Keele Management School Magazine Keele Management School Magazine. Issue 1 | Página 3

Summer2014 l Keele Management School News
Meet our staff
Claire Butters
Postgraduate Administrative
Team Leader
Tell us about your role with KMS?
I have been working at Keele since 2005 and within that
time I have had several roles within KMS. For the last few
years I have been the Postgraduate Team Co-ordinator.
This means that I oversee the day-to-day running of the
PG office as well as acting as administrative lead on the
MA in Management, the MA in International Business and
the part-time courses run by the School.
If you weren’t an administrator what would you be?
A primary school teacher as that is what I studied to be
and gained my degree in.
What would you say to a prospective student thinking of
joining KMS?
You will find the staff very approachable and helpful, but
you need to be prepared to work and to ask when you have
a problem.
Any advice for a postgraduate or executive training
student with KMS?
Work hard and enjoy your time with us. The year will fly by,
so if in doubt, ask.
If you could visit any country in the world, which would it
be and why?
Australia as my son is crazy about the animals there and it
would be lovely for him to see them in their own habitats.
Claire Butters
Postgraduate Administrative
Team Leader
KMS Professor explains
how to bag the cheap seats
According to research carried out by
KMS Professor of Economics, Claudio
Piga, the low-cost airlines adopt a
pricing method according to which
fares increase as the plane fills up.
Furthermore, even if no extra seats are
sold, the airlines push their fares up by
between 50 and 75% in the last 10 days
before departure. Both aspects suggest
that last-minute bargain hunting is not
the best method. Claudio also found
that price decreases are, however,
often observed in the data, especially
between 42 and 21 days prior to a flight
departure and when a flight has many
available seats to sell. He describes
prices from low-cost airlines as being
on a ‘U-shaped temporal profile’.
Claudio presented his findings at the
Royal Economic Society Conference in
Manchester in April and subsequently
received confirmation that his study has
been accepted for publication in the
Review of Economics and Statistics, a
journal edited by Harvard University.
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