Martin Wolf

Early life and education Wolf was born in London, in 1946. In London, Edmund met Wolf's mother, a Dutch Jew who had lost nearly thirty close relatives in the Holocaust. 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 root causes of World War II. 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".

Between 2010 and 2011, Wolf served on the Independent Commission on Banking. 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 sustainable environment, trust, the Rechtsstaat, and economic and financial stability. 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 Depression of the 1930s".

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)." Moreover, too few teachers were recruited in subjects like physics or design and 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.

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 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 Patron Saint's Day he received a doctorate honoris causa of the university

Wolf is a regular participant in the annual 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. Wolf has been named in the top 100 lists of global thinkers by Prospect and by Foreign Policy magazine.

Wolf is regarded as "staggeringly well connected" within financial circles. Mohamed A. El-Erian, former CEO of PIMCO, said Wolf is "by far, the most influential economic columnist out there".

Prospect magazine described him as "the Anglosphere's most influential finance journalist",

Publications The Resistible Appeal of Fortress Europe Why Globalization Works Fixing Global Finance The Shifts and the Shocks: What We’ve Learned—and Have Still to Learn—from the Financial Crisis The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism

Personal life Wolf married Alison Margaret Potter in 1970 and they have three children.