Simon Franklin

Simon is a Postdoctoral Research Economist at the London School of Economics, and a associate member at the Centre for the Study of African Economies.  He completed his doctorate at the University of Oxford, which focused on the workings on urban labour markets in developing countries. He received his Bachelors degree from the University of Cape Town, where he worked at the South African Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU). He has conducted research on how poor housing conditions, and how living far away from jobs, can constrain labour supply and job search outcomes, in South African and Ethiopian cities. He is currently working on projects to look at ways to improve job search and employment matching in large urban labour markets, through experiments with firms and job seekers in Addis Ababa. Other work includes an evaluation of a large scale subsidized housing project in Addis Ababa. By exploiting a lottery system for assigning households to housing, locations and neighborhoods, he plans to study the ways in which neighborhoods influence social networks, risk sharing, and employment outcomes.