Research interests
Professor Johnson’s research aims to improve the quality of decisions made in uncertain environments by fully utilising both quantitative and qualitative information to make accurate predictions of the future. His research has focussed on employing a variety of econometric and statistical models to explore risk taking and decision-making in financial, betting and prediction markets. He has a particular interest in research examining:
- Effective combinations of machine learning and econometric models for event prediction.
- Inefficiency and decision-making biases in betting, prediction and financial markets.
- Individuals’ ability to understand and cope with synergistic risk.
- Differences in decision-making/risk taking behaviour between laboratory and naturalistic settings and between naive and experienced decision-makers.
- The motivation for engaging in risk taking in real world settings.
- The ability of individuals to make decisions involving dynamic information.
- Violations of rational economic behaviour in betting and financial markets.
- The impact of complexity on risk taking and decision making.
- Irrational behaviour in betting, prediction and financial markets.
- Factors influencing the degree of accuracy of subjective probability judgements.
The results of Professor Johnson’s research are published in two books, in contributions to a further 23 books, more than 70 articles in leading international journals and more than 150 international conference papers.
Selection of current and previous topics explored by Professor Johnson's PhD students:
The role of web information in the investor decision-making process.
Semi-strong efficiency of football and horserace betting markets.
Information-based trading strategies in a competitive environment.
The operation and efficiency of corporate prediction markets.
Investigation of financial trading behaviour responses to volatile market price changes.
Examination of psychological effects on trading behaviour in financial markets.
Biased decision-making in a naturalistic environment: Implications for forecasts of competitive events.
The implications of information processing efficiency on decision-making.
Similarities in investment strategies between agents in financial and betting markets.
Overconfidence amongst financial market traders.
Evidence for use of the anchoring heuristic in real world financial market behaviour.
Searching for information inefficiency: Empirical evidence for the UK bookmaker horserace betting market
I will consider applications to undertake PhD research study related to my research areas.
If you obtained a good MSc degree, or a first class honours degree in an appropriate subject, or equivalent professional qualification, and meet the language requirements of ILETS of 7.0 or equivalent, please email me your CV and research proposal or apply online via our PhD programme.
A number of PhD scholarships for full-time entry are available.
Research projects
Research Councils
£30,000 (2017) ‘Developing an innovative, cloud-based risk management framework’, sponsored by Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Impact Acceleration Account.
£21,000 (2016) ‘Effective risk management for Big Data - supported mobile lending’, sponsored by ESRC Impact Acceleration Account.
£166,000 (2015/7) 'Portfolio optimization via advanced volatility estimation', sponsored by Innovate UK, EPSRC, ESRC
£10,000 (2015/6) ‘TreeNet forecasting of spread trading risk,’ sponsored by Economic and Social Research Council Accelerating Impact Award
£57,000 (2015/9) ‘Risk factor model portfolios for retail investors,’ sponsored by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) CASE Studentship Scheme
€30,000 (2015/8) ‘Collaboration, risk management and governance in SMEs: Drivers for competitiveness and international entrepreneurship’ sponsored by Ministerio de Economia y Competitvidad, Spanish National Research Council.
£200,000 (2015/7) ‘Building a big data supported financial services platform’, sponsored by Shenzen Government, China
EUR25,300, (2014-16) 'Managing efficiency in high risk environments: Analysis of export relationships in food businesses', sponsored by Andalusian Regional Government for Excellent Research Project Initiative (Excellence Project P12-SEJ-1933).
£60,000, (2014-17) 'Managing risk through state-of-the-art quantitative analysis of financial traders' decisions', sponsored by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) CASE Studentship Scheme.
£53, 659, (2013) ‘Modelling the wisdom of the crowd’, sponsored by EPSRC.
£304,900, (2013-16) ‘To develop a state-of-the art trading dashboard presenting cognitively-intuitive real-time risk information that optimises risk management decisions through effective human-technology distributed cognition’, sponsored by Economic and Social Research Council, Technology Strategy Board, and Star Financial Systems Ltd. (KTP009163).
£148,000, (2013-14) ‘Development of a real-time model of spread-trader risk’, sponsored by Economic and Social Research Council, Technology Strategy Board, and London Capital Group Holdings plc. (KTP8952).
£59,450, (2012) ‘Modelling and prediction of spread-trader and contract for difference-trader risk’, sponsored by Technology Strategy Board and Star Financial Systems Ltd. (SKTP1000767).
£149,600, (2011) ‘Classification and prediction of financial market trading behaviour’, sponsored by Technology Strategy Board (KTP008504).
£212,641 (2003-6) ‘Executives’ rewards, incentives and performance’, sponsored by Economic and Social Research Council.
Commercial organisations
£40,000 (2016-2020) ‘Managing uncertainty through sophisticated quantitative analysis of financial decisions’, sponsored by Star Financial Systems Ltd. (SFS)
£80,000 (2017) ‘Developing and testing a risk tolerance questionnaire for investors’, sponsored by Seven Investment Management (7IM)
£240,000 (2017) ‘Developing an innovative, cloud-based risk management framework’, sponsored by Seven Investment Management
£41,000 (2016) ‘Managing uncertainty through effective risk analysis’, sponsored by an anonymous sponsor.
£100,000 (2015/17) 'Portfolio optimisation via advanced volatility estimation', sponsored by Seven Investment Management
£247,000 (2015/17) 'Flexible portfolio optimisation models for strategic asset allocation', sponsored by Seven Investment Management
£33,000 (2015/9) ‘Risk factor model portfolios for retail investors,’ sponsored by Seven Investment Management
£200,000 (2015/7) ‘Building a big data supported financial services platform’, sponsored by Audaque Ltd.
£27,700. (2014-17) 'Managing risk through state-of-the-art quantitative analysis of financial traders' decisions', sponsored by London Capital Group Holdings plc.
£214,000, (2013-14) 'Modelling complex, uncertain environments'.
£2,550, (2013) Following excellent progress on a KTP project (KTP8952) with London Capital Group, the company agreed to provide additional funding to sponsor the project's Associate, Juan Carlos Moreno Paredes, to undertake his PhD.
£2,750, (2012-13) ‘Development of mathematical models for forecasting uncertainty in speculative markets’.
£3,250, (2012) ‘Predicting the long-term performance of financial market traders’.
£9,800, (2011) ‘Modelling successful decision-making and risk-taking behaviour in a naturalistic setting’.
£19,300, (2010) ‘Impact of cognitive biases on information-based trading strategies in a competitive environment’.
£100,481, (2010-11) ‘The development of mathematical models for forecasting uncertainty in speculative financial markets’.
£29,000, (2010) ‘Impact of cognitive biases on information-based trading strategies in a competitive environment’.
£115,377, (2009-10) ‘Efficiency of sports betting markets’.
£48,500, (2009) ‘Outcome prediction in traditional and speculative financial markets’.
£105,000, (2008-09) ‘Efficiency of speculative financial markets’.
£28,000, (2007) ‘Speculative market behaviour’.
£148,560, (2006-8), ‘Use of information by speculative market traders’.
Internal University funding schemes
£24,400 in total, (since 2006-present) University Hamburg Staff Exchange Programme Fund.
£4,500 (2006-2009) ‘Role of skill and chance in successful poker play’ and SVM’s for competitive event prediction’. School of Management Pump Priming Fund
£18,500 (2001-4), ‘The implications of trading volume and patterns of price movements on market efficiency’.
Affiliate research group: CORMSIS: Centre for Operational Research, Management Science and Information Systems
Research projects
Risk management for investment portfolio optimization
A two year project to design and embed an innovative capability concerning risk management for investment optimization via advanced volatility estimation
Big data supported financial services
A two year project sponsored by the Shenzen Government and Audaque Ltd to build a Big data supported financial services platform
Collaboration, risk management and governance in SMEs
A three year project sponsored by the Spanish National Research Council examining how to develop competitiveness and entrepreneurship via collaboration, risk management and governance
Risk factor model portfolios for retail investors
A three year CASE conversion award sponsored by EPSRC to work with a leading investmet management company to examine new approaches to develop risk factor model portfolios for retail investors
TreeNet forecasting of spread trading risk
A one year project sponsored by ESRC to develop TreeNet forecasting algorithms to predict the risk posed by informed traders.
Classification and prediction of financial market trading behaviour (KTP8504)
This project employed a range of advanced statistical modelling techniques to improve a company's trading data quality and to use the enhanced data to profile the trading behaviour of their clients.
Modelling and prediction of spread-trader and contract for difference trader risk (SKTP1000767)
Project to develop the foundations of a new product for evaluating the performance of financial market traders.
Development of real-time risk management models of financial decision performance (KTP8952)
A two-year project to help develop real-time risk management models to predict investors' financial decision behaviour.
Modelling complex, uncertain environments
A 3-year project to explore innovative means of improving data quality and modelling complex, uncertain environments.
Developing a state-of-the art trading dashboard (KTP009163)
Project to develop a state-of-the art trading dashboard presenting cognitively-intuitive real-time risk information that optimises financial service firms’ risk management decisions through effective human-technology distributed cognition.
Modelling the wisdom of the crowd
The research will involve the development of innovative discrete choice models and real-time Big Data analysis which will enable WBX to transform its existing and future digital data into commercial knowledge and sources of future profit.
Director of Centre for Risk Research
