Experts

David, an Associate Director at the IFS, has particular expertise in two areas. Firstly, devolved and local government finance, where he has analysed fiscal rules, funding allocations and local risks in the context of Covid-19. Secondly, tax and social protection policy in developing countries, where he helps lead the DfID-funded TaxDev programme, which has been supporting partner governments’ policy development and appraisal and publishing broader research and analysis on the Covid-19 crisis.

Jim Phillips is a leading authority on deindustrialisation in Scotland. He has pioneered the use of a moral economy framework for explaining the social and political results of lost employment in industrial sectors since the 1950s. Deindustrialisation was broadly accepted as fair in Scotland in the 1960s and 1970s because the security of workers and communities affected was protected by Labour governments at UK level. Employment alternatives were stimulated. Conservative governments at UK level in the 1980s and 1990s enabled the acceleration of industrial employment losses without supporting those affected, which was why deindustrialisation came to be seen as grossly unjust in Scotland.

He is the author of Scottish Coal Miners in the Twentieth Century (Edinburgh University Press, 2019) and co-author, with Valerie Wright and Jim Tomlinson, of Deindustrialisation and the Moral Economy in Scotland since 1955 (Edinburgh University Press, 2021).

Jeremy Phillipson is a Professor of Rural Development at the Centre for Rural Economy, Newcastle University, and Director of the National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise (NICRE). He has research interests on the development needs of rural economies and fishing communities, processes of expertise exchange within rural land management and the integration of social and natural sciences in resource management. He was Assistant Director of the UK Research Council’s Rural Economy and Land Use Programme (Relu).

Angus is a research economist at the IFS working within the Human Capital Development sector. His work focuses on inequalities in child development and families as well as the effect of early intervention programs on child development.

Harry Pickard is a research associate at the University of Sheffield. His main research interests are in the areas of political and public economics, particularly in voting behaviour, British political economy and Brexit, and political leadership. His recent work has examined the impacts of terrorism in the UK whilst giving consideration to type of terror attack and the effect of political ideology on migration patterns. Harry is also an associate fellow at the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute.

Using a data intensive approach, Claudio’s research has identified key aspects of airline pricing algorithms. His work on hotel pricing has highlighted the positive impact of the abolition of Price Parity Clauses in Online Travel Agents Platforms.

In 2019, he received a grant from the Office for National Statistics to collect data on the UK housing market. The data is being used to study the market during the COVID-19 crisis.