Christine is an internationally respected applied economist. She has worked with a wide range of international agencies as well as regularly for the UK government and Parliament. She was Director of the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research from 1990 to 2010. She has conducted an extensive programme of research on various aspects of the housing market, with special reference to housing finance and subsidies, private renting, social housing provision and land use planning, as well as on urban, industrial policy and privatisation issues.
Major themes in her recent research have included analysis of the relationship between planning and housing; the role of private renting in European housing systems; financing social housing in the UK and Europe; and more broadly the application of economic concepts and techniques to questions of public resource allocation with respect to housing, education, policing and urban regeneration. Her latest book, with Sarah Monk as joint editor, Making Housing More Affordable was published by Wiley Blackwell. She was awarded the OBE for services to housing in 1991. She has acted as Adviser to Parliamentary Select Committees on many occasions – latterly for the CLG Select Committee inquiry into Financing the Supply of New Housing.