Tom McCarthy is Professor of Economics and Executive Dean of the Business School at Dublin City University since September 2002. He was previously a member of the Economics Department and Dean of Research & Graduate Studies at National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He has also held appointments at University College, Cork, Queens University, Canada, Trent University, Canada, and the University of Limerick. He graduated from University College, Cork with a BA and MA in Economics and was awarded a PhD by Queens University at Kingston, Canada.

Professor McCarthy's primary research area is Public Finance. His work has appeared in numerous publications including European Economy, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Economic Letters, The Economic and Social Review, and the Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland. He has also published a book Third World Debt: Towards and Equitable Solution (Gill & Macmillan 1994) with M. McCarthy.

He has acted as a research consultant for public and private organizationsProfessor McCarthy is a also member of the Higher Education Authority (HEA), the Irish Council for Science, Technology and Innovation (ICSTI), and the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS).