Sarah Brown
Professor of Economics
Room 427
Tel +44 (0)114 222 3404
Fax +44 (0)114 222 3458
email : sarah.brown@sheffield.ac.uk
Biography
Sarah graduated from the University of Hull in 1989 and gained her MA in Economics at the University of Warwick in 1990 and her PhD from the University of Loughborough and was appointed to a lectureship there in 1994. Sarah was promoted to a Senior Lectureship in 2001 at the University of Leicester and took up a Chair in Economics at the University of Sheffield in 2005 and was Head of Department from 2006 to 2011. Sarah is a Research Associate at the Institute for Social and Economic Research (University of Essex) and a Research Fellow at the IZA (Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn). She has been a member of the Department of Work and Pensions Steering Committee for the Work and Pensions Economics Study Group since 2001. Sarah is currently a member of: the Steering Group of the Conference of Heads of University Departments of Economics; the Women's Committee of the Royal Economic Society; the REF Economics & Econometrics Sub-Panel; and the Grant Assessment Panel C of the Economic and Social Research Council.
Teaching
"I currently teach microeconomic analysis which explores the behaviour of individuals, households and firms, and their interactions. It is particularly important to understand how such agents make decisions and how they respond to changes in their environment from the perspective of economic policy. For example, microeconomic analysis can be used to inform the Bank of England in predicting how households may alter their consumption and savings decisions in the context of interest rates changes. Similarly, when setting prices for their goods and services, it is important for firms to predict how consumer demand responds to such price setting. Microeconomic analysis can thus be applied to decision-making by many different agents and in many different contexts. My approach to teaching entails not only introducing students to traditional as well as recent advances in microeconomic analysis but also to develop critical evaluation skills so that students can assess alternative theories and consider possible areas of improvement. This approach to teaching explicitly links teaching and research: students are not just presented with a fixed set of theories – they are encouraged to discuss ways of expanding and improving on them so that they learn about and engage with the process of research."
Research Summary and PhD Student Supervision
Sarah´s research interests lie in the area of applied microeconometrics focusing on labour economics, the economics of education and, more recently, household financial decision-making. Her research has focused on individual, household and firm-level data as well as matched workplace-employee data. Examples of research projects include empirical analysis of the reservation wages of the unemployed (funded by the ESRC) and empirical analysis of wage growth, human capital and risk aversion (funded by the Leverhulme Trust). Her current research focuses on household financial decision-making and attitudes towards risk. Sarah is interested in supervising PhD students in applied microeconometrics.