John Vickers has been warden of All Souls College, Oxford, since October 2008. He studied at Oxford University, where, after a period working in the oil industry, he taught economics and was Drummond Professor of Political Economy from 1991 to 2008. He was chief economist at the Bank of England and a member of the Monetary Policy Committee (1998–2000); director general/chairman of the Office of Fair Trading (2000–05); president of the Royal Economic Society (2007–10); and chairman of the Independent Commission on Banking (2010–11).
Vickers’s research interests span theory and policy, especially relating to competition and regulation. In particular, he is working with Mark Armstrong on the incentive theory question of how a principal can best give incentives for an agent to choose among competing projects. Vickers’s main current policy-related interests arise from his work in 2010–11 as chair of the Independent Commission on Banking, which recommended fundamental reform to improve stability and competition in UK banking.