John Muellbauer

Biography

Professor John Muellbauer is a Senior Research Fellow of Nuffield College, Professor of Economics and a Senior Fellow of the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, Oxford University. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, of the Econometric Society, of the European Economic Association and a CEPR Research Fellow. Before coming to Nuffield College in 1981, John was Professor of Economics at Birkbeck College, London, and Lecturer at Warwick University. He obtained his first degree from Cambridge University, England and his Doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley. His most cited paper is the 1980 paper with Angus Deaton, “An Almost Ideal Demand System” in the American Economic Review, selected as one of the top twenty papers published in the first one hundred years of that journal. His 2012 paper with Janine Aron, John V. Duca, Keiko Murata, and Anthony Murphy, "Credit, Housing Collateral, and Consumption: Evidence from Japan, the U.K., and the U.S." received the 2014 Kendrick Prize.

He is known best for his work on household economics, housing markets and on finance - real economy interactions through balance sheets and credit channels. Beginning in the late 1980s, he was one the first economists to focus on the many complex interactions between housing markets and the economy. Two recent influential papers are a research survey on international house price cycles (Journal of Economic Literature 2021, with John Duca and Anthony Murphy); and an analysis of the implications of real estate booms and busts for monetary and macroprudential policy in Europe, including a critique of current policy models at central banks (2022 paper for the ECB Annual Forum ). His empirical research (with co-authors) for several countries with a systems approach on consumption, house prices, debt and income forecasting (to capture income expectations), includes a key role for credit conditions, modelled as latent variables for mortgage and non-mortgage debt. This provides new insights into the multiple monetary transmission mechanisms from policy interest rates and credit conditions to aggregate demand, including via disaggregated household balance sheet items on consumption.

He has worked with many central banks, in Europe and globally, and with the BIS, IMF and the OECD. He was a Wim Duisenberg Visiting Fellow at the ECB in 2012/13 and a Fellow of the South African Reserve Bank in 2018-2020, advising on financial stability issues. He recently completed commissions for an external review of policy modelling at the Czech National Bank (with Janine Aron) and advice on instruments for macroprudential policy for the Swedish Prudential Authority (with Jagoda Kaszowska-Mojsa). He contributed the chapter on housing for the Research Handbook of Macroprudential Policy (forthcoming). With Janine Aron, he has co-authored over 25 papers on monetary and macroprudential issues for South Africa since the late 1990s.

He is heavily involved in policy debates and is a frequent contributor to CEPR’s VoxEU columns. He regularly presents on housing market reform in the UK and has proposed a Green Land Value Tax, a form of property taxation with global relevance. Recent presentations connected with public policy include a lecture in the 695^th Lord Mayor of London’s lecture series, the Peter Sinclair Memorial Town Hall lecture at Birmingham University, and talks at the British Academy, UCL Stone Centre, SUERF - the European Money and Financial Forum, All Party Parliamentary Group on Land Value Capture, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, HM Treasury, OECD, Oxford Civic Society, Royal Society of Edinburgh, and Resolution Foundation.