View source for Martin Wolf

{{short description|British journalist (born 1946)}}
{{other uses}}
{{EngvarB|date=April 2015}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2015}}
{{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox writer/doc]] -->
| name             = Martin Wolf
| image            = Martin Wolf 2015.jpg
| caption          = Wolf in 2015
| birth_name       = Martin Harry Wolf
| birth_date       = {{birth date and age|df=yes|1946|8|16}}<ref name=whoswho/>
| birth_place      = London
| occupation       = [[Journalist]]
| nationality      = 
| ethnicity        = 
| citizenship      = British
| education        = [[University College School]]
| alma_mater       = [[University of Oxford]] (BA, MPhil)<!-- Neith Corpus Christi College or 
Nuffield College actually award degrees-->
| period           = 
| subject          = [[Economics]]
| notableworks     = 
| spouse           = {{marriage|[[Alison Wolf|Alison Margaret Potter]]|1970}}
| partner          = 
| children         = 
| relatives        = 
| influences       = 
| influenced       = 
| awards           = [[Gerald Loeb Lifetime Achievement Award winners|Gerald Loeb Lifetime Achievement Award]] (2019)
| website          = {{Official URL}}
}}

'''Martin Harry Wolf''' {{post-nominals|country=GBR|CBE}} (born 16 August 1946 in London) is a British journalist who focuses on [[economics]].<ref name=whoswho>{{Who's Who | author=Anon | title = Wolf, Martin Harry | id =U40453 | year = 2025 | doi =10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U40453 | edition = 177th |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|location=Oxford|isbn=9781399411837|oclc=1427336388|pages=2720}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/wolf-martin-harry-1946|title=Wolf, Martin (Harry) 1946-|encyclopedia=[[encyclopedia.com]]}}</ref> He is the chief economics commentator at the ''[[Financial Times]]''.<ref name=ft>{{Cite web |title=Martin Wolf |publisher=Financial Times |url=https://www.ft.com/martin-wolf |access-date=2023-02-07 |website=Financial Times |language=en-GB}}</ref>  He also writes a weekly column for the French newspaper ''[[Le Monde]]''.<ref name=cspan>{{C-SPAN|6980}}</ref><ref>{{YouTube|-pjFvKb5ot8|Video: UC Berkeley Events, Conversations with History – Martin Wolf, February 2009}}</ref><ref>[https://www.fljs.org/place-britain-future-europe Video: Oxford Law, Justice & Society Lecture, The Place of Britain in a Future Europe – Martin Wolf, October 2012]</ref>

==Early life and education==
Wolf was born in London, in 1946.<ref name=whoswho/>  His father Edmund was an [[Austrian Jews|Austrian Jew]]ish playwright who migrated from [[Vienna]] to England before World War II.<ref name = "CalloftheWolf">{{cite magazine
|url= http://www.tnr.com/article/economy/call-the-wolf
|title= Call of the Wolf
|magazine= [[The New Republic]]
|author= Julia Ioffe
|date = 16 September 2009
|access-date=13 September 2010}}
</ref>
In London, Edmund met Wolf's mother, a [[Dutch Jew]] who had lost nearly thirty close relatives in the [[Holocaust]].<ref name = "wolfBio">{{cite news
|url= http://www.cosmopolis.ch/english/politics/51/martin_wolf_biography.htm
|archive-url= https://archive.today/20130115165957/http://www.cosmopolis.ch/english/politics/51/martin_wolf_biography.htm
|url-status= dead
|archive-date= 15 January 2013
|title= Martin Wolf – a biography of the chief economist commentator of the Financial Times and author of the book Why Globalization Works
|date= 1 August 2004
|access-date= 13 September 2010
}}</ref> Wolf recalls that his background left him wary of political extremes and encouraged his interest in economics, as he felt economic policy mistakes were one of the [[Causes of World War II|root causes of World War II]].<ref name = "CalloftheWolf"/>  He was an active supporter of the [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]] until the early 1970s.<ref name = "wolfBio"/>

Wolf was privately educated at [[University College School]],<ref name=whoswho/> a day school for boys in [[Hampstead]] in north west London, and the [[University of Oxford]] where in 1967 he was a student of [[Corpus Christi College, Oxford]] for his undergraduate studies. He initially read [[classics]] before switching to [[Philosophy, Politics and Economics]].<ref>{{Cite book
 | last = Wolf
 | first = Martin
 | title = Fixing Global Finance
 | year = 2009
 | page = xi
 | isbn = 978-0-300-14277-8 
 | publisher= Yale University Press}}</ref>
As a [[postgraduate]] student Wolf moved on to [[Nuffield College, Oxford]], which he left with a [[Master of Philosophy]] degree (MPhil) in economics in 1971. Wolf has said that he never pursued a PhD, because he "didn't want to become an academic".<ref name = "wolfBio"/><ref name=whoswho/>

==Career==
[[File:Martin Wolf World Economic Forum 2013.jpg|thumb|right|Wolf at the [[World Economic Forum]] in 2013.]]

In 1971, Wolf joined the [[World Bank]]'s young professionals programme, becoming a senior economist in 1974. By the start of the eighties, Wolf was deeply disillusioned with the Bank's policies undertaken under the direction of [[Robert McNamara]]: the Bank had been strongly pushing for increased capital flows to developing countries, which had resulted in many of them suffering debt crises by the early 1980s. Seeing the results of misjudged intervention by global authorities and also influenced from the early 1970s by various works critical of government intervention, such as [[Friedrich Hayek]]'s ''[[The Road to Serfdom]]'', Wolf shifted his views towards the right and the free market.<ref name = "CalloftheWolf"/><ref name = "wolfBio"/>

Wolf left the World Bank in 1981, to become Director of Studies at the ''Trade Policy Research Centre'', in London. He joined the ''Financial Times'' in 1987, where he has been associate editor since 1990 and chief economics commentator since 1996. Up until the late 2000s, Wolf was an influential advocate of [[globalisation]] and the [[free market]].

In addition to his journalism and participation in various international forums, Wolf had also attempted to influence opinion with his books; he has stated that his 2004 book, ''Why Globalization Works'',<ref name=wgw/> was intended to be a persuasive work rather than an academic study. By 2008, Wolf had become disillusioned with theories promoting what he came to see excessive reliance on the [[private sector]]. While remaining a pragmatist free of binding commitments to any one ideology, Wolf's views partially shifted away from free market thinking back to the Keynesian ideas he had been taught while young.<ref name = "CalloftheWolf"/><ref name = "wolfBio"/>

He became one of the more influential drivers of the [[2008–2009 Keynesian resurgence]], and in late 2008 and early 2009, he used his platform on the ''Financial Times'' to advocate a massive fiscal and monetary response to the [[2008 financial crisis]]. According to [[Julia Ioffe]] writing in 2009 for ''[[The New Republic]]'', he was "arguably the most widely trusted pundit" of the crisis.<ref name = "CalloftheWolf"/> Wolf is a supporter of a [[land value tax]].<ref>{{cite web
|url= http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/03/tax-the-ground-they-walk-on-2/
|title= Tax the ground they walk on
|publisher= [[Prospect (magazine)|Prospect]]
|author= Philippe Legrain
|date = 23 March 2010
|access-date=1 September 2011}}
</ref>

Between 2010 and 2011, Wolf served on the [[Independent Commission on Banking]].{{citation needed|date=May 2021}}

In 2012, Wolf stated in remarks for the Financial Times that [[public goods]] are building blocks of civilisation: security and safety, knowledge and science, a [[sustainability|sustainable environment]], trust, the [[Rechtsstaat]], and economic and financial stability.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.standaard.be/artikel/detail.aspx?artikelid=DMF20120824_00270009|title=Martin Wolf verwacht chaos|work=De Standaard|date=25 August 2012 }}</ref> 

Wolf discussed the [[economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic]] in an April 2020 editorial for the ''Financial Times'' titled "The world economy is now collapsing", where he called it the "biggest economic disaster since the [[Great Depression|Depression of the 1930s]]".<ref>{{cite news |last1=Wolf |first1=Martin |title=The world economy is now collapsing |url=https://www.ft.com/content/d5f05b5c-7db8-11ea-8fdb-7ec06edeef84 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221211231213/https://www.ft.com/content/d5f05b5c-7db8-11ea-8fdb-7ec06edeef84 |archive-date=11 December 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |access-date=15 April 2020 |work=Financial Times |date=14 April 2020 }}</ref>
{{clearleft}}

===Views===
Wolf maintained in December 2022 the government's failure to maintain real pay in the public sector had an adverse effect on recruitment and retention of staff.  Since 2010 real average pay rose 5.5% in the private sector till September 2022, but fell 5.9% in the public sector.  If it wanted to, the government could raise taxes to pay for pay rises.  There were too few key public sector staff and their quality raised concerns.  NHS England data "show a vacancy rate of 11.9 per cent as at September 30 2022 within the Registered Nursing staff group (47,496 vacancies). This is an increase from the same period in the previous year, when the vacancy rate was 10.5 per cent (39,931 vacancies)." Also too few teachers were recruited in subjects like physics or design & technology.  Poor health damaged labour supply. Allowing inflation to bring real pay down and expecting services to maintain or improve standards was in Wolf's opinion "plainly dishonest."  Wolf stated the government should keep public sector pay comparable with private sector pay particularly where there are noteworthy recruitment and retention issues.<ref>[https://www.ft.com/content/ca81509b-e929-487f-8975-49d75dc4f78d The UK government’s policy on public sector pay is foolish] ''[[Financial Times]]''</ref>

===Awards and honours===
Wolf was joint winner of the Wincott Foundation senior prize for excellence in financial journalism in both 1989 and 1997. He won the RTZ David Watt memorial prize in 1994. In 2000. Wolf was awarded the [[Order of the British Empire|CBE]] (Commander of the Order of the British Empire). He was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters, ''honoris causa'', by the [[University of Nottingham]] in 2006, and was made Doctor of Science (Economics) of [[University of London]], ''honoris causa'', by the [[London School of Economics]] in the same year. In 2018, on the occasion of the [[KU Leuven]] [[Candlemas|Patron Saint's Day]] he received a [[doctorate honoris causa]] of the university <ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.kuleuven.be/communicatie/congresbureau/evenementen/patron-saints-day/2018/honorary-doctors |title= Patron Saint's Day Honorary Doctors|access-date=February 2, 2018 | publisher = KU Leuven }}</ref>

Wolf is a regular participant in the annual [[Bilderberg Group|Bilderberg]] meetings of politicians and bankers. He is visiting fellow of [[Nuffield College, Oxford]], a Special Professor at the [[University of Nottingham]] and an honorary fellow of the Oxford Institute for Economic Policy. He has been a forum fellow at the annual meeting of the [[World Economic Forum]] in Davos since 1999.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ft.com/comment/columnists/martinwolf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221211231229/https://www.ft.com/martin-wolf |archive-date=11 December 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |title=Wolf's info page on the FT |publisher=[[The Financial Times]] |access-date=18 September 2010 }}</ref> Wolf has been named in the top 100 lists of global thinkers by ''[[Prospect (magazine)|Prospect]]''<ref name="ProspectTop100">{{cite web
 |url=http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/prospect-100-intellectuals/ 
 |title=Prospect's top 100 intellectuals 2009 
 |publisher=[[Prospect (magazine)|Prospect]] 
 |year=2009 
 |access-date=13 September 2010 
 |url-status=dead 
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090930143349/http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/prospect-100-intellectuals/ 
 |archive-date=30 September 2009 
}}
</ref> and by  ''[[Foreign Policy]]'' magazine.<ref>{{cite web
|url= https://foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/11/28/the_fp_top_100_global_thinkers?page=0,38#thinker55
|title= Foreign Policy Magazine's top 100 global thinkers 2011
|publisher= [[Foreign Policy]]
|date= December 2011
|access-date= 5 December 2011
|archive-date= 9 June 2012
|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120609170544/http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/11/28/the_fp_top_100_global_thinkers?page=0,38#thinker55
|url-status= dead
}}</ref>

Wolf is regarded as "staggeringly well connected" within financial circles.<ref name = "CalloftheWolf"/> His friends include leading financiers such as [[Mohamed A. El-Erian]]; politicians such as [[Manmohan Singh]], [[Timothy Geithner]] and [[Ed Balls]]; many leading economists; central bankers such as [[Mervyn King, Baron King of Lothbury|Mervyn King]]: according to Wolf, he knows all significant central bankers.<ref name = "CalloftheWolf"/> Despite Wolf's close connections with the powerful, he is trusted for his independence and is known to criticise initiatives promoted by his friends when he considers it to be in the public interest.<ref name = "CalloftheWolf"/> Wolf is widely regarded as one of the most influential economics journalists in the world. [[Lawrence H. Summers]] has called him "the world's preeminent financial journalist."<ref name="Fixing">{{cite web
 |url         = http://www.levininstitute.org/wolf/transcript.cfm
 |title       = Fixing Global Finance with Martin Wolf
 |publisher   = [[The Levin Institute]]
 |year        = 2009
 |access-date  = 13 September 2010
 |url-status     = dead
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20110727030716/http://www.levininstitute.org/wolf/transcript.cfm
 |archive-date = 27 July 2011
 |df          = dmy-all
}}
</ref> Mohamed A. El-Erian, former CEO of [[PIMCO]], said Wolf is "by far, the most influential economic columnist out there".<ref name = "CalloftheWolf"/> [[Paul Krugman]] wrote of him that "Wolf doesn't even have a PhD. And that matters not at all; what he has is a keen sense of observation, a level head, and an open mind."<ref name = "Listen">{{cite web
|url= https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/who-to-listen-to/
|title= Who To Listen To
|work= [[New York Times]]
|year = 2012
|access-date=30 July 2012}}
</ref>

''[[Prospect (magazine)|Prospect]]'' magazine described him as "the Anglosphere's most influential finance journalist",<ref name = "ProspectTop100"/> while economist [[Kenneth Rogoff]] has said, "He really is the premier financial and economics writer in the world".<ref name = "CalloftheWolf"/> In 2012, he received the [[Ischia International Journalism Award]].

In 2019, Wolf received the [[Gerald Loeb Lifetime Achievement Award winners|Gerald Loeb Lifetime Achievement Award]] from the [[UCLA Anderson School of Management]].<ref name=LOEB-2019>{{Cite press release |title=UCLA Anderson School of Management Announces 2019 Gerald Loeb Award Winners |date=June 28, 2019 |publisher=UCLA Anderson School of Management |url=https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ucla-anderson-school-of-management-announces-2019-gerald-loeb-award-winners-300877656.html |last1=Trounson |first1=Rebecca |access-date=October 2, 2019 |website=[[PR Newswire]]}}</ref>

===Publications===
* ''The Resistible Appeal of Fortress Europe''<ref name=resist>The Resistible Appeal of Fortress Europe (AEI Press 1994) {{ISBN|978-0-8447-3871-0}}</ref>
*''Why Globalization Works''<ref name=wgw>Why Globalization Works (Yale University Press 2004) {{ISBN|978-0-300-10252-9}}</ref>
*''[[Fixing Global Finance]]''<ref name=fixing>Fixing Global Finance (The Johns Hopkins University Press 2008) {{ISBN|978-0-8018-9048-2}}</ref>
* ''The Shifts and the Shocks: What We’ve Learned—and Have Still to Learn—from the Financial Crisis''<ref name=learned>The Shifts and the Shocks: What We’ve Learned—and Have Still to Learn—from the Financial Crisis (Penguin Press 2014) {{ISBN|978-1594205446}}</ref>
* ''The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism''<ref name=crisis>The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism (Allen Lane 2023) {{ISBN|978-0-2413-0341-2}}</ref>

==Personal life==
Wolf married [[Alison Wolf|Alison Margaret Potter]] in 1970 and has three children.<ref name=whoswho/>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

{{Commonscatinline}}

{{GeraldLoebAward Lifetime Achievement}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Wolf, Martin}}
[[Category:1946 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:British Jews]]
[[Category:Spouses of life peers]]
[[Category:Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Oxford]]
[[Category:Fellows of King's College London]]
[[Category:People educated at University College School]]
[[Category:Alumni of Nuffield College, Oxford]]
[[Category:English male journalists]]
[[Category:English financial writers]]
[[Category:British economics writers]]
[[Category:Academics of the University of Nottingham]]
[[Category:Financial Times people]]
[[Category:Gerald Loeb Lifetime Achievement Award winners]]
[[Category:Recipients of Ischia International Journalism Award]]
[[Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire]]