My father, Peter Riach, who has died aged 86, was professor and head of the economics department at De Montfort University, Leicester, from 1987 to 2000. He was also a passionate advocate for equality in the labour market, initially on women’s rights and then on all forms of discrimination, including that based on race and age. His academic research to uncover such discrimination was widely appreciated.
A profoundly Keynesian economist, it was significant to Peter that, having returned permanently to central London from his native Australia in the 1980s, he lived only streets away from the former home of the economist John Maynard Keynes and other members of the Bloomsbury set who so inspired his convictions.
Born in Melbourne, to Andrew Riach, a grocer originally from Glasgow, and Doris, a dressmaker, Peter was also a talented athlete at Melbourne high school, and at Melbourne University, where he graduated in economics in 1958. There he met Lorraine, a fellow student who became a teacher and lecturer, and they married in 1960.
Peter first travelled to London in 1962 to study for his PhD at London School of Economics under the supervision of Henry Phelps Brown. He returned to Melbourne in 1965 to found the labour economics department at Monash University.
During the 70s his research contributed to the theory of income distribution, complementing the work of the Cambridge economist Nicholas Kaldor.
In the 80s, with his colleague Judith Rich, Peter pioneered the application of the experimental method to the labour market, sending out applications to real jobs but varying gender, race or age of the otherwise equally qualified and experienced applicants. The parallel applications led to very different rates of invitation to interview, suggesting discrimination.
Peter lived in London regularly on research sabbaticals, staying in Bloomsbury, but settled in Britain finally with his family in 1987 in order to found the economics department at De Montfort University. In 1997 he co-edited with Geoffrey Harcourt A ‘Second Edition’ of the General Theory, a sequel to Keynes’s major 1936 work.
During the Covid-19 lockdowns, Peter wrote and self-published a novel, Re-Imagining the Christmas Truce, an “alternative history” set during the 1914 first world war truce, in which famous feminists such as Emmeline Pankhurst establish peace in Europe.
After retiring in 2000, Peter was a consultant for the Prison Service Pay Review Body (2004-09), and from 2006 was a research fellow at the Institute of Labour Economics (IZA), in Bonn, Germany. The same year he appeared on a Panorama programme to discuss his research on age discrimination.
Peter and Lorraine enjoyed travelling to Spain and France, in particular the countryside around Aix-en-Provence to celebrate their love of the paintings of Cézanne, and regularly attending the ballet at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.
Lorraine died in 2006. Peter is survived by me.
