Ronald MacDonald OBE was born in the West End of Glasgow in 1955, to Duncan and Effie MacDonald (nee Macrae) and spent his formative years in Glasgow, Fort William and Falkirk. He attended Tinto Road Primary School, Glasgow, Corpach Primary School, Fort William, Comely Bank Primary School, Falkirk, and Falkirk High School, with a gap year in Portree primary and High School, before progressing to his university education. He is a Scottish economist with interests in a wide range of topics in International Finance and Macroeconomics and a considerable amount of his research focuses on the economics of exchange rates and currency regime choice. He is currently Research Professor of Macroeconomics and International Finance at the Adam Smith Business School in the University of Glasgow.
He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2015 Birthday Honours "for services to Economic Policy."
Tertiary Education and career
Qualifications and appointments
MacDonald holds a first class B.A. (Hons) degree from Heriot-Watt University, M.A. (Econ) and PhD from the University of Manchester. He has previously held the Robert Fleming Chair of Investment and Finance at the University of Dundee (1989-1992), Professor of International Finance at the University of Strathclyde from 1992 (formerly Professor of International Macroeconomics), the Bonar Macfie Chair of Economics, 2005-2006, Department of Economics University of Glasgow and the Adam Smith Professor of Political Economy at the Adam Smith Business School in the University of Glasgow from January 2006 – 2015. He has been a visiting professor at the University of New South Wales, Australia, Queen's University, Canada, European University Institute, Florence, University of Cergy-Pontoise, Paris, ZEW, Mannheim, and Centre for Economic Studies, Munich.
Timeline
(1975 to 1978) BA, with First class Honours, in Economics at Heriot-Watt University
(1978 to 1979) MA(Econ) in Economics at the University of Manchester
(1979 to 1982) PhD in Economics at the University of Manchester
(1982 to 1984) Midland Bank Fellow in Monetary Economics at Loughborough University
(1984 to 1989) Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen
(1989 to 1992) Robert Fleming Professor of Finance and Investment at the University of Dundee
(1992 to 2004) Professor of International Finance at the University of Strathclyde, formerly Professor of International Macroeconomics
(2005 to 2006) Bonar MacFie Chair of Economics University of Glasgow
(2006 to 2015) Adam Smith Professor of Political Economy at the Adam Smith School of Economics and Finance in the University of Glasgow
(2015 to present) Research Professor of Macroeconomics and International Finance at the Adam Smith Business School in the University of Glasgow.
Research ranking and grants
Research ranking
MacDonald has consistently been ranked amongst the top 1% of economists in the world by the IDEAS/RePEc ranking, and amongst the top 1% of all research in international finance and open economy macroeconomics. He ranks amongst the top 6% of SSRN Top Economics authors. With a wide range of interests focused around exchange rates through to macroeconomics and international finance, he has published over 130 articles in peer-reviewed journals and authored or edited over 15 books. He has over 18,000 citations to his work recorded on Google Scholar
Fellowships and grants
MacDonald is an International Fellow at the Kiel Institute of Economics, and Research Fellow of the CESifo Research Network Munich and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh from 2002 to 2014. Since 1996 he has been involved in successful Research Grant applications totalling over £2,000,000.
Academic research
Current research
MacDonald's current research interests span a range of topics in Macroeconomics (i.e. optimal monetary policy and the monetary transmission process; the role of FDIs, exchange rate misalignment, capital flows and corruption on economic growth; the sustainability of fiscal policy), International Finance (i.e. the determination of exchange rates and exchange rate forecasting; equilibrium exchange rate issues) and Finance (i.e. the determination of stock and bond prices and the term structure of interest rates).