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Wendy Carlin is Professor of Economics at University College London (UCL), Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), and external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. 

She leads an international project - the CORE Econ project - to reform the undergraduate economics curriculum and is co-director of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Centre on Wealth Concentration, Inequality and the Economy. The CORE project produces open-access e-books used in universities around the world. Her research focuses on macroeconomics, institutions and economic performance, the economics of transition, inequality, and the political economy of the state, the market and civil society. She is a member of the Expert Advisory Panel of the UK's Office for Budget Responsibility. 

Wendy has co-authored with David Soskice four macroeconomics books: Macroeconomics and the Wage Bargain (OUP, 1990), Macroeconomics: Imperfections, Institutions and Policies (OUP, 2006) and Macroeconomics: Institutions, Instability and the Financial System (OUP, 2015). The third book integrates the financial system into the macroeconomic model to allow for analysis of financial cycles as well as business cycles and growth. The fourth (2024) is titled Macroeconomics: Institutions, Instability, and Inequality. It brings to the fore how inequality can be incorporated in macroeconomic modelling of business cycles, financial instability, and growth in a unified way. 

In 2015, she was awarded a CBE for services to economics and public finance, in 2022 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 2023 as Fellow of the British Academy and of the Academy of Social Sciences, and in 2025 of the Royal Economic Society. In the New Year's Honours of 2026, Wendy was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) for services to economics. She is Vice President of the International Economic Association (the first woman and first Australian to hold this post). 

Her older brother, John Carlin, is a biostatistician and co-author of Bayesian Data Analysis. 

Her younger brother, David Carlin is a writer, theatre director and ceramicist. His latest co-authored book (with Peta Murray) is How to Dress for Old Age.