Richard Murphy is assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

He received his Ph.D. in economics from University College London in 2014. Richard is a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and is affiliated with the Center for Economic Performance, and the economics of education group at CESifo Munich. He co-runs the Economics of Higher Education research network.

Richard’s main field of interest is the economics of education. He focuses on the determinants of human capital from the schooling years on to higher education. Methodologically he specializes in exploiting novel variation found in large administrative data. To date, he has worked on the impact of rank and mobile phones in schools, and the impact of financial aid and international students in universities.

Richard joined IZA as a Research Affiliate in June 2017 and became a Research Fellow in December 2023.