Peter Lambert

Office 532 PLC; email: plambert@uoregon.edu;
Homepage.

Biographical Information

Peter J. Lambert, Professor, was educated in the UK, receiving his B.Sc. in Mathematics in 1968 from Manchester University, his D.Phil. in Mathematics in 1971 from Oxford University, and his M.Sc. in Economics and Econometrics in 1977 from the University of York. Until recently he was a Full Professor of Economics at the University of York. He has held Visiting Professorships at a range of European and non-European universities (the latter group including the Delhi School of Economics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and University of Melbourne), and was a Visiting Scholar in the Fiscal Affairs Department of the International Monetary Fund in 1995. He was appointed to the Scientific Committee of the Swiss National Science Foundation's research programme "Problèmes de l'Etat Social" in 1999, and also became a Research Fellow of the CESifo Research Network at the Center for Economic Studies, University of Munich in that year. He is an Editor of the journal Social Choice and Welfare.

Research Interests

Professor Lambert's research focuses upon measurement problems and normative issues associated with the distribution and redistribution of income. Particular interests include social concerns such as the assessment of family needs and tax and benefit system design, and aspects of distributional analysis including the measurement of inequality, poverty, social welfare and redistribution. Although it has long been known that a progressive income tax is vertically equitable (exerts an equalizing effect on the distribution of income), the typical multi-attribute income tax violates a basic command of social justice, that of horizontal equity (the equal tax treatment of equals). This happens because of the range of exemptions, deductions and credits typically present in the tax code. Some of Professor Lambert's recent papers examine this problem and propose ways to assess the extent of horizontal inequity, as a guide for the process of tax reform and simplification.

Teaching

Professor Lambert has extensive teaching experience at all levels in areas of public economics, mathematical modelling (in particular optimization), and quantitative methods generally. He also teaches welfare economics and social choice theory at the graduate level and microeconomics at the undergraduate level.