Dr. Gwilym B. J. Pryce

Dr Gwilym Pryce is the Deputy Director of the Graduate School (Faculty of Social Sciences), the Faculty Senior Lecturer in Social Science Methodology, and a Senior Lecturer in Housing Economics in the Department of Urban Studies, University of Glasgow. He has published widely in the areas of housing and mortgage markets and has conducted research for a large number of funding bodies including Department of the Environment Transport and the Regions, Council for Mortgage Lenders, Glasgow Solicitors Property Centre, Economic and Social Research Council, National Assembly for Wales, Federal National Mortgage Association, Scottish Homes/Communities Scotland, European Commission, National Housing Federation, Strathclyde Police, North Lanarkshire Council, East Dunbartonshire Council, Monopolies and Mergers Commission and the Scottish Office. He has been an Economic Consultant to the SCOC Learning to Live Theology Program and a member of the Council for Mortgage Lender's Sustainable Home Ownership Panel. He is currently an Associate Researcher for the Scottish Centre for Research on Social Justice and a Consultant Market Analyst for Glasgow Solicitors Property Centre. He is the Economics Adviser to the European Journal of Housing Policy and a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Property Research. He was an Academic Consultant on both Stage I and Stage II of the HM Treasury Barker Review of Housing Supply and is currently a member of the Post-Barker Advisory Group organised by Office of the Deputy Prime Minister / Her Majesty's Treasury. His most recent publication is "Inference and Statistics in SPSS", published by GeeBeeJey Publishing, www.geebeejey.co.uk.

(A) Data Analysis and Macros in SPSS and Stata
Dr Pryce has over 12 years of experience of using and developing quantitative methods. He has used a wide range of statistical techniques (including logit, probit, ordered logit, two-stage least squares, fractional logit, Log-logistic/Weibull/Cox time-to-event models, Klein and Moeschberger kernel smoothed hazard functions, and fixed and random effects panel models) and has been at the cutting edge of applying techniques in an innovative way (he is one of the first in the UK to apply the following techniques to socio-economic data: Fractional Logit, Multiple Fractional Polynomial estimation, bootstrapped-Cox-Proportional-Hazards with sample selection correction). Dr Pryce has also been innovative in developing new applied techniques in SPSS and Stata, such as the development of a 5 step approach to estimating tax penalty impacts, estimation of time-varying location value signature models and the development of a grid-search algorithm that tests for structural breaks across space in socio-economic relationships).

He has also been particularly innovative in making statistical techniques accessible to non-specialists:

* He has written an extensive series of macros in SPSS that allows users to run basic statistical tests in SPSS based on summary information (thus allowing researchers to compute confidence intervals and hypothesis on statistics reported in journal articles and other publications when only the mean, standard deviation and sample size is provided). These macros can be downloaded free if charge from the Downloads page of www.geebeejey.co.uk. They also form the basis for Dr Pryce's innovative introductory statistics textbook: Inference and Statistics in SPSS (ISBN: 0955143306) which can be ordered from www.geebeejey.co.uk.

* Dr Pryce has integrated these macros into mind-mapping software that allows users to locate the appropriate techniques and SPSS syntax by clicking on a series of mind-map branches. These mindmaps can also be downloaded free if charge from the Downloads page of www.geebeejey.co.uk.

* He has added new features to SPSS that allow users to run proper regression diagnostics without having to turn to advanced software.

(B) Social Inequality
Dr Pryce is an Associate Researcher for the Scottish Centre for Research on Social Justice and a member of the Centre for Neighbourhood Research, University of Glasgow. Both of these research centres are concerned with issues surrounding social inequality. He has been involved in research on the development of measures of social deprivation (Bailey et al 2003), and much of his current research on the definition of neighbourhoods is closely related to this (a critical factor in creating deprivation indices is the spatial unit used to compute them). His current and proposed research on measuring and analysing the growing inequality in housing equity is also central to future research on social inequality (growth in housing wealth inequality has far outstripped the growth in income inequality - see Thomas and Dorling 2004). He has also begun work on analysing the role that house price inequality plays in creating inequities in access to quality secondary education in Strathclyde. Furthermore, a large part of his research over the past six years has been examining inequalities in risk exposure among mortgage borrowers (not only are those at the lower end of the income schedule more likely to experience trigger events that make mortgage repayment difficult, but they are also more likely to be excluded from Mortgage Payment Protection cover - Pryce and Keoghan 2001; Kemp and Pryce 2001; Pryce 2002). Visit www.gwilympryce.co.uk for more details.

(C) Employment and Labour Markets:
Much of Dr Pryce's work has strong links with the labour market. Inequality in exposure to redundancy risk is a crucial determinant of the pattern of mortgage default and a number of his research projects have been related to this and the broader issue of the apparent conflict between globalisation/flexible labour markets and the inexorable growth of owner occupation (Maclennan and Pryce 1996; Maclennan and Pryce 1998; Pryce and Keoghan 2002). His work on analysing the take-up of Mortgage Payment Protection Insurance involved constructing models of unemployment risk and of the Income Support benefits system (Pryce 2002). He has a long-standing interest in the connections between labour supply and the housing market (eg his undergraduate dissertation was on labour supply; he developed the first UK econometric estimates of the unemployment-trap effects of Housing Benefit [Pryce 1999]; he is currently supervising a PhD that looks at the links between mortgage repayment difficulties and household labour supply adjustment). Moreover, a crucial factor in Gwilym's current research for ODPM on the determinants of frequency of sale of residential dwellings is the pattern of employment and unemployment. He is also involved in a SEPA project with Beaumont and Pates examining the determinants of employee loyalty in business organisations. He is also the director of a small business of his own -- GeeBeeJey Publishing and Consultancy. Visit www.gwilympryce.co.uk for more details on Dr Pryce's academic work, and visit www.geebeejey.co.uk for information on GeeBeeJey Publishing and Consultancy.

(D) Crime
Dr Pryce has worked with K. Goodhall, Faculty of Law on a project funded by Strathclyde Police analysing racist incidents before and after September 11th.

(E) Socio-Linguistics
Dr Pryce has been working with Timmins and Stuart-Smith, Dept of English Language, funded by ESRC on The Determination of Vowel and Consonant Pronunciation by Socio-Economic and Media Factors. Visit www.gwilympryce.co.uk for more details.

(F) Theology
Dr Pryce has been working with Dr E. Stoddart, Department of Theology, University of St. Andrews on the Aversion to Raising Hell in Pastoral Situations. Gwilym also has interests in a range of theological topics including the doctrine of tithing and Christian economics (he is a member of the Association of Christian Economists). See the Beliefs page of www.gwilympryce.co.uk for more details;

Dr Pryce is also an Associate Member of ImoEconometrics, a Portuguese real estate investment consultancy firm, and is the Director of GeeBeeJey Publishing and Consultancy (www.geebeejey.co.uk).