I am a Senior Economist and Economic Advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). Previously, I was the James Meade Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Nuffield College, where I also served as Head of the Department of Economics (2021–2024), and before that Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College.
My research asks: What risks do individuals face over their lifetimes, and to what extent can they insure against those risks? I use life-cycle simulation models incorporating uncertainty, combined with structural estimation methods, to understand how individuals and families make decisions dynamically. My work spans public finance, labor economics, and macroeconomics, with emphasis on individual and family heterogeneity and on connecting empirical data closely with theoretical models. At the Chicago Fed I am also working on productivity and how productivity changes interact with labor markets.
As part of this agenda, I have written several papers on disability insurance. This is a discussion of some of that work as part of a public education series at Oxford.