Michael Barrow was educated at the Universities of Warwick and Sussex. He has worked as an economist in the government economic service as well as in academia, at the University of Sussex. His research interests lie in the field of public economics, particularly fiscal federalism, value for money, education and housing. He has published on these topics in a wide range of academic journals and he is also the author of an undergraduate level text book on statistics: Statistics for Economics, Accounting and Business Studies (Pearson).