Andrew Oswald
Andrew Oswald (born 1953) is a Professor of Economics and Behavioural Science at the University of Warwick, England. He is an ISI highly cited researcher and has been a professorial fellow of the ESRC. He is currently a member of the board of reviewing editors of Science. He held previous posts at Oxford, the London School of Economics, Princeton, Dartmouth and Harvard. Andrew Oswald serves as the chair of the IZA Institute Network Advisory Group.
Career[edit]
Oswald went to high school mainly in Perth in Western Australia and in Currie, Edinburgh, Scotland. He holds degrees from the University of Stirling, the University of Strathclyde, and the University of Oxford. He was a lecturer at the University of Oxford in 1983, at Princeton University from 1983 to 1984, at the London School of Economics from 1984 to 1989, and at Dartmouth College from 1989 to 1991, where he was also DeWalt Ankeny Professor of Economics.[1]
Oswald has been a Professor of Economics at Warwick University since 1996.
Oswald was awarded Princeton University's Richard A. Lester prize alongside David Blanchflower in 1994 for The Wage Curve.[2] In 1996, he was awarded the Medal of the University of Helsinki.
Oswald was a member of the Stiglitz Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress.
Other work[edit]
Oswald's other work includes research that finds a U-shape in human well-being through life, on blood pressure and well-being, on happiness and productivity, on antidepressants, and on risk-taking. His recent co-authors include Nick Powdthavee, author of The Happiness Equation, and the Warwick economists Eugenio Proto and Daniel Sgroi.
More broadly, earlier journal articles included work on the design of optimal nonlinear taxation in a world in which people care about their relative income (in the 1983 Journal of Public Economics) and on why humans imitate each other (in the 1998 Journal of Public Economics). These articles are rather mathematical. He has also worked with Liam Graham on the theory of hedonic adaptation (in the 2010 Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization);[12] a key idea in their paper is that humans have a pool of psychic resources called by the authors 'hedonic capital'.
Media contributions[edit]
Oswald contributed to the BBC series The Happiness Formula, has written over 200 articles for newspapers and magazines, and given about 1000 broadcast-media interviews around the world. One article that provoked a public debate was his 19 January 2006 Op-Ed in the Financial Times entitled "The Hippies Were Right All Along about Happiness". In England he has contributed to public debate on many issues—including warning of a housing crash in newspaper articles in The Times in the middle of the 2000s, his writing in The Economist about the need for liberalized remuneration in UK universities, promulgating the case for higher taxes on fossil fuels and petrol, and arguing for a larger private-rental housing sector in the European nations as a way of helping the labour market.
Personal life[edit]
Oswald is the eldest son of the late Professor Ian Oswald.[13]
Oswald is married to Amanda Goodall (Bayes Business School) and he has two daughters.[14]