Meredith M. Paker

I am an economic historian at the University of Oxford, where I am an Associate Professor of Economic History, a Fellow of All Souls College, and an Associate Member of the Department of Economics.

I study how economies and labor markets adjust to structural change, including industrial decline and emerging technologies, and how these shifts interact with recessions. My research explores how the difficulty of moving workers between industries can lead to persistent unemployment and slow recoveries, why the burden of this unemployment falls so unevenly across regions, industries, and workers, and the extent to which policy can help. Much of my work focuses on Britain in the interwar years (1920s/1930s) and the 1980s, when deep economic downturns coincided with major structural transformation. My research relies on archival data, econometrics, and machine learning at the intersection of economic history and labor economics.

Contact

One strand of my work focuses on mass unemployment and inequality during periods of structural change, centering on Britain's interwar downturn and the early 1980s recession. For the interwar years, I use industry-level data to trace how labor reallocation shaped unemployment across industries, regions, and genders, and I study how policy responded, including the role of devaluation in the recovery from the Great Depression and the impact of unemployment benefits on inequality and poverty. For the 1980s, I study reallocation and job polarization, showing how they contributed to Britain's jobless recovery after the 1980-1 recession and to disparities in labor market outcomes.

Another strand of my research concerns labor market structures, living standards, and wages. I study how labor market organization and employer power have shaped wages and employment relationships over time, especially focused on preindustrial Britain. I also investigate how job quality, employment stability, and career trajectories affect workers' economic well-being, and how we can better measure wages to understand historical living standards.

Before academia, I worked as an economist at the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), where I contributed to policy and research on the regulation of the US housing market. I also bring experience from the Bank of England and RAND Corporation. I was previously an Assistant Professor of Economics at Grinnell College. I received my PhD and Master's in economic history from the University of Oxford (Nuffield College) as a Marshall Scholar, and my undergraduate degree from the University of Georgia.

Contact

meredith.paker [at] all-souls.ox.ac.uk

meredith.paker [at] gmail.com

All Souls College

High Street

Oxford

OX1 4AL

United Kingdom

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