Richard Musgrave Visiting Professorship 2017: Rachel Griffith

The 2017 Richard Musgrave Guest Professorship was awarded to Professor Rachel Griffith. Professor Griffith is Research Director at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) in London, one of the world’s leading think tanks in the field of public economics.

She is Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester. In 2015 she was awarded a CBE in the Queens Birthday Honours, in recognition of her services in the field of policy advice. She is Fellow of the Econometrics Society and a Fellow of the British Academy. She was President of the European Economic Association (EEA) in 2015, and was awarded the Birgit Grodal Award in 2014, which is given to outstanding European-based female economists. In 2015 she was awarded the Schumpeter School Award for Business and Economic Analysis in Wuppertal. From 2011-2017 Professor Griffith was Managing Editor of the Economic Journal, one of the oldest and most renowned journals in the field of economics.

Professor Griffith is the first woman to be awarded the Richard Musgrave Guest Professorship. Her work considers a wide range of issues in public economics and micro-econometrics, with a primary interest in bringing academic insights into the policy arena. She has published on topics ranging from corporate taxation, productivity and innovation economics and consumer behaviour. Her work with Philippe Aghion on the relation between competition and innovation is very highly cited. Professor Griffith currently has an ERC Advanced Grant to study consumer behaviour and health in food markets.

In her capacity as guest professor, Rachel Griffith held the 9th Richard Musgrave Lecture entitled "Do Sin Taxes Work?" on 27 April 2017 in the Senatssaal of the University of Munich. She also gave a doctorate course in: "Applied Empirical Industrial Organisation".