My Career as an Academic....

Having a quick read through some old essays to help lil sis, or rather to help myself avoid prison by finding a way to explain how to write an essay before killing her, I found myself engrossed in a third year Labour Economics essay:

"The evidence from these empirical studies leads us to rather similar conclusions. That transfer payments lead to a reduction in labour supply as the model predicted, and that tax credit systems can induce an increased level of participation in some individuals whilst leading to a reduction in the participation of others, again as the model predicted. Although studies such as that of Brewer et al (2005) find an aggregate increase in labour market participation. The model indicated whether tax credits would increase and individuals labour supply or not would be dependant upon the preferences of the individual, and the empirical studies all identified the same clear groups in which labour supply was increased or not. All the studies indicated labour supply would increase for single parents (or single mothers), males with unemployed wives and females with unemployed husbands whist reducing the labour supply of both females and males who had working partners. This could perhaps be termed “The Breadwinner effect”, as the tax credit only increases labour market participation in households where there is only one major source of income, a breadwinner."








This enthralling final paragraph contains my solitary contribution to Economic Academia in its final sentence. As I envisioned it at the time, the marking lecturer would be impressed and immediately email me, he'd then pass word of my achievement to his peers at other Schools of Economics, a short while later a phone call from The Economist followed by the IHT would int erupt my morning viewing of One Tree Hill, I'd be awarded a first and invited to do some research with the Fellows of the department and our empirical study into The *MyName* Effect or 'Breadwinner' Effect would show working tax credits to be pointless and simultaneously bring about the fall of the Labour government paving the way for my cheeky move to Whitehall or the Bank of England.

Sadly nothing, as far as I know, came of it. Although I will have to check Professor Murphy's recent work just in case....



The two men pictured are Nouriel Roubini and Gary Becker, two academics I wouldn't mind being. Roubini as well as being more of a Rockstar than most modern day Rockstars, predicted the global recession. Whilst Nobel Laureate Becker is credited with being the first to apply Economics to traditionally Sociological subjects such as drug addiction and crime.