My name is Michael McMahon and I am a Professor of Economics at University of Oxford, a Senior Research Fellow at St Hugh's College, and an Associate Member at Nuffield College.

I am interested in most topics related to macroeconomic policy but particularly monetary policy (especially communication issues), fiscal policy, business cycles, and inventory behaviour. My research has been published in many journals including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Monetary Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics and the Journal of International Economics.

I hold a ERC grant to study a number of aspects of monetary economics focusing on communication and monetary signals.

I am a research fellow of the CEPR and currently I am director of the Research Policy Network (RPN) on Central Bank Communication. Until recently, I sat on the Royal Economic Society's Executive Committee and was the Conference Secretary in charge of the strategic organisation of the RES Annual Conference. (In 2017, I was Prof Sarah Smith's Deputy Programme Chair for the 2017 RES Conference).   In addition, I am affiliated with LSE’s Centre for Macroeconomics where I previously co-edited the CfM Survey. I also previously served as Director of Impact at CAGE (Warwick), served as Treasurer of the MMF research group, and was formerly an Economics Network advisory board member.

I hold an undergraduate degree from Trinity College Dublin, and MSc, MRes, and PhD degrees from LSE.

My Story

I was born in Dublin and lived there most of my life (though the gap is closing fast). As a child I lived for 3 years in Zimbabwe. I did BESS (Business, Economics and Social Studies) in Trinity College Dublin. Immediately after my degree I moved to the UK to study at LSE for an MSc and work for the Bank of England.

While at the Bank I was fortunate to meet Prof Francesco Giavazzi who at the time was visiting the Bank as a Houblon-Norman fellow. I started to do some research with him and caught the research bug. So after a few years at the Bank, I returned to LSE to complete the MRes and PhD in Economics. My supervisor was Prof Francesco Caselli and my advisor was Prof Silvana Tenreyro. We had a really great class of students, the environment was wonderful and despite all the hard work I loved it.

When I finished my PhD I moved to University of Warwick where I spent 9 years in total (including leave periods). During one period of leave I visited INSEAD and Stanford. On another I was a Houblon-Norman-George fellow back at the Bank of England.

In 2015 I took leave to work at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Singapore Training Institute (STI). My work in Singapore involved running courses for central bankers and other government officials from the Asia-Pacific region, as well as continuing with my research. 

I moved to Oxford in September 2017.