Professor Robin Mason joined the University of Birmingham in March 2016, as Pro-Vice-Chancellor (International).
Robin moved to Birmingham after seven years at the University of Exeter, where he was first Professor of Economics, then appointed Dean of the University’s Business School in 2011, and Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean in 2015. He had previously been the Eric Roll Professor of Economics and Head of Economics at the University of Southampton. His first degree is in Natural Sciences; after a stint working in finance, he returned to Cambridge to do his PhD in Economics. He was a Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford; then went back, yet again, to Cambridge to work in the Department of Applied Economics, before moving to Southampton. His academic research concentrates on how firms respond strategically to uncertainty; and, more broadly, the incentives faced by economic agents in situations when they have imperfect information about their environment. (Formally, his area is game theory with incomplete information and learning.) While this research is theoretical in nature, it is motivated by the applied problems encountered while advising regulators and companies.
Robin is a fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and a Member of both the Competition and Markets Authority (formerly the Competition Commission) and the Financial Conduct Authority. He has acted as advisor to a number of regulators, in both the UK and internationally; to the Prime Minister of Mauritius on competition policy; and to a number of private-sector companies worldwide. He sits on the Accreditation Board of EQUIS, one of the two major international accreditation bodies for business schools. He is a dual national, Canadian/UK, being born in Kingston, Ontario. He went to King Edwards Birmingham for secondary school. He enjoys walking and body-boarding in North Cornwall with his family; playing the guitar; and telling bad jokes to his daughters.