Igor Shagalov is a Research Associate at the Care Policy and Evaluation Centre. His expertise spans public sector economics, social policy, the economics of social care, and health economics. He is particularly interested in the feasibility of outsourcing social services to independent providers, the role of competition and transparency in care delivery, and the impact of local community involvement on health and social care outcomes.

His recent work explores the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing long-term care for older adults to for-profit and non-profit care homes in England, focusing on how external and internal incentives influence care quality. He is currently investigating the role of local community social capital in shaping the wellbeing of older adults in care homes and evaluating the effectiveness of England’s care quality assessment framework. Igor also contributes to the WISE study at the University of Birmingham, which examines decision-making around resource allocation for student mental wellbeing in English schools, using a mixed methods ‘process tracing’ approach. He leads the policy forum on Care Home Markets and Regulation, established within the Global Observatory of Long-term Care at LSE, which brings together stakeholders from academia, policy, and practice to advance care quality and outcomes.

He holds a PhD in Public Administration from HSE University and previously served as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Institutional Studies and as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Applied Economics at HSE University. He was also involved in the Human Capital Multidisciplinary Research Centre (HCMRC), a consortium of four leading Russian universities, where he contributed to a project on outsourcing social services to the non-profit sector. Igor has published in peer-reviewed journals and regularly presents his work at academic conferences and public science events.