Employer: Financial Conduct Authority, London (usual place of work)
Project: Analysis of Repeat Lending and Affordability in HCSTC (Payday) Lending
Type: Research Assistance, full-time Start
Date: 5th October 2015 (approximate start date)
Duration: 3-4 months Rate: £300 per day
The Behavioral Economics and Data Science Unit (BDU) at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is offering a number of short-term research assistant positions for research support for work on High Cost Short Term Credit (Payday) Lending in the United Kingdom. The project is led by Stefan Hunt (Head of BDU, PhD Harvard), John Gathergood (University of Nottingham) and Neale Mahoney (University of Chicago). The project extends previous work on payday lending undertaken by the FCA in 2014. The project will result in academic research and policy-related outputs. Research support for this project will involve application of advanced techniques in applied microeconometrics. Suitable candidates should have obtained, or be in process of obtaining, a PhD and have advanced training in econometrics and advanced skills within STATA. The appropriate candidate will also have knowledge and experience of managing large, complex datasets and efficient coding for implementing computationally intensive routines. Familiarity with the Regression Discontinuity Designs (RDD) methodology and non-parametric statistics would be a particular advantage. Knowledge of the payday lending market in the UK is not essential for this role. The project also offers an opportunity to work within the BDU unit at the FCA. The BDU unit is a new initiative at the FCA and aims to apply modern theory and applications from behavioral economics and data science to contemporary economic problems. Current BDU research also includes large-scale randomized control trials in consumer finance and application of data mining and machine learning techniques to market data. It should be emphasized that this research support role will be full-time and candidates employed by the FCA will need to take a break from other research and other normal activities while undertaking this role. In exceptional circumstances it may be possible to fulfil this role part-time (3-4 days per week). Interested candidates should email their CV and job market paper (or example of research in progress) to Elizabeth.Ajibike@fca.org.uk as soon as possible.