Dr John Peirce

(he/him)

PhD AFHEA TEFL

Research

My PhD thesis looked at quality in the English and Welsh water and wastewater industry, taking an empirical microeconomic approach. For more detail, please see the Thesis section.

I also have a variety of other research projects and interests that I am know undertaking, following the completion of my PhD thesis. These projects are:

•       Sêr Gorrach: Addressing Technical Efficiency Recovery in Stochastic Frontier Analysis Models: This project wishes to re-examine how Stochastic Frontier Analysis captures Technical Efficiency, given potential issues with recovering efficiency from the composite error term of the model. Special thanks go to Prof. Adrian Pagan for his communications around the project.
•        Rivers in Wales Project: This interdisciplinary project seeks to address the current water quality, environmental and biodiversity issues through both an Economics and Extinction Accounting lens, so that solutions to the current threats to the rivers in Wales can be addressed. In collaboration with Prof. Jill Atkins of Cardiff University. Expected research outputs include "Ymarfer Meddwl: An Essay on the Economics, Accountability and Catallaxy of Rivers in Wales", and "Econometrics, Extinction Accounting and Subjective Wellbeing on the River Wye."
•       Cost of Quality Project: This project wishes to incorporate Quality, as a significant factor of production, into cost modelling for the English and Welsh Water and Sewerage Industry. To achieve this, the ‘Cost’ of quality also needs to be explored.

Thesis

Efficiency and Quality in the English and Welsh Water and Wastewater Industry

My thesis is titled "Efficiency and Quality in the English and Welsh Water and Wastewater Industry".

The purpose of the thesis was to investigate the measurements of quality in the industry, whether the currently employed measures are still viable, and whether new measures of quality provide new insights into the performance of the water and sewerage companies in England and Wales.

The research utilises Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) as its primary empirical method, which is commonly used in public utilities research, and has the distinct advantage of being able to analyse firm performance, via technical efficiency, without the restrictions of a functional form between inputs and outputs. To develop the quality measurement of the industry, a Composite Indicator (CI) approach is taken, which takes multiple quality factors and yields a single, composite index. This index was then used as a production output in the DEA models.

Results show that, when compared to older measures of quality, the CI quality measure is about 45% worse on average, suggesting that its component parts require significant attention in the industry. Applying this index to DEA models yields significant differences in technical efficiency, making it an important consideration in water industry production hereafter. Extending both contributions to a dynamic setting, thereby accounting for quasi-fixed capital, yields less certain results related to efficiency scores. Lastly, the CI shows limited interactions with naïve measures of extreme weather, suggesting a need for greater insights into this relationship in future research.

Funding sources

Funding was provided by the ESRC Wales Doctoral Training Program from October 2018 to January 2023. The funding was in conjunction with Dŵr Cymru/Welsh Water.

Teaching

Courses taught at Cardiff University:

• BS1551 Microeconomics, taught by Dr. Iain Long, Oct 2022 – Mar 2023
• BST164 Quantitative Methods, taught by Prof. David Meenagh, Oct 2018 – Jan 2019

Topics taught as a Private Tutor, from April 2023 onwards:

• Microeconomics (Undergraduate, Postgraduate)
• Econometrics (Undergraduate, Postgraduate)
• Maths and Statistics for Economics (Undergraduate)
• Dissertation Support (Undergraduate, Postgraduate)

Biography

My interest in Economics started in high school, and the thought of using creativity for a living was of such fascination to me, that I decided then to seek a PhD in the subject to pursue academia thereafter.

I received my BSc Economics degree from Swansea University in 2018, and then moved to Cardiff University, where I received my MSc Economics in 2019, MRes Advanced Economics in 2020, and my PhD in Economics in 2024.

Other qualifcations I have obtained include:

• Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA), in 2023
• Teaching English as a Foreign Language 198 Hour, in 2023
• Award for Good Citizenship from Swansea University's School of Management, in 2018

Supervisors

Kent Matthews

Sir Julian Hodge Professor of Banking and Finance