Conor McCaffrey
Conor worked at Bruegel as a Research analyst until March 2025. He studied Philosophy, Political Science, Economics and Sociology in Trinity College Dublin for his undergraduate degree, where he specialised in Economics and studied in Tilburg University for a semester. He also holds an MA in Economics from the Vancouver School of Economics in the University of British Columbia, Canada, and his thesis considered the impact of welfare reforms on educational outcomes in the UK.
Prior to completing his Master’s degree, Conor completed a traineeship in the European Parliament, where much of his work was focused on the Special Committee on Foreign Interference in European Democracies. He also worked as an intern in the Institute for International and European Affairs in Dublin, and held roles as both a Research Assistant and a Teaching Assistant over the course of his Master’s degree. He is particularly interested in labour and public economics.
Conor is a native English and Irish speaker.
Featured work
Russian foreign trade tracker
Tracking Russian trade using data from the EU, China, the US, South Korea, Japan, India, the UK, Turkey, Switzerland, Norway, Brazil and Kazakhstan
Management of debt liabilities in the EU budget under the post-2027 MFF
Inflation inequality in the European Union and its drivers
Banking union and the long wait for cross-border integration
The European Union’s proposed duties on Chinese electric vehicles and their implications
The European Commission can take a better route than imposing countervailing duties on Chinese electric vehicles
Instruments of economic security
The challenge of improving European economic security has grown in importance, with various relevant policy measures introduced at EU level
European Economic Security: Current practices and further development
EU savers need a single-market place to invest
Proposals to leverage the single market to boost retail investment could lead to a product citizens will trust
Emerging countries have replaced most of Russia’s lost trade with advanced economies
Russian trade overall seems to have suffered little from sanctions; meanwhile, medicine and food trade continues with sanctioning countries
Making industrial policy work: a case study on the European Battery Alliance Academy
Efforts to address skilled-labour shortages in the battery sector can provide lessons to other areas of EU industrial policy.
What will it cost the European Union to pay its economic recovery debt?
Servicing the EU debt until 2058 seems feasible, despite increased borrowing costs, but member countries must make choices about budget funding
An estimate of the European Union’s long-term borrowing cost bill
Debt dynamics: Exploring EU borrowing in changing times
As interest costs rise, the EU should review how they are accounted for in its budget and financial framework.
The rising cost of European Union borrowing and what to do about it
Interest rates on the EU debt have risen substantially since 2022: what are the main drivers and implications and what to do about it?
The ECB as part of an imperfect architecture
Does inflation hit the poor hardest everywhere?
Low-income households suffer most from high inflation, but in some European Union countries the inflation burden is felt more equally than others.