Edward Pinchbeck

Dr Edward Pinchbeck

The Department of Economics
Birmingham Fellow

Edward, more commonly known as Ted, is a Birmingham Fellow at Birmingham Business School. He is an applied microeconometrician with extensive experience of providing economic advice to policy-makers in central government.

Ted’s research interests are in health, urban and spatial economics, and behavioural economics. His program of work as a Birmingham Fellow relates to infrastructure and the links between places, people, and policy.

He is especially interested in how locations’ characteristics determine how they withstand or respond to permanent or transitory shocks, and the effects of place and environmental quality on economic outcomes and health.

Some of Ted’s projects draw lessons for contemporary society and policy using historical contexts, whereas others examine current settings. For example, one current research strand (with Gibbons, Heblich) examines the effects of the “Beeching Axe” - a massive reduction in railways in 1950-1980 in the UK – on the spatial distribution of the overall population, skilled workers, and the young. A second strand (with Roth, Szumilo, Vanino) uses the housing market to examine for the first time the extent and distribution of the costs of radon: a little-studied indoor pollutant which is the second largest cause of lung cancer after smoking, estimated to be responsible for some 3.8 million global deaths each year.

Qualifications

  • PhD in Economic Geography, LSE, 2016
  • MSc in Real Estate Economics and Finance, LSE, 2012
  • MSc in Economics, Warwick), 2003
  • PG CERT Higher Education (Associate level), 2016
  • RSA CELTA

Biography

Ted is a Birmingham Fellow in the Birmingham Business School. Prior to joining Birmingham, Ted was a Lecturer in Economics at City University and a researcher in the Urban and Spatial programme of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, where he also completed his PhD.

In between spells in academia, Ted spent more than 5 years working at the coalface as an economist in the UK government. His roles typically saw him offering advice to Ministers and senior officials across a range of policy areas including at the Department of Health, Monitor (now NHS Improvement); the Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills; and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

Ted’s research uses data-driven approaches to analyse issues of academic and policy interest. It crosses fields of economics and disciplines although his chief interests are in urban, environmental, and health economics.

As a Birmingham Fellow Ted will be pursuing a research program that relates to infrastructure and the links between places, people, and policy.  In one strand of the program a primary emphasis is how availability and regulation of infrastructure - whether that be transport, housing, and healthcare infrastructure - affects places, people, and firms. A second strand examines how locations’ characteristics determine how they withstand or respond to permanent or transitory shocks, and the effects of place and environmental quality on economic outcomes and health

Ted’s research program ties closely to work of City-REDI and WM-REDI and to colleagues in the Economics department.

Teaching

Ted is happy to hear from potential Birmingham PHD students working on urban, health, and public economics using quantitative methods.  

From time to time he'll have openings for postgrad or PHD-level research assistants on projects like these. If you're interested, please share your CV.

Other activities

Ted has been an invited referee for a number of prestigious economics journals including: Econometrica, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of Economic Geography, Journal of Housing Economics, Journal of Health Economics, and Regional Science & Urban Economics.

He is a member of the American Economic Association, the Royal Economic Society, and the Urban Economics Association.

He has organised several groups and conferences. For example, he was on the organising committee for 7th, 8th and 9th Annual SERC (Spatial Economics Research Centre) conferences. He was also the organiser for the London Health Economics Group (LHEG) meetings.

During his time at LSE he was an Advisory Board member for the MSc Real Estate Economics and Finance.

Publications

Koster H.R.A & Pinchbeck E.W. (forthcoming) How do Households Value the Future? Evidence from Property Taxes. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.  https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20200443&&from=f

Pinchbeck, E. W. (2019). Convenient primary care and emergency hospital utilisation. Journal of Health Economics, 68, 102242. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2019.102242

Hilber, C. A., Palmer, C., & Pinchbeck, E. W. (2019). The energy costs of historic preservation. Journal of Urban Economics, 114, 103197. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jue.2019.103197

Bracke, P., Pinchbeck, E. W., & Wyatt, J. (2017). The time value of housing: Historical evidence on discount rates. The Economic Journal, 128(613), 1820-1843. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12501

View all publications in research portal