Professor Karl Taylor

School of Economics

Professor of Economics

Karl Taylor
Profile picture of Karl Taylor
k.b.taylor@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 3420
Room B28 , Elmfield Building

Full contact details

Professor Karl Taylor
School of Economics
Room B28
Elmfield Building
Northumberland Road
Sheffield
S10 2TU
Profile

Karl graduated from Staffordshire University with BA Economics, then gained his MA Economics from Staffordshire and PhD in Economics from the Open University under joint supervision with Cardiff University.

He worked at the University of Leicester from 2001 to 2005, where he was initially a Lecturer before being promoted to a Senior Lecturer. Karl was initially appointed to a Readership in September 2005 at the University of Sheffield and was subsequently promoted to a Personal Chair in January 2009.

Karl was the coordinator of the DWP-sponsored Work, Pensions and Labour Economics Study Group (WPEG) from 2010 until 2020 and remains a member of the WPEG Steering Group.  

Karl has completed research projects funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Leverhulme Trust, the Home Office and the Department for Health.

He was a research associate at the Institute for Social and Economic Research (University of Essex) from 2006 to 2008 and a member of the Grant Assessment Panel C of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) from 2016 to 2020, and 2024.

Karl is currently an Associate Editor of the Bulletin of Economic Research. He is also a member of the Money and Pensions Service Research Evaluation Group, a Topic Champion for Understanding Society (UKHLS) in the area of household finances, and since 2009 has been a research fellow at the IZA, Institute for the Study of Labour, now known as IZA@LISER.

Research interests

Karl's research interests lie in the area of applied microeconometrics focusing on labour economics, the economics of education and, household financial decision-making. His research has focused on individual, household and firm-level data including matched workplace-employee data.

Examples of research projects include empirical analysis of the reservation wages of the unemployed (ESRC) and empirical analysis of wage growth, human capital and risk aversion (Leverhulme Trust).

He has been involved in advisory reports for the Home Office and more recently the Department of Health looking at the minimum pricing of alcohol.

Karl is interested in supervising PhD students in applied microeconometrics.

Publications

Journal articles

Teaching interests

I currently teach postgraduate econometrics. Econometrics is an essential part of an economists toolkit and includes a fascinating set of techniques which enables the measurement and analysis of economic phenomena.

As economists we use econometrics to describe economic reality, test hypotheses about economic theory, and to forecast the future.

The first half of the module provides a grounding in key econometric techniques covering elements such as the classical linear regression model, hypothesis testing and problems of non-spherical disturbances. 
 
More advanced topics are then introduced in the second half of the module. Specifically focusing upon topics in microeconometrics: including modelling discrete binary variables; censoring and sample selection, and then topics in macroeconometrics including: stationarity; cointegration, ARIMA modelling and  economic forecasting.
 
My approach to teaching is that concepts which initially students may find challenging are always taught via theory followed by examples in lectures, where possible linked to my own research, and are subsequently reinforced via computer practicals where students have the opportunity to estimate models.
  • ECN6540 Econometric Methods