This year, the Fraser of Allander Institute turns 50! 🎉
Founded in 1975, the FAI has grown into a powerful voice in Scottish and UK economics. Now, five decades later, we’re honouring our legacy with a dynamic programme of events and themed outputs throughout the year, showcasing our history, impact, and future direction.
The events this year are part of us ensuring that we continue to make an impact… for at least the next 50 years! And, of course, for us all to celebrate!
Have a listen to our latest podcast to hear from FAI Director Mairi Spowage and economist Ben Cooper what we have planned, and see below for details and links.
So, what do we have planned?
50th Anniversary Conference, 18th and 19th September 2025
The Institute will host our inaugural conference at The University of Strathclyde’s Technology and Innovation Centre. The conference is a celebration of the work that the institute conducts, including keynote speakers, themed sessions and an opportunity to network with individuals working across applied economics in Scotland.
Our themed sessions will include research and discussions on fiscal sustainability, poverty and inequality, trade and data improvement and evaluation, among others, with the aim to highlight the broad nature of the work conducted by the Institute.
We will also be joined by many of our partners on the day, as well as confirmed key note speakers Professor Sir John Curtice and Stephen Boyle, the Auditor General for Scotland.
To register for the conference, click here.
More information and a full conference programme will be shared in the coming weeks, including an opportunity to pre-register for our themed sessions on the day.
Scotland Office Reception, Dover House, London, October 2025
We will host a parliamentary reception in October at Dover House in London. The event will provide an opportunity to network with those across the UK, including partners, researchers and organisations who have worked with us over the past 50 years. This also provides a great opportunity for those not able to attend our events in Scotland.
Full details on how to attend this event will be shared in the coming weeks.
Parliamentary Reception, Scottish Parliament, December 2025
To close out our year of celebrations, we will also host a parliamentary reception at The Scottish Parliament on the 11th December 2025. This event will provide an opportunity for everyone who has worked with or for the Institute to celebrate the past, present and future of the Fraser of Allander Institute!
Full details on how to register for this event will be shared in the coming weeks.
Unique publications and discussions
As well as all of this, keep an eye out for our new research and outputs on the history of the FAI, including insight on why we were founded, how we’ve evolved, and the impact we’ve had. We will also publish a series of reports and podcasts diving into the economic landscape that shaped the FAI, and how our research has influenced the conversation.
This includes a podcast series in the coming months in conversation with our current Director Mairi Spowage and some of our previous Institute Directors. These will provide discussions on the work conducted by the Institute under each of their tenures and an exploration of how the Scottish economy and the FAI have evolved.
You’ll also see a range of exciting front covers on some of our publications, including historical covers for the economic commentary!
We also have more exciting plans still in the works! If you have an idea for a celebratory partnership, we’d love to hear from you at fraser50@strath.ac.uk.
Calling All FAI-ers!
While today’s FAI team keeps the momentum going, we know we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. Over the past 50 years, countless individuals have contributed to the institute’s success—and we want to bring you all together to celebrate.
If you’ve worked with the FAI at any point in your career and would like to be part of our events for former contributors, please email fraser50@strath.ac.uk with “FORMER FAI” in the subject line. We’d love to reconnect and celebrate with you!
We look forward to celebrating the past, present and future of the Fraser of Allander Institute with you over the remainder of this year.
To keep in touch with what’s going on, join our mailing list, and keep up to date across all of our social media platforms.
Podcast transcript
00:00:07 Hannah Randolph
Hello and welcome back to the latest Fraser of Allandar podcast. I’m Hannah Randolph, an economist here at the institute, and today I’m joined by FAI director Mairi Spowage and economist Ben Cooper to talk about the Fraser of Allander Institute’s 50th anniversary.
The FAI was founded in 1975 to provide economic analysis for Scotland and a lot of the early work was focused on input output modelling and other macroeconomic analysis.
That was also the first year that we put out our quarterly economic commentary. Now, over the years the FAI has put out a huge amount of economic analysis and provided a record of Scotland ‘s economy through the commentary and through our Business Monitor which was first published in 1998.
Mairi, what else can you tell us about the history of the FAI?
00:00:48 Mairi Spowage
Yeah, the FAI as you say was established in 1975 and and thinking about the 50th anniversary we’ve been, we’ve been looking back through the, you know, very early documents published by by the FAI. Some lovely branding on these documents, by the way, which some of you will see over the next few months as we put out more info about the history of the institute, some interesting choices for branding over the years. But yeah it was very much filling a gap in specific analysis on on the Scottish economy and the trends that were being seen.
The Fraser of Allander Institute, along with, with colleagues at the Scotland Office and so on built the, the first input output model for the Scottish economy, which was for the reference year 1973. But it’s, it was done after the institute was established and it has pride of place on our wall in the institute, everyone will be glad to hear.
00:01:49 Hannah Randolph
And we would like tote bags, please!
00:01:55 Mairi Spowage
Yeah, absolutely! And you know the really interesting thing there, if you look at that that input output table, which for the uninitiated is essentially, sets out all the different sectors of the economy and how they, they interact with each other, you know, which sectors buy from other sectors and so on. It shows how much the economy the Scottish economy has changed over the years and with much more detail about individual manufacturing sectors than we would have in a table today, manufacturing be a much larger part of the economy in the 70s than it is now, and and and services being much less detailed than the table and much smaller in the economy. but the the FAI ‘s been at the heart of analysis of the Scottish economy in particular, although I would say in in the last 10 years or so we’ve been doing more and more across the UK and internationally focusing on our specialisms particularly on input-output tables. But I I first came across the FAI not when I came to work here, but in when I was in the Scottish Government leading the national accounts area, so I was in charge of producing all the economic data for Scotland and the public sector finance information as well.
And and one of the first things that my boss at the time told me was to talk to the key stakeholders, you know, the key users of this data and the top of that list was the Fraser of Allander institute that was, you know, one of the most important stakeholders to talk to about what I was producing. How useful they find it, how I could improve it and so on, because they were seen then and and are still I think seen now as a very influential and important user of economic data, producer of economic analysis and and you know contributions to to the policy debate and helping both the public and parliamentarians to understand what’s going on in the economy and help hold the government to account. So I was very familiar with the the FAI even before I came to work here many years later.
And it is thought of very well in Scottish policy making circles and is increasingly influential, I think, in in policy debates. Although I would say that I suppose.
00:04:10 Hannah Randolph
Yeah it is a bit, maybe – we can’t say we’re unbiased.
00:04:14 Mairi Spowage
That’s true that’s fair.
00:04:16 Hannah Randolph
We’ll be hearing later in the year from past directors is that right?
00:04:19 Mairi Spowage
Yes absolutely. So as part of our celebrations I have approached many of the past directors of the FBI over the last 50 years and kindly many of them have agreed to talk about their experiences of running the FAI when they were in charge.
Including from the 70s and 80s, so that’ll be really exciting to see what they think about how the Scottish economy has changed and the sort of analysis was at, which was at the forefront of what they were doing at the time. And I’m sure we’ll find things that were very different to what we’re doing now and things that, you know, are are exactly the same as as what we specialise in now.
So that’s going to be really interesting, so I’m going to to build that podcast series over the summer and we’ll release that in in the run up to our exciting conference in September.
00:05:10 Hannah Randolph
Yeah I was having a look at the first ever economic commentary and it was striking. It’s 1975, and they’re talking about high inflation and we are here in 2025 and still talking about a period of high inflation and relatively low growth so, the more things change, I guess. We do have a very exciting series of events planned for the year including two parliamentary receptions and our very own conference as Mairi has mentioned, so let’s start with the conference and what’s it going to look like.
00:05:37 Ben Cooper
Yes, so as you said the conference will be the first of the marquee events we’ve got planned to celebrate the 50th anniversary and so, quite exciting to announce that our conference takes place on the 18th and 19th of September. So this is a slight pause to let you hold that date on your calendars right now.
00:05:56 Hannah Randolph
Everyone’s writing it down.
00:05:57 Ben Cooper
That’s it and as Mairi mentioned at the start, you know, the the Fraser of Allander’s played a very influential role in kind of Scottish economic policy and analysis over the years and that’s kind of what the, the aim of the conference will be is to kind of demonstrate that. So in collaboration with our internal economists in the team and our analysts as well as our partners that we have formed and cultivated those relationships over the years, the whole aim of the conference will be to kind of demonstrate that key role that both economic analysis plays, but also the Fraser of Allander plays.
So we’ll have a kind of a number of plenary sessions, and I’ll pass along to Mairi shortly to kind of name a few of them, but we’ll also have, you know, kind of those themed sessions to kind of demonstrate that kind of broad brush area that we do analysis in and kind of demonstrate how different the role each of the economists and our team plays. So yes, that’s again the 18th and 19th of September, hold it in your diaries. And yeah, all of the available information is now available on an article on our website, including the the link to register on there. But yeah, if you have any questions, all of the information is on there please do get in touch.
00:06:56 Mairi Spowage
Yeah, and the point of it is is, there’s a few different things we want to achieve with the confidence and we’ve never done anything quite like this before. But it’s to – to be frank, to celebrate the work of the institute and and the impact that we feel that we’ve had, as Ben says, with our partners is important to demonstrate the the the power that economic and economic analysis can have, and the sorts of additions that can make to to the economic policy discussion in Scotland and and beyond because we will be talking about some of our research that we’re doing with partners across the UK as well.
So we’re quite keen to celebrate that and to highlight that, but it’s also to you know to bring together people to talk about, you know, the next steps for our research you know, make and and foster new relationships so we hope that whether you’ve worked with us in the past and and you’re interested in hearing about our research in recent years or whether, once you see the particularly the list of topics we’re going to cover and the sessions we’re going to have in, if you’re you work in that area and you’re interested in in hearing how economic research can can lead insights.
You know, it’s both about us looking back and taking stock and celebrating, but also looking forward to to what we’re going to achieve for the next, hopefully, fifty years.
00:08:18 Hannah Randolph
Ben’s already alluded to some of the exciting keynote speakers that we have, so who have we confirmed so far?
00:08:27 Mairi Spowage
So and it’s great to be able to announce that our fellow Strathclyder and election guru John Curtice is going to be talking at our conference.
We thought this would be a really great session to round off the the second day of the conference to look forward to the Hollywood election in 2026, which is is is fast approaching, it feels like. So I’m delighted that that John is is able to join us and to to come and you know give us his expert analysis. And I’m also delighted to say that the Auditor General Stephen Boyle’s going to join us as well to talk a bit about the way that our research can support the sort of scrutiny that Audit Scotland do, and how we, you know, sort of work together to ensure that that parliamentarians and so on have the sort of information they need to to scrutinise the government and to hold them to account. And many of the themes that we’ve been talking about in recent years such as the importance of thinking about prevention, policies for the long term, not just the short term, but also transparency around both financial and other information so that we’re able to see what’s happening and how effective policies are being, are likely to be themes of the session that Stephen’s going to be involved in.
So that’s just a start, other confirmations of speakers are on the way and as we publicise the conference we’ll tell you all about the speakers that we confirm as, you know, as we go along.
00:10:01 Hannah Randolph
Great, thank you, and as Ben said more detail on the things that we do have confirmed about the conference, as well as the registration link, are on our website. In terms of other events we will have these parliamentary receptions in the Scottish and UK parliaments, so Mairi, what can you tell us about what those will look like?
00:10:21 Mairi Spowage
Yeah so, we wanted to to have a celebration in the Scottish Parliament as as part of our 50th birthday to bring together the the parliamentarians we work with, but we also, for that event we’re we’re keen for people who have worked with us over the years and to come along, so we have put, there’s a particular e-mail address if you, if you used to work at the the FAI and you would like to be involved in any of our events please get in touch and let us know! As we go through some of the documents we’ve got about the history of the institute there’s lots of names there that you know people who are in economic circles recognise. I’m not sure that there are many economists who’ve been knocking about in Scotland for a while who haven’t worked for the institute to be honest.
So, so yeah it’d be great for people to get in touch and then come along and join the celebration in the Scottish Parliament. I’m really happy to say that’s kind of going to round off our year, we’re gonna have that on the 11th of December in the garden lobby of the Scottish Parliament, so look out for details of that event, which, as I say, we’re hoping to celebrate a bit of the history of the institute, previous workers, but also bring together the parliamentarians that we we hopefully help in our work.
00:11:31 Hannah Randolph
That’s great, that gives everyone a lot to look forward to this year, and thank you both for joining me today. You can find more information about our upcoming events on our website fraserofallander.org and through our social media, and as Mairi said, if you’ve previously worked with or for the Fraser of Allander Institute and you would like to be involved in our celebrations, please e-mail fraser50@strath.ac.uk and we’ll also put that in the article on our website. So thank you for joining us, come back next week to hear our reactions to the medium term financial strategy, until our next Fraser of Allander podcast, we’ll see you then.
Authors
The Fraser of Allander Institute (FAI) is a leading economy research institute based in the Department of Economics at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.