Richard Blundell is the Ricardo Professor of Political Economy at University College London, and Co-Director of the ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at IFS. He was Research Director of the IFS from 1986-2016.

He is a graduate of the University of Bristol and London School of Economics. He was appointed Lecturer in Econometrics at University of Manchester in 1975 and Professor of Economics at University College London in 1984. He holds Honorary Doctorates from the University of St.Gallen, Switzerland, the Norwegian School of Economics, Bergen; the University of Mannheim, Germany; the University of Bristol; and the Athens School of Economics, AUEB, Athens. He has held visiting professor positions at UBC, MIT and Berkeley. He was Knighted in the 2014 New Years Honours list.

Recipient (with David Card) of the 2015 BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance, and Management. Recipient of the 2016 Nemmers Prize in Economics. Recipient of the 2020 Jacob Mincer Prize, SOLE

In 1995 he was awarded the Yrjö Jahnsson Prize for his work in microeconometrics, labour supply and consumer behaviour, and the Econometric Society Frisch Medal in 2000, for his paper Estimating Labour Supply Responses using Tax Reforms, published in Econometrica, July 1998. In 2012 he was awarded the IZA Prize in Labor Economics.

He was President of the European Economics Association in 2004 and President of the Econometric Society in 2006. He was President of the Society of Labor Economists (SOLE) in 2010. He was President of the Royal Economics Society 2011-2013.

He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society (1991), Fellow of the British Academy (1996), Honorary Member of the American Economic Association (2001), Honorary Member American Academy of Arts and Science (2002), Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries (2003) and Fellow of the Society of Labor Economists (2005).

He was co-editor of Econometrica from 1997-2001 and co-editor of the Journal of Econometrics from 1992 to 1997. He is a founding editor of Microeconomic Insights. His published papers have appeared in Econometrica, Review of Economic Studies, American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Economic Journal and Journal of Political Economy.

Richard Blundell joined IZA as a Research Fellow in October 1999.