PhD research

We are looking for a highly motivated student to conduct PhD research in the field of choice modelling. Choice modelling is a key analytical tool used to understand consumer decisions and valuations and forecast choices across a range of topic areas, including transport, environmental and health economics, and regional science. Their outputs form a key component in guidance underpinning government and industry decisions on changes to policy, infrastructure developments or the introduction of new services or products. This role provides an exciting opportunity to contribute to a major cross-disciplinary research programme at the heart of the Choice Modelling Centre (www.cmc.leeds.ac.uk) set up within the University of Leeds. The five year SYNERGY project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) seeks to unify three key paradigms for the unify three key paradigms for the mathematical modelling of human behaviour, namely: i) process models in psychology and cognate disciplines that seek to explain how decisions are made; ii) econometric and behavioural models that explain which factors influence the decision process and to what extent; and iii) data-driven (machine learning) methods that focus on the outcome of the decision process. The different aims and assumptions of these paradigms have resulted in very distinct strengths and weaknesses for each discipline. Only the synergy of the three will fulfil the promise of producing models that are behaviourally consistent, applicable to real-world problems, computationally tractable, and balance a priori assumptions with data-driven insights.

For more details, please see:
https://phd.leeds.ac.uk/project/1643-developing-new-behavioural-models-at-the-intersection-of-psychology-and-econometrics

We are looking for a highly motivated student to conduct PhD research in the field of choice modelling. Choice modelling is a key analytical tool used to understand consumer decisions and valuations and forecast choices across a range of topic areas, including transport, environmental and health economics, and regional science. Their outputs form a key component in guidance underpinning government and industry decisions on changes to policy, infrastructure developments or the introduction of new services or products. This role provides an exciting opportunity to contribute to a major cross-disciplinary research programme at the heart of the Choice Modelling Centre (www.cmc.leeds.ac.uk) set up within the University of Leeds. The five year SYNERGY project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) seeks to unify three key paradigms for the mathematical modelling of human behaviour, namely: i) process models in psychology and cognate disciplines that seek to explain how decisions are made; ii) econometric and behavioural models that explain which factors influence the decision process and to what extent; and iii) data-driven (machine learning) methods that focus on the outcome of the decision process. The different aims and assumptions of these paradigms have resulted in very distinct strengths and weaknesses for each discipline. Only the synergy of the three will fulfil the promise of producing models that are behaviourally consistent, applicable to real-world problems, computationally tractable, and balance a priori assumptions with data-driven insights.

For more details, please see:
Developing new behavioural models at the intersection of econometrics and machine learning | Project Opportunities | PhD | University of Leeds