Research

Within academic economics, I have two broad areas of interest: applied microeconometrics and foundations of microeconomics. In both areas I work on issues that might be called ‘methodological’ and that has led me to contribute directly to literatures on the methodology and philosophy of economics – including questions of causal inference. That in turn has led me on to more fundamental (epistemological, ontological and even metaphysical) questions in philosophy of science. I also do a fair amount of policy and public finance-related work, leveraging knowledge and insights gained from my time in the public sector. See my research sub-pages for more detail on these various areas of work.

These days there is a general view that narrow specialisation is required for substantive intellectual contributions. However, my experience is that specialisation works at least as much against the generation of substantive intellectual insight as in its favour. It is typically forgotten that there are many historical examples of great economists who have spanned policy, philosophy/methodology and economics: Allais, Galbraith, Lewis, Robinson and Sen are only five who are widely acclaimed.

I am an intellectual and methodological pluralist and therefore reject narrow-minded preoccupation with certain methods, disciplines or ideological views; this does not imply that ‘anything goes’.