Biosketch
Professor Sir Richard Blundell holds the Ricardo Chair of Political Economy at University College London where he was appointed Professor of Economics in 1984. He is Director of the ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) where he was been Research Director 1986 – 2016. He holds Honorary Doctorates from University of St.Gallen; Norwegian School of Economics; University of Mannheim; Universita della Svizzera; University of Bristol; University of Venice Ca’Foscari. He has held visiting professor positions at UBC, MIT, Chicago, Northwestern, TSE and Berkeley. He was co-editor of Econometrica 1997-2001, co-editor of the Journal of Econometrics 1992-1997. He is founding editor of Microeconomic Insights. He was editor and panel member of the IFS Mirrlees Review of Tax Reform and is currently editor and panel member of the IFS-Deaton Review: Inequality in the 21st Century. He has been President of the European Economics Association; the Econometric Society; the Society of Labor Economics, and the Royal Economic Society. He was recipient of the Yrjö Jahnsson Prize; the Frisch Prize; the Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize; the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Prize in Economics; the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics; and the Jacob Mincer Prize in Labor Economics.
Research Interests
Richard Blundell's research has focused on the use of detailed micro-data to study the behavior of individuals, households and firms. The aim has been to develop new models for the analysis of tax and welfare reform and for the general understanding of how individuals and firms make decisions. This agenda has involved the development of new microeconometric tools for the study of dynamic panel data models and the nonparametric analysis of individual decisions. The research has produced a string of new estimates of the responses of labor supply, consumption, savings and innovation to tax policy reform and has resulted in key new implications for tax and welfare reform. In particular, the research has exploited the growing availability of longitudinal data at the household and the firm level to develop micro-data based models for intertemporal decisions over labor supply, human capital and consumption. This has involved the analysis of family labor supply behavior and the interaction between consumer and labor supply behavior. It has resulted in new approaches to modelling the dynamics of inequality in which inequality in the labor market is related to inequality in household incomes and saving over the lifetime.
Membership Type
International Member
Election Year
2019
Primary Section
Section 54: Economic Sciences