Rachel Griffith

Do Sin Taxes Work?

This is the title of the 9th Richard Musgrave Lecture to be delivered by Rachel Griffith on 27 April 2017 in the Senate Hall of the University of Munich as part of her 2017 Richard Musgrave Guest Professorship.

Rachel 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 MIT book with Philippe Aghion, Competition and Growth: Reconciling Theory and Evidence, has been widely cited. During her stay in Munich, Ms Griffith will also deliver three CES Lectures on "Applied Empirical Industrial Organisation".

Rachel Griffith is Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester and a Research Director at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) in London. 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 to 2017 Ms Griffith was Managing Editor of the Economic Journal, one of the oldest and most renowned journals in the field of economics. She currently holds an ERC Advanced Grant on "Empirical Evidence on the Formation of Habits and Self-control in Food Choices" and had a previous ERC Advanced Grant on "Microeconomic Analysis of Prices, Food and Nutrition".

Ms Griffith has a BA in Economics from the University of Massachusetts and an MSc in Econometrics and Forecasting from City of London Polytechnic. Her PhD thesis (University of Keele) was entitled: "Taxes, the Location of Multinationals and Productivity: an Empirical Analysis Using Panel Data".