CELMR Researcher in Focus - Professor Tim Barmby

Professor Tim Barmby explains what the behaviour of taxi drivers, performance in piano competitions, and the payments made for archaeological finds in Northern Syria tell us about our labour supply.

Tim Barmby, Jaffrey Professor of Political Economy, has enjoyed a long and distinguished academic career as a labour economist. However, it is his experiences prior to his academic career that have motivated his exciting research agenda.

Tim's early work experience as a taxi driver has been put to use in his recent research on the labour supply behaviour of NYC cab drivers. Tim explains that cab drivers face day to day variation in their wage rates due to a variety of factors (weather, subway breakdowns etc) which will affect demand, but that this variation is transitory. Thus, cab drivers may make their labour supply decisions one day at a time, using a daily income target. On high wage days the cabdrivers will hit the income target earlier and work fewer hours, contrary to the established wisdom on intertemporal labour supply. This research has generated significant interest in the transport economics field as well as in labour economics.

His experiences as a young man assisting in archaeological work in the Middle East kindled an interest in the methods of payment made to archaelogical workers. In recent research he has investigated the daily work decisions of archaeological workers on a Syrian archaeological dig in 1938. The remuneration contract that these workers faced involved a fixed component and a stochastic component termed “bakshish” which were daily payments for small finds that the worker made on the dig. The value of these finds represent transitory movements in the worker’s wage which Tim used to shed light on intertemporal labour supply behaviour.

Tim's most recent research focuses on models of piano competitions. As an accomplished pianist himself, Tim has turned his research intereststs to examining the career concerns and participation decisions of young aspiring pianists and their investments in human capital. They certainly occupy a “thin” labour market, there are few opportunities for professional pianists, and the skills they need are arguably not very transferable, Tim explains. In some sense they are like footballers, since if they don’t make it as professionals there aren’t really many occupations which are close substitutes.

And it doesn't stop there. Tim's childhood experiences in the north east of England has inspired his next research project entitled "Bingtale, Fathomtale and other tales of 19th Century lead mining life". Much to look forward to!