He spent 10 years in Russia advising their Federal Parliament (Duma) and local authorities on property tax reform and establishment of land markets.

In 2002 he ended his work in Russia when it became apparent that the trend of investment from resource rents was not into the ventures he had recommended, but instead into what he termed conspicuous consumption, such as buying Western real estate and football clubs.

His main focus in both writing and lecturing has been to warn of what he considers to be the dangers of using land and real estate as the primary drivers of economic growth.

Harrison's macro-economic analysis is based on the theory that business conforms to a pattern of 18-year cycles, determined by the unique characteristics of the land market.

The only way prices can be brought back to affordable levels is a slump or recession.”[3] In 2009, Dirk Bezemer, a professor of economics at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, noted that Harrison was one of the earliest to have predicted the 2007–2008 financial crisis.

He integrated cultural studies with economic theory to test hypotheses that seek to explain why governments persist with sub-optimal fiscal policies.

[11] Harrison concluded that Western ("neo-liberal") culture had been shaped by rent-seeking to deliver sub-optimum outcomes through tax policies that have the permanent effect of mal-distributing income and retarding economic growth.