Donald Hay was an active member of the University of Oxford Department of Economics from 1970 until 2000, and Fellow and Tutor in Economics at Jesus College from 1970 until 2000. He was a Professorial Fellow of the College from 2000 to 2005 and was made an Emeritus Fellow in 2005. In College, he also held the roles of Senior Tutor and Estates Bursar.
Donald’s research interests included applied industrial economics, and the interface between Christian ethics and economics. His published work included one of the first papers on strategic entry deterrence in spatial markets, a paper on the impact on manufacturing firms of the Brazilian trade liberalization, a monograph (with Derek Morris, Shujie Yao, and Guy Liu) on the effects of market liberalization on Chinese manufacturing firms, and a book on Christianity and economics.
He also maintained an interest in the reform of competition policy in the UK. He taught microeconomics, industrial organization (at both graduate and undergraduate level), and supervised several doctoral theses in industrial economics. He published, with Derek Morris, an advanced textbook, Industrial Economics and Organisation: Theory and Evidence (second edition, 1991).
In 2000 he became the first Head of the Division of Social Sciences in the University, a position he held for five years. During that time he had overall responsibility for the completion of the Manor Road Social Science building. He was also acting Pro Vice Chancellor for Planning and Resources 2006-7, and was responsible for the implementation of the University Resource Allocation System (the JRAM) in 2009.
Since 2009 Donald has been fully retired. His main interest in retirement has been the development of a programme, Developing a Christian Mind, to enable Christian graduate students, researchers and academics (across all disciplines) to begin to integrate their faith and their academic activities. Further details can be found at www.dcmoxford.org
Current research interests
Christian theology and economics: especially Christian anthropology and the modelling of economic behaviour, the financial crisis.
Recent publications
(with Gordon Menzies), ‘Self and neighbours’, Economic Record, vol 88, Special Issue, June 2012, 137-148
(with Gordon Menzies) ‘Human nature, identity and motivation: a modelling experiment using Biblical anthropology’, in Oslington P ed. Oxford Handbook on Christianity and Economics, 2014.
(with Guy Liu), ‘The efficiency of firms: what difference does competition make?’ in J A Bikker and M van Leuwensteijn (eds), A new measure of competition in the financial industry: the performance-conduct-structure indicator, Routledge (Abingdon UK, NewYork), 2015. [This is revised and edited version of our 1997 Economic Journal article.]
(with G Menzies), ‘Is the model of human nature in economics fundamentally flawed? Seeking a better model of economic behaviour’, in Jeremy Kidwell and Sean Doherty eds Visions of the Common Good: Bringing Theology and Economics Together, Palgrave, 2015.
(with G Menzies, Thomas Simpson, David Vines), ‘Restoring trust in finance: from principal-agent to principled agent’, Economic Record September 2019 (on-line version).