I hold an ICREA Research Professorship at the Economics Department, Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, and I am a research associate at the CREI. My area of specialization is economic history. Principal areas of research include long-run economic growth, the political causes of  asset price volatility, the history of sovereign debt, German interwar economic history, and the economic history of the Industrial Revolution. I have published a book with Oxford University Press, five popular books, and over 50 articles. These have appeared (inter alia) in the AER, the QJE, the EJ, the Journal of Economic History, the Journal of Economic Growth, the European Economic Review, and Explorations in Economic History. The Economist, the FT, the New York Times, Financial Times Deutschland, Handelsblatt, FAZ, Vanguardia and De Volkskraat have profiled my research.

I was educated in Bonn, Freiburg, St. Antony's College, Oxford, the European University Institute (EUI), and Nuffield College, Oxford. I'm a Research Fellow in the International Macro Program at the CEPR (London), have held visiting appointments at the MIT Economics Department, Princeton, at NYU-Stern and at the Stanford Economics Department, and I have been a visiting fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies, RSSS, ANU, Canberra, Australia and at Nuffield College, Oxford, as well a research fellow at Clare College, Cambridge. From 1999 to 2001, I served as the Associate Director at the Centre for History and Economics, King's College, Cambridge. After finishing my doctorate at Nuffield College, Oxford, in 1996, I worked as a Senior Associate for McKinsey & Co., Munich. I've also advised Deutsche Börse in Frankfurt, and McKinsey & Co., Germany.

In 2008, I was awarded an Advanced Investigator Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). In 2001, I became one of the first four economists in Britain to win a Philip Leverhulme Prize. For my work, I have received the EHA's Alexander Gerschenkron Prize, the Gino Luzzatto Prize from the European Historical Economics Society, and a Ramon y Cajal research distinction from the Spanish Ministry of Education. I'm a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (London). In 2011, I was invited to give the Tawney Lecture of the Economic History Society.

 

[a more extensive description of my work was profiled on EH.Net]