Experts

Kate joined the IFS as a Research Economist in 2020 and works in the local government sector. Her current focus is the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on local authority finances. She also works on analysis of the ongoing major changes to English local government finance, and another project considering the distributional impacts of spending on public services. Before joining the IFS she worked as an economist at the Cabinet Office.

Timothy Ogden serves as Managing Director of the Financial Access Initiative at NYU-Wagner. He speaks and writes regularly on financial inclusion, microfinance, inequality, and social investment. He is the author of Experimental Conversations, on the use of RCTs in development economics, and of the Weekly faiV, a widely read newsletter on financial inclusion, poverty and economic development. Tim also serves as a senior fellow of the Aspen Institute’s Economic Opportunities Program and Financial

Myrto Oikonomou is an Economist at the Bank of England. She currently works in the Structural Economics Division in the Monetary Analysis Directorate. Myrto holds an MPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford and is currently reading for her DPhil in Economics at the University of Oxford. Her research interests lie in the intersection of international macroeconomics, macro-labour and uncertainty.

I am an Industrial Economist with extensive research and teaching experience. My recent research has modelled the incentives of colluding firms, with the aims of explaining real-world collusive behaviour and improving competition policy to regulate collusion and cartels. My ongoing research examines hub and spoke cartels.  I have taught Microeconomics, Industrial Organisation and Competition Policy and have a keen interest in using technology to enhance teaching and learning.

Özge Öner is an Associate Professor in Spatial Economics and Real Estate at the Department of Land Economy and a Fellow in Economics and Land Economy at Sidney Sussex College at the University of Cambridge. Özge’s research deals with migration, labour mobility, micro-geography of segregation and ethnic enclaves, retail and service geography, urban amenities, the geography of entrepreneurship, and political geography.

Dr Ekaterina Oparina is a post-doctoral Research Economist in the Community Wellbeing Programme of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics. She completed her PhD in Economics at the University of Surrey in Autumn 2020. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Her current areas of research include: methodological approaches to the analysis of well-being data, and individual-level determinants of wellbeing