Career
He was the chief economist at the Economics and Statistics Department at the Organization of European Cooperation and Development in 1984–1992. In 1985 he gave the British Broadcasting Corporation Reith Lectures, which were published in the book Innocence and Design: The Influence of Economic Ideas on Policy (Blackwell, 1986). Since leaving the Organization of European Cooperation and Development, Henderson has been an independent author and consultant, and has acted as Visiting Fellow or Professor at the Organization of European Cooperation and Development Development Centre (Paris), the Centre for European Policy Studies (Brussels), Monash University, the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, the University of Melbourne, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the New Zealand Business Roundtable, the Melbourne Business School, and Westminster Business School.
He is currently a Fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Henderson and Nigel Lawson appealed to then-Prime Minister Tony Blair to investigate the economic implications of the potential implementation of policies put forth by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) findings. Henderson and Ian Castles, a former head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics argued that the IPCC"s projections of future emissions of greenhouse gases was flawed.
The IPCC"s forecasts of global output were based on national Gross Domestic Product converted to dollars using market exchange rates. Henderson and Ian Castles were critical of the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that was published in 2000.
The core of their critique was the use of market exchange rates (MER) for international comparison, in lieu of the theoretically favoured PPP exchange rate which corrects for differences in purchasing power.
The IPCC rebutted this criticism. Castles and Henderson later acknowledged that they were mistaken that future greenhouse gas emissions had been significantly overestimated. Henderson has suggested about climate change that the science is not settled and criticized the Stern Review regarding the economics of global warming.
He has also published books that strongly criticize "corporate social responsibility".
As of 2013 he is chairman of the Academic Advisory Council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.