Edd Cowley case study

Name - Edd Cowley
How long did you work for the CMPO? - A year
Supervisors name - Sarah Smith
Interest area - Third sector

 

Why should you apply to work as a Research Assistant at CMPO?

I believe that a job as a Research Assistant at the CMPO would give you the necessary skills and expertise to greatly assist you in any job or qualification you wish to undertake that involves economics, including postgraduate research (many research assistants go onto complete a PhD), a career in economic consulting or a career within the Government Economic Service.

The role offers the opportunity to apply economics to a diverse range of areas. As a Research Assistant at CMPO I have worked on an interesting variety of papers. They include analysing the trends in charitable giving in the UK overtime, examining the altruistic characteristics of public sector workers across different countries, a project mapping the third sector and finally a paper exploring the role of social connections in corporate board appointments. This has given me excellent experience in applying economic theory and econometric methods to a diverse range of topical issues. For the charitable giving report I was given the opportunity to present our findings to leading figures in the charitable giving sector. This was a great experience and highlights the level of trust that is given to you at the CMPO.

Working closely with top economists on such a diverse range of projects has vastly improved my understanding of economics and it has given me an invaluable insight into what economic research involves and the potential issues and questions that need to be considered when carrying out research.

As well as learning a lot from working with your supervisor, you are also given intensive CMPO training in the use of Stata (an essential skill for any career in economics). CMPO also paid for me to attend two CEMMAP courses run by UCL and the IFS. These are very highly respected courses taught by leading global economists and I gained a lot from attending these courses, and attending these courses looks very good on the CV.

Other advantages of the job are that there is quite a high probability of your name appearing on a paper (and this could be published in a journal) and employers recognise that being a Research Assistant equips you with many of the skills and expertise necessary to work well within their organisations. Past Research Assistants have been recruited by the IFS among others.

In summary, the job offers a great opportunity to work alongside top economists at CMPO and to gain practical experience in economic research.

What does the job entail?

What you will do on a day to day basis will depend on your supervisor but common tasks include data cleaning and manipulation, running regressions and interpreting results and also writing literature reviews and possibly other sections of the papers that you are involved in.

After finishing his post as a Research Assistant at the CMPO, Edd went on to do a masters at Birkbeck University and following this will be working in the Civil Service.