Volume 1, 2025
This 2025 issue of the Kent Economics Undergraduate Research Journal features contributions from 11 of the final year dissertation students from the class of 2025. These papers were selected by those staff who had sight of all of the year’s Dissertations. Papers were chosen for inclusion because of their clear merit, based on objectivity and quality of the work and the intellectual novelty displayed in the work.
Three of these papers, by Abdifitaah Hossein, Arianna Campoverde-Gualtero and Ian Scott all focus on Macroeconomic research questions including, the improvement of inflation forecasting using an open-economy approach, Dollarisation in South America using a Difference-in-Difference estimator and the impact of population aging on the economic performance of Japan respectively. Two papers focus their attention on the impact of early life experiences and family background on later life outcomes to highlight the drivers of social and economic mobility. Connie Lloyd-MacKay focusing her attention on the impact of Free School Meals, family background and immunisation while Harriet Evans chose to consider the impact of socioeconomic status of the parental household. Labour market outcomes was the focus of attention for Emily Reeves, Henry Crawley and Matthew Chance. The topics these three took-on demonstrates the breadth on interest student hold in the topic. They included the impact of macro shocks, in the form on IMF intervention in Argentina, on female labour market participation; the employment effects of Minimum Wage policies across the US and lastly the productivity, labour supply and worker real-wage perception impacts of working from home opportunities. Oliver McSwiney estimates the economic benefit generated by the provision of sport facilities across the UK. David Kobia-Amanfi investigates the impact of electrification in low and middle income countries using a panel of 116 countries. His analysis differentiates the population in to rural and urban dwellers and suggests that the provision of electricity has not significantly benefited the rural poor. Last, but far from least, Samuel McEvoy-Reed dedicated his research time to the question of how spending and savings habits change during times of crisis and provides a fresh understanding of UK consumer behaviour during the 2020-2022 Coronavirus pandemic.
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. Each has taken this opportunity to varying degrees but readers should be aware that these works are the product of the students’, now graduates’, efforts and not of faculty. They are published here as an example of the excellent research our students can produce but should not be considered as peer reviewed research on which decisions can or should be based.
Editors:
Maria Kyriacou and Alastair Bailey (August 27th 2025)