Abi Adams-Prassl
My research sits within Applied Microeconomics, often focused on the econometrics of consumer and family choice.
My research has three main themes. First, I develop empirical methods to bring new models of decision-making to data. Much of behavioural economics is confined to lab experiments because it is difficult to measure and quantify irrationality. I ask what we can learn from real-world data about the drivers (rational or irrational) of choices and develop practical tools for applied researchers to use in their work. Another key research stream concerns family decision-making. Poor data and restrictive models often mean that economists end up making strong assumptions about how families behave, increasing the risk of unintended consequences when formulating policy. In 2020, I was awarded an ERC Starting Grant to develop this research agenda.
Second, I expoit large-scale datasets to better understand modern labour markets. I have a number of projects using job vacancy text to provide new insights on changing employment contracts and diversity in the workplace. A particular interest is in understanding why gender inequalities persist.
Third, I develop frameworks for quantifying access to justice in the UK legal system. There have been a big reforms in the process by which individuals can enforce their rights. Alongside Jeremias Adams-Prassl, I analyse the impact of these changes on claimants and provide theoretical frameworks for assessing the legality of reforms. Our work on employment tribunal fees led to the UK Supreme Court declaring them unlawful in 2017.
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Inequality in the impact of the coronavirus shock: Evidence from real time surveys
September 2020|Journal article|Journal of Public Economics -
Mutually Consistent Revealed Preference Demand Predictions
February 2020|Journal article|AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MICROECONOMICS -
Worker demographics and earnings on amazon mechanical turk: An exploratory analysis
May 2019|Conference paper|Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings© 2019 Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). Prior research reported that workers on Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) are underpaid, earning about $2/h. But the prior research did not investigate the difference in wage due to worker characteristics (e.g., country of residence). We present the first data-driven analysis on wage gap on AMT. Using work log data and demographic data collected via online survey, we analyse the gap in wage due to different factors. We show that there is indeed wage gap; for example, workers in the U.S. earn $3.01/h while those in India earn $1.41/h on average. -
Preferences and Beliefs in the Marriage Market for Young Brides
March 2019|Journal articleearly marriage, education, subjective expectations
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Prices versus preferences: taste change and revealed preference
March 2015|Working paperA systematic approach for incorporating taste variation into a revealed preference framework for heterogeneous consumers is developed. We create a new methodology that enables the recovery of the minimal variation in tastes that are required to rationalise observed choice patterns. This approach is used to examine the extent to which changes in tobacco consumption have been driven by price changes or by taste changes, and whether the significance of these two channels varies across socioeconomic groups. A censored quantile approach is used to allow for unobserved heterogeneity and censoring of consumption. Statistically significant educational differences in the marginal willingness to pay for tobacco are recovered. More highly educated cohorts are found to have experienced a greater shift in their effective tastes away from tobacco.