Orazio Attanasio appointed as Jeremy Bentham Chair of Economics

Jeremy Bentham, was the “spiritual founder” of UCL and a key player in the establishment of UCL Economics. He made fundamental contributions to economics and many of them still shape modern economic theory. Perhaps most importantly, Bentham developed Utilitarianism. Although his felicific calculus has not survived to modern economic theory, the idea of utility being the main object of interest for welfare and choice theory is still very much the dominating paradigm. Utilitarianism also provides the foundation of much modern econometric measurement, testing and estimation of economic theory without which macroeconomics would have little relevance. Bentham also worked on macroeconomic theory including monetary economics. Orazio Attanasio has made fundamental contributions to many of these areas and is an extremely worthy holder of the Jeremy Bentham Chair of Economics.