Experts

I am an applied economist specialising in quantitative methods. My main research area is the economics of higher education, and I am particularly interested in inequalities in university participation and attainment, and the drivers of it – including higher education finance, information advice and guidance, subject choice, drive and ambition, and school factors such as predicted A-level grades.

Xiaowei joined the IFS in 2018 and works in the Income, Work and Welfare sector. Her research focuses on inequalities in labour market outcomes and health. Before joining the IFS, she worked at McKinsey, the Gates Foundation and in economic consulting.

Lei Xu is an Economist at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. His research interests include labour economics, economics of education, and applied micro-econometrics. He has past and ongoing works on the returns to apprenticeship from both the perspective of apprentice and firm, minimum wage, returns to university graduate, housing prices in China. He currently has strong interests on the topics of productivity, digitalization, career development and wage structure.

Derrick Xu is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Southampton. He completed his PhD at the University of Bristol and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, where he remains a guest researcher. An applied microeconomist, his research focuses on the motives behind prosocial behaviour in areas including charitable giving, climate change and political economy. His work also makes use of unstructured and non-traditional data sources.

Tony is an independent economist.  He was formerly a Professor of Economics at Birmingham University and before that Senior Advisor on Monetary Policy at the Bank of England.  He has written recently for the Guardian, New Statesman, Independent and others.

Ivan Yotzov is an Economist at the Bank of England. He is working in the Structural Economics Division, part of the Monetary Analysis Directorate. Ivan has an MPhil in Economic Research from the University of Cambridge and is completing his PhD at the University of Warwick. His research interests include macroeconomics, political economy, and text analysis.