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 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
Their conclusions suggest that the Barnett formula, and the funding of devolved government very largely by grant, is an inappropriate way to proceed – the chief defects being that it encourages inefficient spending, and serves only as a soft (not a hard) budget constraint. Several alternatives are considered: ‘fiscal federalism’, which implies mixed systems combining a measure of fiscal autonomy with some grant financing, and fiscal autonomy both within and outside the Union; a brief survey of overseas systems is also provided. ‘Fiscal federalism’ systems were found to be defective on the theoretical ground that these lack a hard enough budget constraint; the idea that the devolved Scottish Government should collect all taxes in Scotland, and (if part of the UK) remit funds to London to cover the cost of UK-wide public services in Scotland is preferred. This is what is implied by fiscal autonomy in this book (some of us call that 'full fiscal autonomy', for clarity).
Thus, Ronald MacDonald provides a strong argument, from an economic perspective and based largely on theoretical arguments, for what journalists now call 'devolution max' if not independence.
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Non-academic positions
As a prominent figure in economic academia, MacDonald has held posts as Consultant Researcher and Visiting Scholar at the International Monetary Fund on fourteen separate occasions, a Monetary Advisor to the Fund and the World Bank, an advisor to the UK Audit Office, and has presented his five-day course on the 'Economics of Exchange Rates' at the International Monetary Fund Institute.,