Staff profiles

• Applied Economics and Policy

Rob's research interests cover the economics and political economy of EU policies and dynamics of policy reform (especially the Common Agricultural Policy [CAP], EU budget and EU enlargement issues), international trade policies (especially enforcement of trade policy rules in the WTO), and international biofuels policies.

He has a particular interest in research-informed teaching. As well as incorporating his own and others’ latest research into his teaching, Rob has developed new and innovative forms of assessment that introduce students to research activities linked to his teaching on the Economics of the EU.

In June 2010, Rob was awarded a Jean Monnet Chair in European Economic Studies by the European Commission. This and the associated funding will help him develop his EU-related teaching activities at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

• In 2001 Rob was the only academic from a new University awarded funding from the UK Government Challenge Fund. For this Rob undertook a project for DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) looking at the budgetary impact of extending the CAP to the to the applicant countries.
• In 2007 Rob was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship. This award, of over £13000, enabled Rob to spend a term working with Dr Adrian Kay as a Visiting Fellow in Griffith Business School, Griffith University, Brisbane. This project analysed both the dynamics behind the 2005 reform of the EU sugar regime under the CAP and also, with sugar as one case study, changes in the place of agriculture in WTO trade rules and how dispute settlement rules and their enforcement have changed over time.
• In 2008 Rob was a member of a team, led by Dr Wyn Morgan and including Dr Tim Lloyd, Professor Tony Rayner and Evious Zvogu of the University of Nottingham, that received support from the Nuffield Foundation to analyse the impact of EU sugar policy reform on sugar market and price volatility.
• In 2009 Rob, with Dr Kay (now an Associate Professor at the Crawford School of Economics and Government, the Australian National University) was awarded over £78000 by the ESRC to investigate the dynamics and interactions of food and biofuels policies in the EU, USA and Brazil.

• The project supported by the Nuffield Foundation involves two distinct elements. One is the econometric modelling of sugar price volatility. The second involves developing a partial equilibrium model of the EU sugar sector, to analyse budget and welfare impacts of the EU policy reform.
• The ESRC-funded project is exploring the dynamics of food and biofuels policies, where agricultural commodities have dual uses, in the context of high food and energy prices and concerns over sustainability and climate change. Interviews are being undertaken with policy-makers in three key centres, the EU, the USA and Brazil.
• CAP reform is a phrase used to describe something that, in key regards, is very hard to pin down. Rob, with Dr Kay, are exploring how a policy as complex and multi-faceted as the CAP can be operationalised and its reform be understood more clearly, using techniques of policy analysis recently developed by Howlett and Cashore.
• Recent work on sugar dispute cases in the GATT and WTO has revealed how contingent on exogenous factors the conduct and outcome of such cases can be. Another strand of work with Dr Kay, in its planning stages, is setting out to explore the practical meaning of a dispute settlement system that is more formalised than in the past, yet remains somewhat less than fully legalised.

• In July 2003 Rob was invited to present a paper to the QMW Public Policy Seminar series examining the impact of the 2003 reform of the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) on the world trade talks.
• In April 2005 Rob was invited to present the paper The Implementation of Rural Development Policy in the New Member States: Lessons for Romania? to a conference Challenges of the EU Rural Development Policy in an Enlarging Europe, organised by the European Institute of Romania and hosted at the Marriott Grand Hotel, Bucharest.
• In 2004 and 2006 he was invited to submit written evidence to the House of Lords' investigations into aspects of the EU budget. In the latter case he was subsequently invited to give oral evidence.
• In 2009, Rob delivered an invited paper on the future of the EU Budget to a seminar organised by the Federal Trust.
• Rob is a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Common Market Studies, an Associate Editor for Economic Issues, and a member of the Steering Group for EuroChoices.

Rob's supervisory experience covers a wide range of applied economics topics. As Director of Studies he has supervised to successful completion theses analysing the impact of inward flows of Foreign Direct Investment on Turkey's trade performance and another modelling monetary policy in Ghana. He is currently directing a thesis analysing the corporate governance role of failed merger bids.

As Second Supervisor he has supervised to successful completion a thesis analysing pensions reform options in Romania. Rob is currently Second Supervisor to theses investigating the development of stock markets in transition economies and an inter-disciplinary study of sovereignty and statehood in an evolving post-national world.

Rob is happy to be a member of a supervisory team for theses covering a wide range of applied economics and inter-disciplinary themes. Topics for which he is willing to be Director of Studies are principally in the broad areas of European integration, policy studies and international trade.