Picture of Thomas Monk

Thomas Monk

PhD Candidate in Economics, London School of Economics


Bio

I am a PhD Candidate in Economics at the LSE, supervised by Professor Alan Manning & Professor John Van Reenen.
I am firstly a labour economist, focussing on technological change and the labour market with application towards inequality.
My research creates & utilises large novel datasets, and I have interests in the automisation of the digitisation of historical data, using frontier machine learning techniques. Two of these projects are open-acess, details can be found below.

Questions, ideas or thoughts on collaboration? Get in touch at t.d.antispmonk@lse.ac.uk.

Research

Working paper: Occupational Skill Content and Technological Change

Abstract: Technological change events fundamentally change the type of tasks performed by human labour within occupations. I develop a predictive model, utilising machine learning techniques, and find that occupational skill intensity data can predict, to a high degree of accuracy, technological change event exposure, as measured by indices developed by Webb (2020). I link these predictions to skills data from a library of newspaper job vacancy adverts to understand how skill intensities have changed over time, and use this this to predict historical occupational technological exposure. Change in occupational technological exposure, as predicted by changing skill intensities, is highly associated with important labour market outcomes.

This project is kindly supported by grants funded by the LSE's Research Impact and Support Fund 2024 and the Economic and Social Research Council.

Working paper: Uncertain Health and Wealth Inequality
(Best Dissertation Prize, MSc Economics, University College London, 2017)

Abstract: Precautionary saving is a key driver of wealth inequality within models of the Bewley-Huggett-Aiyagari canon. However, models with savings rates calibrated solely to idiosyncratic income risk find it difficult to replicate the vast wealth inequality empirically observed in the United States. This paper looks at a potential source of increased precautionary savings - idiosyncratic medical expenses shocks. This paper: i. establishes an identification procedure for medical expenditure shocks across the entire life cycle, ii. finds that idiosyncratic shocks are very highly persistent, iii. establishes the extent to which these shocks contribute to wealth inequality through the effect on savings behaviour.

Working paper (joint with Alan Manning): Public Opinion and Immigration

Abstract: Immigration in many high-income countries is often a fraught political issue. The share of migrants has been rising yet typically more people want lower than higher immigration, though views on the issue are often very polarised with strongly-held views on both sides. Given this, understanding public opinion on immigration is obviously important and there is a large and growing academic literature on the subject. These studies often investigate how attitudes vary with demographics among people in the same country at the same point in time. But it is also likely that attitudes respond to country-level macro variables like the level and mix of immigration and the general state of the economy. To investigate the influence of macro-level variables requires data on multiple countries and years so that there is enough variation in the variables of interest. This data is relatively rare. To address this, we introduce a novel high-dimensional dataset, harmonising data on the 28 EU countries from Eurobarometer surveys over the period 2002-2019, and investigate the influences of macro-level variables on attitudes towards immigration.

Public Datasets & Code

Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) 1939-1991 (in progress): a novel dataset fully digitising all Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) editions published between 1939-1991. This dataset includes titles, descriptions and SOC codes at the occupation level, cross-walking across each edition. This this dataset allows for understanding the evolution of occupational skill requirements within-occupation over time.

Harmonised Eurobarometer 2003-2019 (forthcoming): this dataset harmonises responses from the 28 EU countries from Eurobarometer surveys over the period 2002-2019. We use the Standard Eurobarometer survey series, conducted in the Spring and Autumn of each year in a repeated cross-section, with around 1000 respondents from each EU country. The Standard surveys ask a range of repeated trend questions alongside a selection of rotating modules and individual demographic details, which have previously been difficult to understand across time and countries.

multe - multichoice logit estimator: a fast, Python implementation of an MLE estimator of the multichoice logit model, as described in Ophem, H.V., Stam, P. and Praag, B.V., 1999. Multichoice logit: modeling incomplete preference rankings of classical concerts. Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, 17(1), pp.117-128. Theoretical documentation available here.

Teaching

LSE Excellence in Education Award, School of Public Policy - 2021-2022, 2022-2023, 2023-2024

LSE Class Teacher Award, School of Public Policy - 2022-2023, 2023-2024 (Highly Commended)

LSE Teaching Bonus Award, Department of Economics - 2020-2021, 2022-2023, 2023-2024

Graduate

2021-2025: PP455 - Quantitative Approaches and Policy Analysis - Teaching Fellow
Instructors: Dr Jeremiah Dittmar & Prof Mark Schankerman
Student Feedback: LT 2023/24 [4.9], MT 2023/24 [4.8], LT 2022/23 [4.9], MT 2022/23 [4.9], LT 2021/22 [4.7], MT 2021/22 [4.7]
Stata for Public Policy: https://stata.jeremiahdittmar.info

2022-2025: EC423 - Labour Economics - Teaching Fellow
Instructors: Prof Guy Michaels & Dr Rui Costa
Student Feedback: LT 2023/24 [5], MT 2023/24 [4.9], LT 2022/23 [5], MT 2022/23 [5]

2022-2023: Introduction to Data Science for Public Policy - Course Convenor & Lecturer
Course website and teaching material: https://tdmonk.com/dspp/

2021-2023: PP455E - Empirical Methods for Public Policy - Teaching Fellow
Instructors: Prof Daniel Sturm & Dr Gregory Fischer

2021-2025: PP408 - Introduction to Quantitative Methods for the MPA Programme - Course Convenor & Lecturer

Undergraduate

2021-2022: EC202 - Intermediate Macroeconomics - Graduate Teaching Assistant (Summer School)
Instructors: Dr Kevin Sheedy
Student Feedback: ST 2021/22 [4.8]

2020-2022: EC102 - Introductory Macroeconomics - Graduate Teaching Assistant (Summer School)
Instructors: Dr Canh Dang & Dr Antonio Mele
Student Feedback: ST 2021/22 [4.8], ST 2020/21 [4.7]

2020-2021: EC220 - Introduction to Econometrics - Graduate Teaching Assistant
Instructors: Prof Steve Pischke, Prof Taisuke Otsu, Dr Marcia Schafgans & Dr Canh Dang
Student Feedback: MT 2020/21 [4.7], LT 2020/21 [4.6]


Contact

Email: t.d.antispmonk@lse.ac.uk
Mastodon
Office hours: Tuesday 17:30-19:00 term time, within the Centre for Economic Performance. Please book on Student Hub.

2.01 H, Centre for Economic Performance
London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
Houghton Street
London, WC2A 2AE