Frank Cowell

Frank Cowell is a Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he serves as a CASE (Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion) and STICERD (Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines) Associate. His academic work spans several decades with publications dating from the early 1990s through to 2018, demonstrating sustained scholarly contribution to the field of economics.

Professor Cowell's research primarily focuses on inequality and poverty measurement, income and wealth distribution, taxation, and social mobility. His work combines theoretical economic analysis with empirical applications across different countries and contexts. His research interests include methodological approaches to measuring inequality, particularly addressing challenges related to top incomes and wealth concentration, as well as examining the relationship between social identity and redistributive preferences.

His publication record reveals consistent engagement with methodological issues in inequality measurement, with numerous papers addressing statistical robustness, decomposition techniques, and comparisons of income and wealth distributions across countries. His more recent work has increasingly focused on wealth distribution, inheritance, and intergenerational mobility, reflecting evolving scholarly interest in these areas. He has collaborated extensively with researchers across Europe, particularly on cross-national comparative studies using datasets like the Luxembourg Wealth Study.

Professor Cowell has made significant contributions to the theoretical foundations of inequality measurement, developing alternative approaches that address limitations in conventional indices. His work on median-normalized inequality measures represents an important methodological innovation aimed at better capturing changes at the top of the income distribution.

Throughout his career, Cowell has examined the relationship between economic theory and empirical measurement, often bridging gaps between abstract welfare economics and practical policy applications. His research has implications for tax policy design, social welfare programs, and understanding the dynamics of economic inequality across different populations and time periods.

As a CASE and STICERD Associate, Professor Cowell contributes to LSE's research environment focused on social exclusion, inequality, and public policy analysis. His work has been published in numerous discussion papers, journal articles, and book chapters, establishing him as a significant contributor to the field of distributional economics.