Ellen Greaves completed her PhD on the Economics of School Choice and Sorting at the University of Bristol in 2022. Before her PhD, Ellen worked for the Institute for Fiscal Studies as a Senior Research Economist, and at the Centre for Market and Public Organisation as a Research Assistant. Earlier projects during this time included child development, such as the role of month of birth and parents’ marital status on educational and social outcomes; teacher bias; initial teacher training; an evaluation of reforms to teacher pay in England, and the interaction between public and private investments in education.

At the EUI, Ellen studies school effectiveness, the effect of school admissions priorities on inequality, and the effect of racial and social segregation on longer-term attitudes and behaviours. Ellen’s PhD studied parents’ preferences for school attributes, concluding that parents in England actively use school choice and value school quality, for example by responding to the revelation of quality information. Another key question was how parents’ residential choices depend on the school choice context. Structural modelling revealed the underlying mechanisms through which geographical school admissions criteria lead to property price premiums around `good’ schools. However, empirical work found that only a minority of households use this residential channel to access their preferred school.

Research projects, clusters and working groups

Inequality, welfare and social justice

Mentor

Sule Alan