Professor Parker is Head of the Department of Economics & Finance at Durham University and Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurship at Durham Business School. He is also a Research Professor of the Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena Germany, and a Research Fellow at the IZA Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn Germany. He has published over 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals in economics and entrepreneurship, and is the author of The Economics of Self-employment and Entrepreneurship (Cambridge University Press, 2004)