PhD Studentship: Electricity Price Risk Exposure and Equity Valuations in Europe

Project summary: How does exposure to electricity price risk shape the way investors value European companies? Using textual analysis and financial econometrics, this PhD will construct new electricity risk indices for Europe and test whether firms more exposed to electricity price risk face different market valuations and stock return dynamics.

Subject areas: Econometrics, Finance, Mathematical Modelling, Applied Statistics, Linguistics, Data Analysis, Large Language Models, Machine Learning.

Start date: 1^st October 2026

Deadline: 30^th April

Duration: 36 months

Funding: Funded

Funding towards:

Home fee/international fee

Stipend -UKRI stipend rate for UK students. 

Funding details: Fully-funded scholarship for 3 years covers all university tuition fees (at UK level) and an annual tax-free stipend. International students are also eligible to apply, but they will need to find other funding sources to cover the difference between the home and international tuition fees. Exceptional international candidates may be provided funding for this difference. 

Number of places: 1

Number of places extra: There will be a shortlisting and interview process.

RCUK eligibility: No

Eligibility: Candidates should hold, or expect to complete by September 2026, a Master’s degree in Economics, Finance, Statistics or Computer Science, and have at least a 2.1 or equivalent in a relevant undergraduate degree. The project suits applicants with strong quantitative skills, an aptitude for coding, and an interest in textual analysis, large language models and computational methods. Previous experience in Python/Matlab is desirable but not essential, alongside clear potential to develop as an independent researcher.

For full details, see advert: https://www.strath.ac.uk/studywithus/postgraduateresearchphdopportunities/business/economics/electricitypriceriskexposureandequityvaluationsineurope/

Study modes eligibility: Full-time

Fee Status:

• Home
• International

Project Details: Electricity price volatility has become a major concern for European firms following recent energy-market disruptions and changes in power-market regulation. Sharp movements in electricity prices can affect costs, profitability, investment and market valuations, yet there is still no timely, country-specific indicator that captures electricity-market risk and links it to firm-level outcomes.

This PhD project will develop new text-based electricity risk indicators for major European economies using large language models, natural language processing and large collections of newspaper articles. Focusing on leading newspapers in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, the project will generate comparative cross-country measures of economic risk from multilingual text.

The project addresses key challenges in Economics and Finance, including detecting meaningful content across languages, accurately classifying risk-related discussions, and constructing robust indicators from unstructured data. Combining modern NLP tools with financial econometric methods, the student will assess whether these electricity risk indices capture firms’ exposure to energy-related risk and whether more exposed firms are valued differently by investors and earn different stock returns. The project offers the opportunity to contribute to a highly topical research area at the intersection of energy economics, sustainable finance, text analytics and empirical asset pricing.

Primary Supervisor: Dr Luigi Gifuni

Additional Supervisor/s: Prof Joseph Byrne

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