2016 Nemmers Prize in Economics Recipient

Richard Blundell

University College London and Institute for Fiscal Studies, United Kingdom

For his important contributions to labor economics, public finance and applied econometrics.

Blundell’s research covers the empirical microeconomic study of consumer, savings and labor supply behavior.

He has developed micro-data based models for intertemporal decisions over labor supply, human capital and consumption. Blundell also has analyzed family labor supply behavior and the interaction between consumer and labor supply behavior, while developing new microeconometric tools for the study of dynamic panel data models and the nonparametric analysis of individual decisions.

Since 1986, Blundell has been research director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which is highly influential in the economic policy debate in the United Kingdom. He also is director of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy.

Blundell is the recipient of many prestigious honors and awards including the Yrjö Jahnsson Prize (1995) for his work in microeconometrics and the analysis of labor supply, welfare reform and consumer behavior; the Econometric Society Frisch Prize Medal (2000) for the paper “Estimating Labor Supply Responses Using Tax Reforms;” the Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize (2008) given to a high-level economist whose research combines both the theoretical and applied aspects of economics; the CES-Ifo Prize (2010); the Sandmo Prize (2011); the IZA Prize in Labor Economics (2012); and the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Prize in Economics (2015).

He has served as president of the European Economics Association, the Econometric Society, the Society of Labor Economics and, most recently, as president of the Royal Economic Society.

Blundell is a fellow of the Econometric Society, the British Academy and the Institute of Actuaries and an honorary member of the American Economic Association and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Blundell has held visiting professorships at the University of British Columbia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of California, Berkeley. He was knighted in the 2014 Queens New Years Honours list for services to Economics and Social Science.

A native of England, Blundell earned a B.Sc. from the University of Bristol in 1973 and a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics in 1975. Before joining the faculty of the University College London in 1984, he was a lecturer in econometrics at the University of Manchester from 1975 to 1984.  

Past winners of the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics are: Jean Tirole (2014), Nobel Laureate 2014; Daron Acemoglu (2012); Elhanan Helpman (2010); Paul Milgrom (2008); Lars Peter Hansen (2006), Nobel Laureate 2013; Ariel Rubinstein (2004); Edward C. Prescott (2002), Nobel Laureate 2004; Daniel McFadden (2000), Nobel Laureate 2000; Robert Aumann, (1998), Nobel Laureate 2005; Thomas Sargent (1996), Nobel Laureate 2011; and Peter Diamond (1994), Nobel Laureate 2010.