Q&A with Francesca Arduini

Francesca has just completed her Economics PhD. She tells us about her work on game theory and her future work joining the University of Oxford as an Economics Fellow.

Francesca Arduini in a blue blazer in front of a grey background.

Can you tell us what your journey to a PhD looked like? Why did you choose to study at the UCL Institute of Education?

In 2018, I graduated from the Oxford MPhil in Economics. When I started that programme, my goal was to become an academic, and I planned to continue after the MPhil directly onto the DPhil.

However, I increasingly realised my focus in the MPhil was in theoretical microeconomics, mainly game theory, and while I enjoyed that it felt too detached from reality for me to commit to spending several years, and perhaps a lifetime, studying that. I decided to try going out into the “real world” as an economic consultant for Oxera. I worked there for three years and had a fantastic experience which helped me realise how practically useful theoretical economic models are in a variety of different applications.

I found myself still yearning to do research, while also conscious I did not want to feel too siloed within my field, and instead to remain open to insights, and ideas on policy-relevant applications, from other disciplines.

The UCL Institute of Education seemed like a great place because of its interdisciplinary nature, and when I spoke with Lorraine Dearden and Alex Bryson, who I hoped would be my supervisors, I was very excited at the prospect of working with them.

What is your research about? What are the policy implications of your work?

My research is about applying game theory to a variety of policy-relevant topics. When I started the PhD, I was hoping to advise policy-makers on how to best design parental leave policies to reduce gender pay gaps. However, I soon realised that this is a very complex task which first requires a solid understanding of both models of firm decision-making and of household decision-making.

In my PhD, I explored each of these two components separately. I developed a new method to estimate inequality within households, finding that women in the UK are more than 20% more likely than men to be in poverty. With my co-author Florine Le Henaff, we built on this approach to estimate the impact of female empowerment within the households on greenhouse gas emissions.

Our findings suggest that policies aimed at empowering women will decrease poverty rates and also decrease emissions.

As part of my study of firm decision-making, I wrote a theoretical chapter on a question in competition economics. There is a common misconception that when firms employ “focal pricing” e.g. only set prices ending in 9s, then if their input providers overcharge them this will be absorbed by the firms rather than passed-through to consumers. I show that under a general model, this is not the case. This is relevant to several antitrust cases, including several high-profile class actions in the UK and US.

You were awarded scholarships from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). How have these contributed to your studies and your practice?

I was an ESRC scholar as well as an IFS PhD scholar throughout the duration of my PhD. These scholarships were incredibly beneficial to my research in a variety of ways. Being part of the IFS enabled me to build an international research network, which helped me strengthen my research and find co-authors for projects both during my PhD and after.

ESRC funding allowed me to focus on my research without having to be overloaded with teaching, and supported me to travel to international conferences and submit my work to prestigious journals. The ESRC and the Yale-UCL award also funded my exchange with Yale during the last year of my PhD. This was a deeply formative experience which I would never have otherwise been able to afford.

I didn’t really have a 'best' part of my PhD: it was a challenging and exciting journey, and every day shaped the researcher I am today.

What do you find interesting about your field of study and what inspires you?

My field of study is economics. This subject, partly deservedly and partly not, has a rather bad reputation! It saddens me that most people, when they hear “economics” assume that I study something to do with money, finance, or perhaps interest rates.

Economics can be about those things, but it is a much broader discipline than that. The reason I decided to be an economist is because I wanted to do rigorous, quantitative research about important policy questions. Economics is about modelling how individuals, groups of individuals, and institutions make decisions.

This is fascinating in itself but also allows one to think about how these behaviours can be affected by policy, for the better.

You’re joining the University of Oxford as an Economics Fellow at Somerville College, what’s next for you?

I am excited to be returning to Oxford, my alma mater. I was a PPE undergraduate student there myself, and I know first hand how important the role of College Fellows is in the intellectual and personal growth journey of students. I am honoured to have been given this wonderful role.

I am also excited to be part of the Economics Department and continue working on my research. My current projects include my long-term parental leave project, continued research on inequality within households, and others.