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Professor Keith Bender

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Professor Keith Bender
Professor Keith Bender
Professor Keith Bender

SIRE Chair in Economics

About
Email Address
kabender@abdn.ac.uk
Telephone Number
+44 (0)1224 273411
Office Address
S49 Edward Wright Building
Old Aberdeen Campus
Dunbar Street
AB24 3QY

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School/Department
Business School
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Biography

I specialise in applied microeconomics, particularly interested in labour economics.  Early in my career I focused on the role of institutions and labour market outcomes, looking at differences between union and nonunion workers, public and private sector workers, and the subjective wellbeing of retirees and retirement behaviour.  More recently I have been looking at the interactions of health and labour economics, particularly the effect of different kinds of labour contracts on stress and the health of workers.  In addition, I have previously done research on issues around in the educational and skills mismatch in the labour market, examining its incidence, causes and effects, particularly among the very highly educated.

I am an Associate Editor of the British Journal of Industrial Relations and a Research Fellow of the IZA.

In addition to working at the Unversity of Aberdeen, I have held previous positions at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the US Social Security Administration, as well as visiting positions at Louisiana State University, University of Potsdam, Giessen University and the National Institute for Labour Studies at Flinders University in Australia.

Performance Related Pay and Health

Research in economics have established a link between performance-related pay (PRP) – where workers’ pay is contingent upon their performance at work – and poor health. However, the causal direction of this relationship is not known.  The aim of the project is to explore this relationship using an experimental work task and by measuring stress through cortisol. This paradigm will then be altered to measure other effects that may influence the relationship between PRP and stress. 

Link to project website

Qualifications

  • PhD Economics 
    1994 - Duke University 
  • MA Economics 
    1992 - Duke University 
  • BA Economics 
    1990 - Furman University 

Memberships and Affiliations

Internal Memberships

Director of Research - Business School

Member of the Centre for Labour Market Research (CeLMR), the Scottish Experimental Economics Laboratory (SEEL) and the Just Transition Lab (JTL).

External Memberships

Nonexecutive Board Member of the Keith and Strathisla Regional Partnership (InKeith). 

Research

Research Overview

Labour Economics, Subjective Well-being, Health Economics, Economics of Ageing

Member of the Centre for Labour Market Research (CeLMR), the Scottish Experimental Economics Laboratory (SEEL) and the Just Transition Lab (JTL).

Research Areas

Economics

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Research Specialisms

  • Applied Economics

Our research specialisms are based on the Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS) which is HESA open data, published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.

Current Research

My current research projects investigate:

  • Employment contracts and wellbeing
  • Labour market effects of energy transition
  • Educational mismatch
  • Labour supply elasticities near retirement
  • Union and nonunion forms of worker voice
  • Skills shortages from the firm's point of view
  • Labour market (earnings) discrimination

Past Research

Determinants of trade unionism

Public-private wage determination and differentials

Knowledge Exchange

Interview on Faculti, Performance-related Pay, Mental and Physiological Health found here:  https://faculti.net/performance-related-pay-mental-and-physiological-health/

Podcast:  Performance-related Pay:  The Good, The Bad, The Stressful found here: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/engage/podcasts/explorathon-lunch-bytes-episode-2.php

School teaching resource on performance-related pay and stress:  How does the type of payment you receive impact your health?

Supervision

I generally supervise PhD topics in various aspects of applied labour economics.

Funding and Grants

Teaching

Programmes

Courses

Teaching Responsibilities

For the 2023-24 first teaching session, I will be coordinating EC1006 (Economics of Business and Society) and the QB5027: Employment Relations in Qatar as well as helping with the teaching of BU501S: Employment Relations. In the second teaching session, I will be supervising undergraduate Economics Dissertations (EC4526) .

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