Stephen Nickell on his journey from math teacher to the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee

Sir Stephen John Nickell, Honorary Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, joins the podcast to discuss his many mentors at the London School of Economics (LSE), how an invite to meet Gordon Brown in Aspen helped put a labor economist on the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, and his lasting impact on the field of labor economics and economic policy in the UK.

In this episode, Nickell and Ashenfelter discuss:

• Nickell’s decision to leave his job as a math teacher to pursue a master’s degree at LSE.
• Nickell’s teachers and mentors at LSE, including Frank Hahn. It was Hahn who first sugged Nickell apply to join the faculty after graduation.
• Nickell’s path to becoming a researcher, which started one summer in New Hampshire when he wrote a paper on modeling investment decisions.
• How Nickell’s participation in an LSE soccer league with Dave Metcalf sparked his interest in labor economics. 
• Nickell’s time visiting Princeton, and a request from the UK Treasury Department to study unemployment during the Thatcher administration that led to Nickell’s famous book on unemployment (written jointly with Richard Layard and Richard Jackman).
• How an invitation, at the suggestion of Larry Katz, to a meeting with Gordon Brown and Paul Volcker in Aspen led to Nickell’s membership on the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee.

Stephen Nickell earned his M.Sc. in Mathematical Economics and Econometrics from LSE in 1970. He held economics professorships at both LSE and Oxford University and served as warden of Nuffield College at Oxford from 2010 to 2016.  He was also a member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee and the UK Budget Responsibility Committee. He was president of the Royal Economic Society from 2000-2003. "The Work Goes On"—a podcast produced as Princeton's Industrial Relations Section (IR Section) celebrates its 100th anniversary—is an oral history of industrial relations and labor economics hosted by Princeton's Orley Ashenfelter.