Matias Mäkiranta wins the Stone Centre Explore Econ prize

Many congratulations to Matias Mäkiranta on winning this year’s Stone Centre Explore Econ prize!

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Explore Econ is an undergraduate student research conference organised by the Centre for Teaching and Learning Economics (CTaLE) at University College London. Any undergraduate student from the Department of Economics has a chance to work on a research project and submit it for consideration to Explore Econ.

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Now in its ninth year, Explore Econ is a great opportunity for students to explore their interests, while gaining valuable research skills working under the supervision of academic staff in the department. For example, one of the shortlisted students studied outcome bias in strategy selection by looking at how football managers update their strategies with data from 7,965 football games in Europe’s ‘top-five leagues’ (England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) between 2016 and 2022.

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Matias Mäkiranta has been awarded the Stone Centre Explore Econ prize for best inequality-related submission. His paper ‘Labour market concentration and worker mobility: evidence from online vacancies’ studies the effects of labour market concentration on wages using data on online vacancies from Germany. Matias finds that greater concentration is associated with lower wages.

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The analysis is novel as there is little evidence on this phenomenon. Moreover, it raises important policy questions as it implies that when wages are higher in more dense areas, that’s not only because of higher productivity in those areas, but also lower market power. This opens up new policy options for reducing regional wage inequality.

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Matias joins the Stone Centre at UCL as a Stone Scholar, alongside Gaurav who won last year’s Stone Centre Explore Econ prize. Many congratulations and a warm welcome!

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Matias explains his paper online. You can watch below, or on YouTube.

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