Research:
Duncan’s research is generally located in the field of labour economics and has been  primarily inspired by investigating the significance of low wages. Whilst retaining his commitment to this area of expertise, much of his recent research has been considerably less conventional in form. Over the past few years he has been preoccupied with transgressing a few ‘economic borderlines’, and he has experimented with the application of labour theory to increasingly diverse topics, deemed by many to be non-traditional and lying outside the accepted boundaries of the discipline. Examples of current research projects that reflect this more eclectic and cross-disciplinary approach include the linking of economic psychology to the modelling of housing demand, the application of firm organisation theory to skill shortages, assessing the impact of military expenditure on labour demand and the investigation of the importance of labour market inefficiency on financial sector costs.

PhD Areas and Topics in Economics 

Administration:
Director of Undergraduate Studies (Economics)
Student Liaison Officer (Economics)

External Activity:
Member of the Welsh Economy and Labour Market Evaluation and Research Centre
Member of the Applied Research in Economics Group

Some Recent Publications:

• ‘Reservation Wage Levels in UK and German Financial Services Sectors’, Services Industry Journal, with R Webb, forthcoming.
• ‘The Contribution of Hours Constraints to Working Poverty in Britain’, with S Brown and J Sessions, 2007, Journal of Population Economics, Vol. 20(2), pp. 445-463. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00148-006-0086-7]
• ‘Employer perceptions of skills deficiencies in the UK labour market: a subregional analysis’, with S Johnson and R Webb, Environment and Planning A, 2006, Vol. 38(9), pp.1753-1771. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/a37319]
• ‘Manufacturing Labour Demand, Technological Progress and Military Expenditure’, Frontiers in Finance and Economics, with P Dunne, 2006, Vol. 2(1), pp. 18-30. [http://carecon.org.uk/DPs/0511.pdf]
• ‘Influence Costs and Skill Deficiency Perception: An Analysis of the Dorset Labour Market’, with S Johnson and R Webb, Human Relations, 2006, Vol. 59(1): pp. 35-57. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0018726706062744]
• ‘Coping with low pay: Cognitive Dissonance and Persistent Disparate Earnings Profiles’, with R Webb, Theory and Decision, 2004, Vol. 57(5), pp. 367-378.  [http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11238-005-0121-2]
• ‘Testing for Wage Overpayment in UK Financial Services: A Stochastic Frontier Approach’, with R Webb and T Hinks, Service Industries Journal, 2003, Vol.  23(5), pp. 123-137.
• 'Comparisons in Gender Wage Differentials and Discrimination Between Germany and the United Kingdom '. With M Brookes and T Hinks, Labour: Review of Labour and Industrial Relations, 2001, Vol.15, No.3, pp.393-414. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9914.00170]
• 'German Wage Underpayment: An Investigation into Labor Market Inefficiency and Discrimination'. With P Dawson and T Hinks, Vierteljahrsheft zur Wirtschaftsforschung, 2001, Vol.70, No.1, pp.107-114.
• 'A Multinomial Logit Non-Discriminatory Approach to Estimating Racial Wage and Occupational Discrimination', with T Hinks, Applied Economics, 2001, Vol.33, No.5, pp.605-612. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00036840122869]
• 'In Search of the Poor', Journal of Economic Psychology, 2001, Vol. 21, No. 5, pp.495-515. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0167-4870(00)00016-7]
• ‘UK Wage Underpayment: Implications for the Minimum Wage’, Applied Economics, 2000, Vol. 32, pp. 429-440. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/000368400322606]