Paolo Surico
Boards are being asked to plan capital, hiring, and pricing through a cycle they cannot read. The standard macro briefing is too abstract to be useful, and the in-house view is rarely anchored in evidence about how policy actually reaches households and firms. Leaders need someone who can connect rate decisions, fiscal choices, and inequality to the parts of their business that actually move.
Paolo Surico is Professor of Economics at London Business School and a research adviser to central banks whose empirical work on monetary policy, government spending, and inequality helps senior leaders read the macro cycle through the parts of it that hit their customers, workforce, and balance sheet.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Paolo Surico
- He has shown, using household and firm micro-data, that most of the consumption response to interest rates comes from mortgaged households, which is the single most useful framing for any business modelling consumer demand under a rate cycle.
- His American Economic Review paper on the long-run effects of government spending was cited in the UK Chancellor’s Spring Statement, which is rare evidence that academic work has moved actual fiscal policy.
- His advisory portfolio with the Bank of England, European Central Bank, European Commission, and Financial Conduct Authority means he reads central bank communications from the inside, not as a commentator.
- His ESRC GBP 1 million grant and ERC Starting Grant put him in the top tier of European macroeconomists by independent funder validation.
- He translates technical macro into language a non-economist board can use, which is the reason financial services and professional services firms book him repeatedly.
Biography highlights
- Professor of Economics, London Business School
- Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research; Research Associate, LSE Centre for Macroeconomics
- Co-author, “The Long-Run Effects of Government Spending,” American Economic Review (2025), cited in the UK Chancellor’s Spring Statement
- Awarded a GBP 1 million ESRC grant for “Long-Run Consequences of Business-Cycle Fluctuations”; recipient of an ERC Starting Grant
- Former Adviser to the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee; consultant to the European Central Bank, European Commission, and Financial Conduct Authority
- Regular contributor and commentator in the Financial Times, The Economist, Il Sole 24 Ore, and Corriere della Sera
Biography
Most macroeconomic commentary stops at the aggregate. Surico’s work begins where it usually ends: with the household and the firm. Using micro-data from the US and UK, he has shown that mortgaged households drive most of the consumption response to interest rate changes, while outright owners barely move at all. That finding has reframed how central banks think about transmission, and it gives commercial leaders something more useful than a forecast.
His 2025 American Economic Review paper with Juan Antolin-Diaz, “The Long-Run Effects of Government Spending,” used 125 years of US data to show that military and public R&D spending produce large, persistent growth effects through their composition, not their size. The paper was cited in the UK Chancellor’s Spring Statement, which is an unusually direct line between academic research and fiscal policy.
The credentials are substantial. Fellow of CEPR, Research Associate at the LSE Centre for Macroeconomics, former Adviser to the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, current consultant to the European Central Bank and European Commission. A GBP 1 million ESRC grant and an ERC Starting Grant sit behind the academic record. He writes regularly for the Financial Times, The Economist, and the major Italian financial press.
What sets him apart for boardroom audiences is the bridge he builds between empirical macro and decisions a leadership team has to make this quarter. When he talks about household debt, demographic change, or the redistributive effects of monetary policy, the argument lands in concrete terms that a CFO, a head of strategy, or a wealth-management chief can act on.
Key speaking topics
- Monetary policy transmission and household debt
- Public debt sustainability and fiscal outlook
- Government spending, innovation, and long-run growth
- Inequality and the macroeconomy
- Housing, credit, and financial markets
- Demographic change and macroeconomic policy
Ideal for
- CFO, treasury, and finance leadership teams in financial services, asset management, and insurance
- Boards and executive committees stress-testing strategy against rate, fiscal, and policy scenarios
- Wealth and private banking client events where senior clients want substantive macro analysis
- Strategy and economic-policy functions in industrials, real estate, and consumer-facing sectors
Audience outcomes
- A clearer view of how rate decisions actually move through mortgaged households, renters, and balance sheets, rather than aggregate models
- A framework for reading central bank communications from the inside of the policy process
- Specific implications of public debt and government spending trajectories for medium-term growth and capital allocation
- A grounded read on inequality as a macroeconomic amplifier, not a social commentary point