ESCoE PhD students presented at the recent King’s Business School Doctoral Research Symposium. This event showcased research from PhD students across the Business School.
Capital depreciation rates
First, we heard from Josh Martin on regional variation in capital depreciation rates in the UK. Capital depreciation is the concept that capital assets lose value over time. Regional capital stocks are useful for regional productivity, wealth and growth analyses. Focusing on environmental differences, his presentation explored evidence for the UK using insights from materials science. This includes the effects of weather on corrosion and durability of capital assets.
Time use diaries
Time use diaries measure how the public spend their time. Mechelle Viernes talked about how quality of work changed with new working patterns and how to link this with workers’ productivity using the time use diary collections that span the pandemic years. She also presented the study’s recommendations in time use diary collection, building on the Public Sector Time Use collection by ONS. This records time spent on different tasks at work, alongside self-perceived enjoyment and productivity, to examine the relationship between personal wellbeing and self-perceived productivity.
Ranking scientific output
Arjun Shah spoke about his work on ranking scientific output by the value of its knowledge spillovers to technology. He outlined how scientific knowledge creates value by serving as an input to technology development and proposed a ranking method to measure its value. This method will describe differences in spillovers across countries, disciplines, and institutions, with a particular focus on the UK and similar countries.
Measuring the deprecation of intangibles
Next came a presentation from John Lourenze Poquiz on measuring the depreciation of intangibles using search volume data. He spoke about a new methodology to estimate the depreciation of intangible assets, specifically focusing on the obsolescence of software and creative originals. This uses data from Google Search Volume (GSV), commonly known as Google Trends. His findings reveal a depreciation rate for software originals, ranging from 13-19% using this search data, faster than the rates applied by statistical agencies. He also demonstrated that the growth in capital stocks within the information and communication industry would have been lower from 2015 to 2016 if these rates had been employed in the estimation process.
Conditional inflation forecasts and expectations
Expectations are widely recognised as crucial determinants that have a significant influence on current inflation. They greatly influence the economic and financial decision-making of individuals and firms alike. Traditionally, inflation forecasting has primarily relied on singular-source expectations, which may not adequately capture the diverse range of expectations held by different economic agents. Furthermore, most inflation projections often fail to consider the uncertainty associated with other endogenous variables, leading to unreliable forecasts. Juan Reyes proposed a model for predicting inflation in the UK that incorporates different measurements of expectations and takes into account various economic conditions or scenarios. This approach aims to generate more reliable estimates of inflation and provide valuable insights to inform policymaking.
Pay for social care workers
Finally, we heard from Eduin Latimer on pay for social care workers. The presentation explored whether minimum wage in the sector improves job retention, using Scotland as a case study. The research found that the policy was effective at increasing pay for the workers on lowest hourly pay, but had no impact on pay for better paid workers. The research also found provisional evidence from tax data that the policy improved job retention. Affected workers were more likely to stay in their roles for the following 12 months after the policy was introduced. Improved job retention was one of the key aims of the policy and other research has shown that improving job retention in the sector can improve health outcomes for care users. The next stage of the research is to understand how the effects of the policy vary across different firms and workers.*
For more information on the ESCoE research programmes, visit the project section of the website.
*Disclaimer: “This work contains statistical data from HMRC which is Crown Copyright. The research datasets used may not exactly reproduce HMRC aggregates. The use of HMRC statistical data in this work does not imply the endorsement of HMRC in relation to the interpretation or analysis of the information.”