Biography

Paul Frijters completed his Masters in Econometrics at the University of Groningen, including a seven-month stay in Durban, South Africa before completing a PhD at the University of Amsterdam into wellbeing in Russia during the transition. He is Professorial Research Fellow and Co-Director of the Wellbeing Programme and Project Director of the World Wellbeing Panel. Professor Frijters specializes in applied micro-econometrics, including labor, happiness, and health economics, though he has also worked on pure theoretical topics in macro and micro fields. His main area of interest is in analyzing how socio-economic variables affect the human life experience. Professor Frijters is a prominent research economist and has published over 70 papers in fields including unemployment policy, discrimination and economic development. He regularly commentates on economic issues in newspapers and on television, including articles in the New York Times and on the BBC. Before joining the LSE, he was the Research Director of the Rumici Project, an international project into the migration from the countryside to the cities in China and Indonesia, sponsored by ministries, the World Bank, the Ford Foundation, and many others, tracking 20,000 individuals for many years. In 2009 he was voted Australia's best young economist under 40 by the Australian Economic Society.