Kent Economics Degree Apprentice Research Journal: Issue 2, 2024

In this issue:

This second issue of the Kent Economics Degree Apprentice Research Journal features contributions from 17 of the final year Professional Economist Degree Apprentices from the first cohort of the programme, the class of 2024. These papers were selected from a list recommended by the Independent Assessors who had sight of the year’s Dissertations. Papers were chosen for inclusion because of their clear merit, based on the objectivity and quality of the work and on the intellectual novelty displayed in the work.

This issue of the Journal contains contributions from 17 Apprentices who started their studies in September 2020 in unusual times. The contributions are grouped into 5 broad topic areas including Health, Labour, Education Fiscal and Macro, with the later including Growth & Development, Demographic and Finance subtopics.

Those contributions to the Health area include work by Pablo Lawrie from the ONS, who investigates the impact of unemployment on mental health as indicated by antidepressant proscribing. Similarly, Victoria Long of the DESNZ, formally part of BEIS, considers the impact of employment status on both physical and mental health outcomes. Peter Huggill, from HMRC, considers the impact of minimum unit alcohol pricing, as applied in Scotland on household alcohol consumption. Lastly in this section, Amber Lewis-Roberts, who works for the DHSC, develops a model to predict the demand for elective care across England and Wales which might help health service managers to anticipate and meet demand for services.

The papers grouped together under the banner of Labour Economics includes work by Nathanial Spedding (HMT) considers the employment impacts of minimum wage legislation across Europe, Jevan Reynolds (HMT) reports his findings on the effect of local general unemployment rates on the prospects for those entering the labour market for the first time. Umaymah Ali working at the BoE, conducts an investigation into the effect of unionisation of wage equality and Caitlin Lilley (Ofcom) investigates the effect of immigration as part of the motivation for internal migration.

Two, quite different papers are included in our Education section. The first, by Tamzin Webb of the MoJ, considers at the direct impact of educational attainment on later life happiness and satisfaction using individual data. The second paper by Elle Brown of Defra, focuses attention on the shadow value of the quality of locally provided education, indicated by the Ofsted ratings of Schools, on the spatial patter of value of housing.

We present two papers in the area of Fiscal policy. The first, by Samuel Bramley of HMT, asks how member countries of the OECD have adapted their fiscal policies to in the face of crisis caused by financial crash, pandemic and conflict. Meanwhile, Zachariah Adu from Arup reports an investigation into the impact of the adoption of special economic zones in the UK in which, alongside trusted econometric technique, he also includes ArcGIS work.

In the Macro sphere, two contributors work on growth and development. Jake Gilbert from the DWP focuses on the impact of oil price volatility on the economic growth of oil exporting countries while Catalin Savo, from the DHSC, asks important questions of what, why and how that economic growth is created, differs and can be altered. Sonny Dean from the DHSC reports his findings on the impact of demographics and health spend on economic growth. Darrel Adams of the DWP reports on his investigation into the impact macroeconomic variables might have on stock market valuation and price movement. Lastly, Grace Knight from the DfT investigates whether US Bond yields are affected by the volume of trading on the repurchasing markets.

Each of these authors have been given the opportunity to revise their final Dissertation paper in the light of written feedback provided by staff who marked their paper and the discussion they undertook with an employer representative, the Independent Assessor and their supervisor at viva voice examination. In addition, the Executive Summary, as specified by the EPA plan, has been edited down into an Abstract form for this use. Each contributor has taken this opportunity to varying degrees but readers should be aware that these works are the product of the apprentices’, now graduates’, efforts and not of academic faculty or of their workplace colleagues. They are published here as an example of the excellent research Professional Economist degree Apprentices can produce but should not be considered as peer reviewed research on which decisions can or should be based.

In all cases, the works presented here do not represent the views or opinions of either the University of Kent or each apprentices’ employer.

Editor: Alastair Bailey (November 15th 2024)

Table of Contents: (Click to move to each PDF.)

Health: