Simon Wren-Lewis

Simon Wren-Lewis is a Professor at Oxford University and a Fellow of Merton College. He began his career as an Economist in H.M.Treasury. In 1981 he moved to the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, where as a Senior Research Fellow he constructed the first versions of the world model NIGEM. From 1988-1990, as Head of Macroeconomic Research, he supervised development of this and the Institute's domestic model. During this period he published with colleagues a study suggesting that an entry rate of 1.95 DM/£ into the ERM was too high, which at the time was a minority view. In 1990 he became a Professor at Strathclyde University, and built the UK econometric model COMPACT. From 1995 to 2006 he was a Professor at Exeter University. He has published papers on macroeconomics in a wide range of academic journals including the Economic Journal, European Economic Review, and American Economic Review. He also wrote one of the background papers for the Treasury's 2003 assessment of its five economic tests for joining EMU and advised the Bank of England on the development of its new macromodel. His current research focuses on the analysis of monetary and fiscal policy in small calibrated macromodels, and on equilibrium exchange rates.