Series: Autumn 2004

Alan Hughes

Alan Hughes is the Director of the Economic and Social Research Council Centre for Business Research (CBR) and Margaret Thatcher Professor of Enterprise Studies at the Judge Institute of Management, and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge. 

He was from 2000-2003 Director of the National Competitiveness Network of the Cambridge-MIT Institute, a joint venture between MIT and the University of Cambridge.  Professor Hughes has held visiting Professorships in the USA, France and Australia. 

His research interests, on which he has had published extensively, are concerned with industrial and technology policy; the measurement of innovation; growth, innovation and financial characteristics of small and medium sized enterprises; analysis of the relationship between corporate takeovers, corporate governance, executive pay and business performance; training and business performance; measurement and evaluation of industrial and business support policy; the relationship between law and economics in the analysis of corporate organization and performance. 

Professor Hughes undertakes extensive consultancy activity and has worked with, amongst others HM Treasury, HM Inland Revenue, the DTI, DfES, the Bank of England, Eurostat, the International Labour Organisation, the National Consumer Council, and the UN World Institute for Development Economic Research. 

In 2004 he was appointed by the Prime Minister to membership of the Council for Science and Technology, the UK’s senior advisory body in this area.