Professor Terry Barker

Professor Terry Barker
Founder, CTNTE

Terry Barker is the Founder of the Trust. He is an applied economist specialising in large-scale economic modelling, international trade and the mitigation of climate change. He founded the Trust in 2005 in order to promote economic theory based on social behaviour, managed by institutions, and specific to location and time.

He began his career as an apprentice accountant in Edinburgh. After two years he switched to a four-year degree in Economic Science at Edinburgh University studying political economy, mathematics and constitutional law. He then joined the Cambridge Growth Project in 1965 as a Junior Research Office, working with Richard Stone at the University of Cambridge. He completed his PhD thesis on international trade in in 1973 and published a new theory of trade, the variety hypothesis, in 1977. Terry led the team developing the static input-output equilibrium model of the economy into a Multisectoral Dynamic Model (MDM) designed for policy analysis and projecting the economy year by year. He founded Cambridge Econometrics Ltd as the leader of the MDM team in 1978 and the model was the basis of the company’s forecasting services. He acted as Chairman until he retired in 2017.

He was a Co-ordinating Lead Author (CLA) for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Fourth Assessment Report, 2007 , for the chapter on cross-sectoral mitigation. Previously he was CLA in the Third Assessment Report, 2001 , taking responsibility for the chapter on the effects of greenhouse gas mitigation policies on the global energy industries. He was a member of the core writing team for the Synthesis Report Climate Change 2001. He is now a Senior Department Fellow in the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge. In recognition of his work in environmental economics and climate mitigation, he was awarded an Honorary Professorship at the University of East Anglia.

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