Experts

François Lafond is a senior research officer at the Mathematical Institute and deputy director of the Complexity Economics group at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, and an associate member of Nuffield college. His main areas of research are in the economics of innovation and productivity, environmental economics, networks and complex systems, applied econometrics and forecasting.

Ashley is the Research Editor at the Economics Observatory and leads on both our regional work and ECO magazine. She is also the Centre Manager at the Economics Network, an organisation that supports learning and teaching in higher education economics.

Camille Landais is Professor of economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Director of the Public Economics Programme of the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). In addition to his academic position, he maintains affiliations with the Institut des politiques publiques, Institute for Fiscal Studies, STICERD, IZA Institute of Labor Economics, and the European Economic Association, on whose council he sits. His research focuses on public finance and labour

Joe Lane is a Lecturer in Strategy at Henley Business School. His published research broadly focuses on patents, innovation, and industrial clusters since the middle of the eighteenth century. His recent projects include applying a historical perspective to the development of industrial clusters and building a new database of British patents from 1750-1945 to better understand the patenting behaviours of individuals and firms over time.

Sam’s research focuses on examining the spatial and temporal patterning of crime.  His recent work focused on describing and explaining crime during the COVID-19 pandemic. He is currently working on a project in the Netherlands estimating demand for police services, including that originating from non-crime incidents. Sam is also interested in data visualisation, mapping and promoting the use of open software in social science.

Jens is part of Eurasia Groups Geoeconomics team, working at the intersection of politics, macroeconomics and markets. He has worked as a macro strategist at Wellington Management and as chief European economist at Royal Bank of Canada Capital Markets. He spent more than a decade at the Bank of England, working mostly on monetary policy issues, and served as alternate executive director for the UK at the IMF in Washington, DC. Jens has a PhD in economics from the University of Southampton, UK.