Paul was Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies from 2011 until 2025, when he became Provost of Queen’s. He is a columnist for The Times and also a regular contributor to other broadcast and print media. He is a Visiting Professor in the UCL Policy Lab and at the UCL Department of Economics, as well as a Senior Advisor for Public First, an economics, policy, and opinion research consultancy.
Paul published The Sunday Times bestseller Follow the Money in 2023. He hosted the podcast The IFS Zooms In, which attracted up to 100,000 downloads per episode, and also co-hosted The Expert Factor podcast.
For 11 years he was a member of the UK Climate Change Committee and has served on the council of the ESRC and of the Royal Economic Society. Paul led reviews of pension auto-enrolment and of inflation measurement for the UK government, and of fiscal devolution for the Northern Ireland executive.
Previous roles have included time as Chief Economist at the Department for Education and as Director of Public Spending at HM Treasury, where he also served as Deputy Head of the Government Economic Service.
He was educated at Kings Manor Community College, Keble College, Oxford, and Birkbeck College, London.
He was appointed CBE in the 2018 birthday honours for services to the social sciences and economics. He holds honorary doctorates from UCL and the universities of Exeter, Sussex, and York. He is an Honorary Fellow of Keble College, Oxford.
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