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Department of Economics

Interview with UVic Economics Alumni, Dr. Christopher Ragan

May 08, 2025

Christopher Ragan

Christopher Ragan received his B.A. (Honours) in Economics in 1984 from the ³Ô¹ÏÍø and his M.A. in Economics from Queen’s University in 1985. He completed his Ph.D. in Economics at M.I.T. in 1989. Christopher Ragan is an Associate Professor of Macroeconomics and Public Policy at McGill University’s Max Bell School of Public Policy, and from its inception in 2017 through August of 2024 he was the School’s founding Director.

Ragan was the Chair of Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission, which from 2014 through 2019 worked to identify policy options to improve environmental and economic performance in Canada. He was also a member of the federal finance minister’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth, which operated from 2016 to mid-2019. During 2010-12 he was the President of the Ottawa Economics Association. From 2010-13, Ragan held the David Dodge Chair in Monetary Policy at the C.D. Howe Institute, and for many years was a member of the Institute’s Monetary Policy Council. For 18 months in 2009-10, Ragan served as the Clifford Clark Visiting Economist at Finance Canada; during the 2004-05 academic year he served as Special Advisor to the Governor of the Bank of Canada.

Ragan is an enthusiastic teacher and public communicator. In 2007 he was awarded the Noel Fieldhouse teaching prize at McGill. Chris Ragan’s published research focuses mostly on the conduct of macroeconomic policy.

 We talked to Dr. Ragan and below is a transcript of this interview. It was edited for brevity and clarity. Our questions are in italics, Dr. Ragan’s answers in regular font.

The Interview

 

  1. What did you study at the University? What drew you to this subject? 

I was originally going to study sciences at UVIC and then oceanography at someplace like University of Washington. I was deeply into Scuba diving but then I “accidentally” took an Economics course (ECON 100) at UVIC with John Schofield and it completely changed my life. For the first time there was a discipline that really “spoke” to me in a way that nothing ever had before. I was hooked and quickly registered into Honours Economics.

   2. Can you talk about professors that you particularly remember and why they stood out?

 John Schofield initially tuned me on to the subject. But then I suppose the biggest influences were Colin Jones and Don Ferguson and also the Honours Advisor, Malcolm Rutherford. But I had many great teachers at UVIC, and I realized once I got to graduate school that my UVIC training in economics was very good.

  3. What do you consider to be the most memorable highlights of your time at UVic?

In Don Ferguson’s course, when I finally realized that the formal optimization in microeconomics and the bordered Hessians and the detailed results were – as Ferguson promised – actually rather trivial. But it took half of the course to get to this point. His course prepared me very well for both my MA and my PhD courses to follow.

 4. What did you do after you left the university? Would you say that your time at UVic prepared you for the career challenges that you faced subsequently?

 I went directly to Queen’s for my MA and then to MIT for my PhD. My UVIC training was fabulous preparation for both of these schools.  

  5. Could you tell us a little about the ways in which you have maintained a connection with UVic since your graduation?

 I haven’t kept a good connection – my fault entirely. I’ve dropped by the department a few times and have given a talk on a few occasions. But now that I am moving out to Victoria in early 2026, I am hoping to re-connect to the department and the university. It really is a fabulous place.

  6. Advice for the students who are interested in taking Economics

 I think Economics is a fabulous discipline, and it is so helpful in helping anyone think about what is going on in the world. I often wonder how confusing the world must be to those who haven’t got any formal economics training. But the material and the intuition don’t usually come easily really getting it requires reading, thinking, drawing lots of your own diagrams, reading again, and so on. But if you do the work the intuition will eventually come!

Dr. Ragan, thank you so much for talking to us. We’re very proud of you at UVic.