He was educated at Highgate School and Clare College, Cambridge, where he qualified for an MA in economics, with first-class honours, and was later a fellow from 1981 to 1995.
[1][2] On 5 July 2010 it was announced that he would join the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, replacing Kate Barker.
[3] He was made a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1999 for services to economics[2] after contributing to a report for the Treasury and the Bank of England into the Average Earnings Index.
A 2010 paper for the European Commission argued that "Britain's long boom under Labour was based on unsustainable consumption" and that "the budget deficit has to be closed at some point ... You cannot put it off forever on the grounds that the economy might never be able to stand it.
He has joined the panel of expert economists at the Office for National Statistics and is an associate of the Centre for Macroeconomics at the London School of Economics.