects from an environment viewpoint (both if reduces consumption and if it lowers running costs). Standard oligopoly theory and simple empirical work can be applied to obtain insight in the area. Policy makers (eg in the EU) would likely be interested in the outcome and in the results of a good thesis on the topic.

University imports and exports. Surprisingly, given the enormous importance of the overseas students market for many countries and the fact that policy makers and institutions are keenly aware of this aspect of their staff and student recruitment, virtually all existing work pays no attention to the national origin of university students and staff. Theoretical work is necessary to determine whether neglecting this fact is justifiable.

Peer group effects in tertiary education. A dataset constructed in the past few years can be used to study the peer-group effect in university education. Specifically, whether the quality of one's colleagues matters for the educational achievement. Theoretical analysis will be followed by empirical investigation of the dataset. (joint with T. Oliveira)

Tracking and Segregation. Conventional wisdom is that tracking (ie putting pupils of similar ability in the same school/class increases segregation to the extent that ability and income are correlated. However, some parents of middle ability income whose children would not be in the top track in an affluent area may prefer to live in a less affluent area to ensure that their children are in the top track. The research investigates the trade-offs, and the interaction between the social interaction market (sports clubs, marriage and so on) and the location decisions. (joint with F. Martinez-Mora).

PhD Supervision

• Miguel Flores
• Andrea Oterova

Teaching

• EC1000: Microeconomics 

Administrative Responsibilities

• Member of the Undergraduate Learning & Teaching Committee
• Member of the Postgraduate Learning & Teaching Committee
• Member of the Departmental Research Committee
• Thesis Committee Chair

Most Recent Publications

• The Origin of Utility: Sexual Selection and Conspicuous Consumption, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming.
• Must Try Harder. Evaluating the Role of Effort on Examination Results, Review of Economics and Statistics, 2010, vol. 92, pp. 577-597; with Tania Oliveira and Luisa Zanchi.
• Reverse Discrimination and Efficiency in Education, International Economic Review; forthcoming. 

Full listing of publications