Job description

This is an exciting opportunity for a post-doctoral researcher to carry out applied empirical research in political economy within a team of scholars. The research associate (RA) will support research activities related to the Leverhulme Trust Grant “The Political Economy of Growth Models in an Age of Stagnation”. The RA will be working at the Department of European & International Studies at King’s College London in a team led by Professor Engelbert Stockhammer and Dr Karsten Kohler (University of Leeds). The project analyses the institutional and macroeconomic sources of divergent growth performances between Anglo-Saxon, northern, and southern European countries after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. It engages with the recent growth models approach to Comparative Political Economy and combines macroeconomic and institutionalist analyses.

The RA will be working on the work package on financial instability as a cause of cross-country differences in economic performance. This work package draws on a Minskyan perspective according to which financial fragility builds up during good times. For example, house price booms may improve the macroeconomic outlook and encourage firms to take on riskier financial positions. The project investigates how changes in the macroeconomic and institutional environment influences financial fragility on balance sheets in the corporate sector. Specific attention will be given to institutional residential investors and large real estate companies that have been on the rise in many countries in the last decade.

The RA will contribute to this research through the compilation of a panel dataset of balance sheet and profit/loss accounts of non-financial firms. The data come from Orbis and Orbis Historical provided by Bureau van Dijk. The RA will assist in retrieving, downsizing, and cleaning the data so that they can be used for descriptive and statistical analyses.

This post will be offered on an a full-time fixed-term contract basis for 7.5 months or a part-time fixed term contract basis at 75% FTE for 10 months.

This is either a full-time or part-time post as indicated above.

Key responsibilities

• Retrieval and compilation of a large firm-level dataset  
• Data cleaning and management 
• Generation of descriptive statistics (e.g. bar charts, scatterplots, time series charts, tables)  

The above list of responsibilities may not be exhaustive, and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks and responsibilities as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post.  

Skills, knowledge, and experience 

Essential criteria  

1.       PhD (completed or dissertation submitted) in economics, political economy or a closely related field

2.       Experience in applied empirical research with quantitative data

3.       Good practical knowledge of statistical packages such as Stata or R

4.       Efficient communication skills

Desirable criteria

1.       Experience in working with firm-level data or other micro data

2.       Experience in carrying out statistical analyses  

Please note that this is a PhD level role but candidates who have submitted their thesis and are awaiting award of their PhDs will be considered. In these circumstances the appointment will be made at Grade 5, spine point 30 with the title of Research Assistant. Upon confirmation of the award of the PhD, the job title will become Research Associate and the salary will increase to Grade 6.

The likely interview date is 1 September. The interview will take place online via Teams. Shortlisted candidates will likely be informed ca. 7 August.