logo
School of Economics
   
   
  
 

Image of Richard Disney

Richard Disney

Professor of Labour Economics, Faculty of Social Sciences

Contact

Biography

Richard joined the University of Nottingham as a Professor in the School of Economics in September 1998 having previously been Professor of Economics at Queen Mary & Westfield College , University of London (1995-98) and Professor of Economics at the University of Kent at Canterbury (1988-95). He previously worked at the University of Reading , the University of Strathclyde, and the University of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He is also a Research Fellow of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, London . He has held visiting positions at both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and has been a consultant for the World Bank, the ILO, the OECD and a number of UK government departments.

Professor Disney's complete cv can be downloaded here in pdf format.

Research Summary

Richard's research interests lie largely in the field of applied microeconomics, including tax policy, social welfare reform and pensions policy, all in both developed and the developing countries,… read more

Recent Publications

  • R DISNEY, , and J. GATHERGOOD, 2011. House price growth, collateral constraints and the accumulation of homeowner debt in the United States B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics. 11(1),
  • DISNEY, R., BRIDGES, S. and GATHERGOOD, J., 2010. House Price Shocks and Household Indebtedness in the United Kingdom Economica. 77(July), 472-496
  • BRIDGES, S and DISNEY, R., 2010. Debt and depression Journal of Health Economics. 29(May), 388-403
  • DISNEY, R., GATHERGOOD, J. and HENLEY, A., 2010. House Price Shocks, Negative Equity and Household Consumption in the United Kingdom Journal of the European Economic Association. December(8), 1179-1207

Current Research

Richard's research interests lie largely in the field of applied microeconomics, including tax policy, social welfare reform and pensions policy, all in both developed and the developing countries, and the economics of labour markets, including retirement behaviour and wage structure.

He has published numerous articles in academic journals and books including 'Can we afford to grow older? A perspective on the economics of aging' (1996) and 'The Economics of Consumer Credit' (edited with Giuseppe Bertola and Charles Grant 2006), both for MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Richard teaches economic issues at first year, consumer theory and finance and public economics in Year 2 and graduate level labour economics. He is a Director of the School's Centre for Policy Evaluation (CPE), a member of the Scientific Board of the Centre for Research on Pensions and Welfare Policies in Turin (CeRP), Governor of the Pensions Policy Institute, a member of the NHS Pay Review Body (NHSPRB) from 2003-2009 and a member of the Senior Salaries Review Body 2009-2011. He was conference chair for the 2005 Royal Economic Society annual conference held at The University of Nottingham and on the Council of the Royal Economic Society from 2002-2006.

Relevant Papers

  1. Personal unsecured debt has been rising rapidly in Britain. And so has people's housing wealth. So did the house price boom fuel the debt increase? We investigate this issue here: Sarah Bridges, Richard Disney and Andrew Henley: 'Housing wealth and the accumulation of financial debt: Evidence from UK households' [pdf 195 Kb]. This paper appeared in the volume edited by myself, Giuseppe Bertola and Charles Grant described in my Profile.
  1. You've borrowed a lot of money, your house price goes up, you refinance. We show it here… Richard Disney, Sarah Bridges and John Gathergood 'House price shocks and household indebtedness in the UK', [pdf 273 Kb], Economica.
  1. But what happens when your house price goes down and you've got negative equity? (When we first submitted this paper, we were told by one referee that this was no longer interesting as house prices always go up (but, as the Manic Street Preachers so eloquently put it: "Economic forecast soothe our dereliction. Words of euthanasia, apathy of sick routine. Carried away with useless advertising dreams…NatWest-Barclays-Midlands-Lloyds, Blackhorse apocalypse. Death sanitised through credit." (Sony Music Publishing 1992). Richard Disney, John Gathergood and Andrew Henley 'House prices, negative equity and household consumption in the UK' [pdf 316 Kb], Journal of European Economic Association.
  1. US consumers have been more spendthrift in response to house price increases than UK consumers. Richard Disney and John Gathergood 'House price volatility and household indebtedness in the US and the UK' [pdf 432 Kb].
  1. Are public sector workers overpaid? And do they get large pensions? Broadly, the answers are (respectively) 'No' and 'Yes': Richard Disney and Amanda Gosling 'Changing public sector wage differentials in the UK ' [pdf 153 Kb] Richard Disney, Carl Emmerson and Gemma Tetlow 'What is a public sector pension worth?' [pdf 257 Kb], Economic Journal.
  1. How do people respond to incentives? Once it was fashionable in macroeconomics to have 'time consistent consumers and time-inconsistent governments'. Now, in behavioural economics, it's fashionable to have the reverse. To see which model better describes reality (I think) see: Woojen Chung, Richard Disney, Carl Emmerson and Matthew Wakefield 'Public policy and retirement saving incentives in the UK' [pdf 311 Kb] (This paper appeared in: Robert Fenge, Georges de Menil and Pierre Pestieau (eds) Pension Strategies in Europe and the United States: MIT Press, 2008). For the 'tecky' version, see: Richard Disney, Carl Emmerson and Matthew Wakefield 'Tax reform and retirement saving incentives: Take-up of Stakeholder Pensions in the UK ' [pdf 337 Kb], Economica.

And now for something completely different…

School of Economics

Sir Clive Granger Building
University Park
Nottingham, NG7 2RD

telephone: +44 (0) 115 951 5620
fax: +44 (0) 115 951 4159
email: economics-enquiries@nottingham.ac.uk