February 20th, 2017
Ashley Lait interviews Professor Sir Charlie Bean, former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England.
Charlie Bean is a professor of economics at the London School of Economics and former president of the Royal Economic Society (2013–15). He was deputy governor of the Bank of England from July 2008 to June 2014. Prior to that, he was executive director and chief economist from October 2000. Charlie has also held positions at HM Treasury and Stanford University. In addition, he has published widely — in both professional journals and more popular media — on European unemployment, on European monetary union, and on macroeconomics generally.
AL Where did you first study economics?
CB I did economics as a subsidiary subject at school (my main subjects were mathematics, further mathematics and physics). I started out by doing mathematics at Cambridge University but switched to economics in my second year after I had discovered that quantum mechanics was very beautiful and elegant, but I didn’t have the foggiest notion what was going on!
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November 28th, 2016
Tim Harford is the author of The Undercover Economist. 
He is a columnist for the Financial Times and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s More or Less. In this interview with Ashley Lait, he talks about the way he sees economics and reveals something about his approach to the subject.
AL Where did you first study economics?
TH Brasenose College, Oxford. I studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics and later returned to do Oxford’s 2-year Master’s degree in economics, the MPhil.
AL What attracted you to the subject?
TH I was sceptical about the subject at first — philosophy seemed much more interesting — but I was drawn in by game theory. I suppose I loved the odd combination of strategic thinking, mathematics and psychology. At undergraduate level, game theory felt like half storytelling and half puzzle solving. I loved it. Read the rest of this entry »
October 5th, 2016
Karen Mumford is a professor of economics at the University of York. She received her doctorate in economics from the Australian National University (ANU) in 1991. She has taught at the ANU, the University of Warwick and the University of York. Karen is the chair of the Royal Economic Society Women’s Committee and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). In this interview with Caroline Elliott, she discusses her views on economics, her most admired economists and the changing profile of women in the discipline.
CE: Where did you first study economics?
I didn’t really know about economics as a subject when I was a secondary school student in Australia. As with many students without much clue, my school advised me to keep my options open by taking maths and science for my higher school certificate (equivalent to A levels). I really liked chemistry, didn’t mind maths, and found physics quite dull so I decided to try something different at Uni. I enrolled in an Arts degree at Monash University planning to major in Social Work. By the end of the first year I realised that whilst I was loving university, I wasn’t going to make much of a social worker. I transferred into the Economics faculty and have felt right-at-home ever since.
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