I work at Queen's University Belfast, where I am a Senior Lecturer in Economics at Queen's Management School and Co-Director of the university's Centre for Economic History.

I combine economics and history to better understand the performance of firms, industries, economies and societies. Specifically, my expertise is thinking through the short, medium and long term consequences of policy decisions, given the lessons from history.

​I lead a teaching and learning project which aims to re-insert the study of economic history into the economics curriculum. My book, An Economist's Guide to Economic History (co-edited with Matthias Blum), is available in paperback or eBook.

Expertise: economic history; financial history; business history; banking crises; health crises; patents and innovation; economic policymaking process; pedagogical reform

News

Policy Lessons from Ireland's Past
A series of policy briefings published by the Economics Observatory explore policy lessons from Ireland's past. They were commissioned to coincide with Northern Ireland's centenary.

• John Turner introduces and links the series of five articles
• Together with Áine Doran and Alan Fernihough, I wrote a piece on lessons from the Great Irish Famine

Why Economic History?
I was interviewed about my views on the purpose of economic history for economists by ‪Seán Kenny for his Economic History Podcast. You can listen to the interview here.

Demography and Influenza-18
Eoin McLaughlin and I have a pre-print working paper on the demographic impact of the Spanish flu in Ireland. 

• Death, Demography and the Denominator: Age-Adjusted Influenza-18 Mortality in Ireland (Medrxiv preprint, January 2021)

​This paper is now published in Economics and Human Biology. We have written a non-technical summary of our paper for RTÉ Brainstorm:

• How to measure the demographic impact of a pandemic (RTÉ Brainstorm, 19 June 2020)

​The underlying data (constructed with the help of Kyle Richmond) is deposited at the UK Data Service, and described in a working paper:

• Cohort component population estimates for Ireland, 1911-1920: a new county-level dataset for use in historical demography (QUCEH Working Paper No. 21-06, June 2021)

Historical Precedent
​Covid-19 has historical precedent: Influenza-18. I have recently been doing some science communication work about the lessons to learn from this parallel.

• Eoin McLaughlin and I wrote an op-ed for The Conversation which draws economic lessons from the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic for policymakers today.
• I was interviewed about the 1918 flu pandemic by the stand-up comedian Tiernan Douieb on his Partly Political Podcast.
• I had a conversation about the Spanish flu on Cornelius Christian's YouTube channel.
• I was interviewed as part of a BBC Radio 4 In Business programme on the economic impact of historical pandemics.
• I feature on a 3-part BBC Radio 4 documentary called Pandemic 1918.
• I have written a policy brief about the Spanish flu for the Economics Observatory.
• I was interviewed for The Conversation's Anthill podcast about economic recovery from the Spanish flu and WW1.

​
We Buy Any Gold
I have a working paper circulating on Dutch monetary policymaking during the interwar period (co-authored with Philip Fliers). We explore policy formation, implementation and impact:

• Going Dutch: How the Netherlands Escaped its Golden Fetters, 1925–1936 (QMS Research Paper No. 21/06, June 2021)​ ​​

​We were asked to write about capital controls during the interwar gold standard for The Conversation:

• How the US government seized all citizens’ gold in 1930s (The Conversation, 21 May 2020)

Blogtastic
I maintain an occasional blog with news about activities relating to my pedagogical project on economic history. You can find it here.