The Role of R&D and Innovation in Promoting Growth across Sectors, Firms and Regions.

This studentship offers an outstanding opportunity to undertake a 4-year funded integrated PhD and MSc in Data Analytics and Society based at the Department of Economics of the University of Sheffield, working in collaboration with the Sheffield Methods Institute and the UK Government Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
Directly addressing BEIS policy priorities, the project will explore the role of R&D in promoting innovation and productivity growth across sectors, firms and regions. Applying machine learning to big data from web-scraping of companies' websites, the project will investigate emerging UK sectors, such as life science, renewable energy, creative and digital sectors, which are not accurately identified via traditional industrial classification. The project will also analyse the role of public R&D funding in promoting regional diversification and the importance of ring-fenced regional R&D funding and innovation hubs to promote the levelling up, applying spatial econometric techniques to data on the location of research hubs, innovators and allocated funding.