Richard Blundell holds the David Ricardo Chair of Political Economy at University College London where he was appointed Professor of Economics in 1984, and was Chair of the Department 1988-1992. He is a graduate of the University of Bristol and London School of Economics. Since 1986 he has been Research Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) , where he is also Director of the ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy . He was awarded a Leverhulme Personal Professorship in 1998. He has held visiting professor positions at UBC, MIT and Berkeley.

He holds Honorary Doctorates from the University of St.Gallen , Switzerland; the Norwegian School of Economics , NHH , Bergen, Norway; and the University of Mannheim , Mannheim.

He was knighted in the 2014 Queens New Years Honours list for services to Economics and Social Science . He was awarded the CBE in the 2006 Queens New Year Honours list.

In 1995 he was awarded the Yrjö Jahnsson Prize , given every two years to the best young economist in Europe (aged under 45), for his work in microeconometrics and the analysis of labour supply, welfare reform and consumer behaviour. In 2000 he was awarded the Econometric Society Frisch Prize Medal for his paper 'Estimating Labour Supply Responses using Tax Reforms'. In 2008 he was the recipient of the Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize given to a high level economist whose research combines both the theoretical and applied aspects of economics. He was awarded the CES-Ifo Prize in 2010 and the Sandmo Prize in 2011. He was the 2011 Downing Fellow at University of Melbourne. He was recipient of the IZA Prize in Labor Economics in 2012. He was awarded the 2015 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Prize in Economics.

He has been on the editorial board of many academic journals and was co-editor of Econometrica from 1997-2001 and co-editor of the Journal of Econometrics from 1992 to 1997. He is currently an Editorial Board member of Annual Reviews . His published papers have appeared in academic journals including Econometrica, Review of Economic Studies, American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Applied Econometrics and Economic Journal. He has also published a number of edited volumes and monographs. He is also one of the editors of the Mirrlees Review of Tax Reform which reported its findings in 201.