In October 2023 Matt Dickson was appointed Professor of Economic and Social Policy at the Institute for Policy Research, University of Bath, UK. Prior to this he was Reader in Public Policy at the Institute and before that he held roles as a Lecturer and a Prize (Research) Fellow at the University of Bath. Immediately prior to joining Bath in 2012 he held a Marie Curie Intra-European Research Fellowship at the Geary Institute, University College Dublin, Ireland. Matt completed his Ph.D in Economics at Warwick University, UK, in February 2009 and subsequently held an ESRC post-doctoral research fellowship at the Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK. His research interests include applied micro-econometrics, the economics of education, and labour economics more broadly. Matt’s research to date focuses on the economic returns to education, including higher education, intergenerational mobility, the public-private pay gap and poverty dynamics. At the IPR, Matt leads the programme of research on widening participation in higher education, with current projects examining the scarring effect of graduate underemployment, the role of higher education in political preferences, grade inflation in UK universities, and the intergenerational transmission of entrepreneurship.

Matt joined IZA as a Research Affiliate in August 2008 and became a Research Fellow in December 2011.