Postgraduate Opportunities

My main research area is the development of models of decision making under risk and uncertainty. Models of individual decision making under risk/uncertainty are at the heart of most sciences. Economists, business analysts, policy makers, managers, engineers, researchers in finance and medicine, all make use of such models for theoretical analyses and for practical applications.

I am keen to supervise students interested in choice under risk uncertainty, time preferences, or behavioural economics more generally. The approach I take is interdisciplinary in nature and it includes classical economic theory as well as theories that are informed by empirical and experimental evidence. Prospective students should show a genuine interest in understanding, developing and applying models for theoretical or empirical analyses. For successful progress it is essential that students are equipped with theoretical skills and other quantitative tools typically used in economic theory, microeconomics or mathematical economics, as studied on most economic science masters programmes.

Current students:

• Chi Chong Leong (Prospect Theory, Preference Foundations and Experiments).

Past Students:

• Peter Brooks (Experimental Tests of Loss Aversion and Prospect Theory), Barclays Bank, London.
• Craig Webb (Ambiguity and Application to Game Theory), Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester.
• Laurence Roope (Poverty Measurement), Research Associate at the University of Oxford.
• Jinrui Pan (Time & Risk Preferences) Lecturer at Durham University.
• Kasia Werner (Prospect Theory and Insurance Markets) Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University.
• Krzysztof Brzeziński (Endogenous Timing in Oligopoly Games, Industrial Organizations) proceeded to College Lecturer in Economics at Oriel College and St Hilda's College, Oxford.
• Jingyi Meng (Reference-Dependent Preferences, Applications of Chance Theory), Assistant Professor at Nankai University, Tianjin, China.
• Cahal Moran (Subjective Well-Being), Research Fellow, London School of Economics, London, UK.
• Peihong Liu (Continuous-Time Principal Agent Models), Master of Research.
• Atiyeh Yeganloo (Experimental Economics), Research Associate Cambridge Judge Business School, Cambridge, UK.

• Professor of Microeconomics, Department of Economics, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, since December 2008.
• Visiting Professor in Behavioural Economics, Erasmus School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands, June 2010-May 2011.
• Head of Economics (Teaching and Operations), School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, September 2007-July 2010.
• Reader Microeconomics at Economics, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester 2007-2008.
• Senior Lecturer Microeconomics at Economics, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester 2003-2007.
• Lecturer Microeconomics at the School of Economic Studies, University of Manchester 1999-2003.
• PhD-training in Economics at the Department of Quantitative Economics, Maastricht University, The Netherlands, 1995-1999.
• Study of Mathematics at the University of Technology Aachen, Germany, 1988-1994.

Specific research interests:

Keywords: Decision Theory, Choice under Risk and Uncertainty/Ambiguity, Time Preferences and Discounting, Experimental and Behavioural Economics.

Current research projects:

• l'Haridon, O., C.S. Webb and H. Zank "Using Proper Scoring Rules to Measure Loss Aversion." 
• Meng, J, C.S. Webb, and H. Zank "Mixture-Independence foundations for Expected Utility."
• Chateauneuf, A., F. Maccheroni, and H Zank "A Separation of Utility and Beliefs through Betting Consistency."
• Dutta, I., L.S. Roope, and H. Zank "Endogenous Poverty Lines."
• Abdellaoui, M and H. Zank "Time and Risk Preferences."
• Leong, C.C., and H Zank "Foundations for Loss Aversion."