Karen Bonner
Senior Economist
Karen is a senior economist at Ulster University’s Economic Policy Centre and also works with the ERC on projects relating to entrepreneurship, business demography and innovation. She is involved primarily in firm-level economic research utilising micro-data to examine aspects of firm performance in both Northern Ireland and the UK. Karen works with ERC members to produce the UK Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Other recent projects include those for BEIS, DfE, and Scottish Enterprise. Previously she worked as a Lecturer in Entrepreneurship at Queen’s University, Belfast.
The taxpayer tech dividend: R&D grants provide £43bn economic boost, study finds
News release 7th September 2017 Largest ever study shows public R&D grants turbo-charge growth in UK’s industries of the future Innovation grants stimulated £43bn additional turnover and created estimated 150,000 jobs Employment is boosted by around a fifth, turnover by a quarter – but regional variations are substantial Taxpayer support for high-tech innovation benefits the… Read more
Brexit – the innovation bonus
Innovation is always risky. New technologies may not perform, or may take longer to develop than first anticipated. Customers may react negatively to new products or services and innovation may provoke a strong competitive response from competitors. Will uncertainty linked to the post-Brexit settlement increase or depress firms’ appetite for taking these innovation risks? It… Read more
Joanne Turner
Research Fellow - innovation Studies
Two critical reasons why SME policy must involve consistent institutions
In some recent work on net zero support for SMEs carried out with the Federation of Small Businesses, we called for a new organisation to be set up called ‘Business England’. One key reason for this was to ensure that there would be a highly visible place for entrepreneurs in England to go to for… Read more
Press release -The taxpayer tech dividend: R&D grants provide £43bn economic boost
7th September 2017 The taxpayer tech dividend: R&D grants provide £43bn economic boost, study finds Largest ever study shows public R&D grants turbo-charge growth in UK’s industries of the future Innovation grants stimulated £43bn additional turnover and created estimated 150,000 jobs Employment is boosted by around a fifth, turnover by a quarter – but… Read more
Rethinking the Everyday Economy: Why Improving “Average” Firms Matters Most
In 2018, Rachel Reeves described the “everyday economy” as the ‘services, production, consumption and social goods that sustain all our daily lives’ (Reeves 2018). The term ‘everyday economy’ resurfaced in the new small business strategy published by the government last year (HMSO 2025). One chapter of the strategy focused specifically on SMEs as the ‘crucial… Read more
R&D: What can the Great Recession tell us about the likely impact of COVID-19?
It seems increasingly clear that the economic impacts of COVID-19 will be startlingly sharp for the UK and other world economies. The great unknown at present is whether the historic quarterly contraction we’re expecting to see in Q2 of 2020 is followed by a rebound, or a deep and painful recession. What’s also difficult to… Read more
Knowledge diffusion, innovation and productivity – changing the game in Wales
The current Brexit debate is important and the structure of the UK’s trading and migration arrangements with our international neighbours will influence our future prosperity. However, other more fundamental long term issues remain important for the UK around productivity. UK productivity lags significantly behind that of our main international competitors and Wales is at the… Read more
