A message from the Head

Congratulations to our newly promoted colleagues! Arthur Campbell, Paul Raschky, Wayne Geerling, Ayushi Bajaj, Gordon Leslie, Xiaodong Fan, Anupama Sethi, and Kris Ivanovski.

We are now expecting new colleagues Stefanie Fischer and Corey White to arrive in June.  Kaveh Majlesi and Krisztina Orban are anticipated to arrive near the end of this year.

The Economics Department has continued to increase our student numbers this year and last year, despite the adverse circumstances.  Most of this is due to a large strategic investment in new units and new programs, which is still an on-going process for us.

For example, the new Politics Philosophy and Economics (PPE) degree now has a healthy intake in its second year, and we anticipate more growth next year as word of mouth spreads.

The Department currently contributes to well over ten different degree programs and we are working on more. One exciting proposed new program is offering the Economics major through the Bachelor of Arts as well as Bachelor of Commerce, which is how for example our friends in Parkville manage things.

I believe we are likely to have a formal role in fifteen or more degree programs by 2023, which gives us both broad educational impact and a highly diversified business in a risky time. We'll give a full accounting of all our curriculum initiatives in the upcoming department self-review.

Many people have contributed to new or revised programs and units, too many to list by name, but we all owe thanks to those who have contributed to the design and delivery of these many initiatives.

With all the new business and new students, we will be making the case soon for at least one strategic hire to help continue those investments. Recruiting leads are very welcome.

Professor Michael Ward

2020 was another very strong year of teaching for Economics, despite the adversity of pandemic. Once again, as in the previous few years, Economics had the highest average student evaluations of any department in the Faculty. This takes a team effort, and there are many to thank. I would like to acknowledge the teaching associates who provided so much of the front-line small group teaching experience, each of the chief examiners who so effectively ran the units, and of course the members and leaders of the Education and the Learning and Teaching committees.

We are clearly delivering a good level of satisfaction in how we teach. What we teach is of course at least as important. I will recap a few of the recent developments in curriculum, and foreshadow others. There is so much to cover that I’ll just note in one sentence each of the major initiatives, but it is useful to see it all together to get a sense of how much innovation is underway.

In 2020, we launched the new Bachelor of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics; restructured our economics majors in both Clayton and Caulfield to provide more choice and better integration; restructured the Masters, refocused it as a professional degree, and introduced specialisations such as Development Economics; integrated some of the PhD and Honours coursework; and taught more than five new units on topics including Networks, Energy, Big Data and China.

For 2021 and beyond, initiatives (both exploratory and already approved) include new specialisations on International Business Economics for the Master of Business and Master of Business Leadership; a new Economics specialisation in the Bachelor of Data Science; an innovative multi-campus unit with Malaysia and eventually Indonesia; a summer and possibly eventual full semester in our Prato Italy campus; a new graduate diploma of Economic Analytics; the restructure of the PhD program; a broad new partnership with Arts, and again over five new units on topics such as the Internet, Growth, Cost-Benefit, and Finance. That’s quite a lot, and I’ve left out dozens of smaller initiatives. Most of us are involved in a few parts of this, putting it all together I hope this gives the department a broader overview of just how much change and innovation is going on.

The hope of course is that this will serve the students well and keep the department thriving well into the future.

Professor Michael Ward

It has been a challenging year to say the least, and there are challenges yet to come. We have met the adversity with great professionalism, and I remain convinced our medium to long-term outlook is promising.

As you will know, the university has experienced a very significant drop in students and revenue; even further drops are currently forecast for 2021. Therefore, the university is engaged in a Voluntary Separation Package process that is intended to reduce continuing academic positions by over 100 and professional staff positions by over 150 across the university. Unfortunately, two academic positions within the Economics department will likely be lost through this process. A newsletter is of course not the place for details, but I think it appropriate to acknowledge here these difficult circumstances will impact valued colleagues very personally.

You are likely wondering then why I am optimistic about our prospects in a COVID-normal or hopefully a post-COVID future. From a narrow business perspective, our fundamentals were very strong before COVID.

For example, the Department's budgeted direct expenses (mostly salaries) normally consume only about 33 per cent of our revenues. Even this year, I believe that figure is less than 40 per cent. We are still a very financially successful unit individually, as is the Business School, even after one accounts for our fair share of central support charges, and even in this crisis year. While we of course have to wear our share of the current crisis, our business model will weather it.

More importantly, I'm optimistic because of the fantastic people we have. A university, a department, is the people. Having great buildings, labs, offices, campus, and so-on would be for nothing without great people. As I've started preparing for our external review in 2021, I've been struck by what a great story we have to tell about the journey we've been on.

Over the last decade, I believe we have probably had one of the best trajectories in the world, in research excellence, teaching innovation, curriculum design, and staff recruiting. That simply doesn't happen without tremendous dedication by great colleagues each doing their part. So, again the fundamentals are strong where they matter most.

As with everywhere else in the world, we will be severely challenged until the COVID crisis has passed. Still, I remain convinced that we will continue to thrive post-COVID, because of the combination of strong business fundamentals and our great colleagues.

Professor Michael Ward

In a difficult time, our colleagues have shown tremendous professionalism and dedication to students. Thanks to each of you. I would also like to specifically acknowledge the leadership of Vinod, Simon, and Sue. Unfortunately, the difficult times are not yet past. There will still be at least partially online teaching. There will still be a tight budget. But these difficulties will eventually pass. We can emerge as an even better department, as we are forced to try new ways and learn through trial and the occasional error. Until then, please be especially supportive of colleagues and students, as all are going through stressful times. If anybody is having difficulty coping, please reach out to me, a trusted colleague, or the Employee Assistance Program on 1300 360 364.

You would have seen Matt Leister's email to the department from earlier in the year that he has left Australia and academia for family reasons. Matt has been a wonderful colleague and a good friend to so many of us; we have offered him an adjunct position to formalise our on-going ties. Nathan Lane is also departing soon, having recently accepted a lectureship at Oxford. Best wishes to Nathan and congratulations on a great opportunity. He will be missed, and I am sure his investments in the SodaLabs initiative will have lasting impact here. Moving the other direction, Mladen Adamovic has commenced as a research fellow working with Andreas on diversity and inclusion; we look forward to welcoming him properly once we are back on campus. We are expecting several fantastic new colleagues to arrive in the first half of next year: Stefanie Fischer, Kaveh Majlesi, Krisztina Orban, and Corey White. We are also still hoping for several other research fellows to commence, once border and visa issues from the pandemic are resolved.

In order to provide a secure financial footing for the department, we have been working hard at developing new business. It will take some space to give a sense of much of the activity, as it represents a huge effort by so many colleagues that is fundamentally important to the future of our department. Specific new units that were launched this year or are planned for next year include Economics for Entrepreneurs (George), Cost Benefit Analysis (George), Labour Economics (Anu), Political Economy (Weijia), Energy Economics (Gordon), Economic Growth (Sascha), European Economy (Marco), Chinese Economy and Global Business (He-Ling and Kris), Financial Decision Making (Kaveh), Network Economics (Yves and Arthur), Introduction to Quantitative Methods (Birendra), Sustainability Economics (Corey). We are also co-designing a number of cross-department integrating units within the Faculty to be offered in future. All of these are carefully targeted to meet specific education and business objectives, and we have been able to introduce them without significantly increasing teaching loads as a result of growth in the department. At the same time, we have retired several defunct or very small classes, and we will continue to review which classes make sense in the new environment. 

This year, we have also launched the Politics Philosophy and Economics (PPE) bachelor degree, joint with Arts, with Birendra as course director. Though starting small, we anticipate that it will eventually have an intake of 70-100 students per year, with additional teaching load being about one unit (1/3 of each of 4 new co-taught units). Within the PPE, students have an option to specialise in economics, which will provide similar economics exposure as a bachelor of economics. 

Most of you will have seen the redesign of the masters program, creating a new Master of Economics stream which replaces the old Master of Business Economics. Thanks to Mita, Paul and Vinod for their leadership on this. With this new design and positioning as a professional-focused degree, we hope to be able to tap into future growth opportunities both domestically and internationally. Students will be able to specialise in Business Economics, Policy Economics, Development Economics, Econometrics plus Economics, or build their own specialisation. Core to the redesign will be a year-long case-study based research and consulting skills class, which will provide a cohort experience where students across the specialisations can network. We are seeking permission to make some targeted investments in the masters program in hopes of significantly increasing student numbers by providing a great experience overall and building a reputation of workforce-ready professional training. There is also a possibility being explored by Paul of offering a graduate diploma version of the econometrics plus economics stream. I would like to acknowledge the contributions by our colleagues in CDES at developing several new units for the Development Economics specialisation.

The new unit on the Chinese Economy has opened the door to some new markets as well. This unit has been designed to be a very high-quality on-line experience, supplemented by some live workshops or tutorials. The model is of high initial investment but low marginal cost, offered at all campuses in most teaching periods. It turns out that this meshes nicely with a university-wide initiative for online-oriented masters. As an initial foray into this space, we have proposed offering a specialisation in International Business Economics into an online masters program in Business Management being designed by the Faculty. This will involve designing all-online versions of International Economics, Business in Asia, and Economics (ECF5953) to complement the new Chinese Economy unit The Faculty is also open to packaging these four units in their live formats both as a standalone graduate certificate and as a specialisation in an existing face to face business masters The bottom line is that with some hard upfront work, we may be able to leverage these existing investments to attract many more students.

In addition, we must be increasingly strategic from a business perspective about which units to offer and when to offer them. We must protect and build our student numbers, and do that efficiently with the resources we have. We will need to offer more in winter and summer teaching periods. We likely should offer some targeted units in two semesters, especially in units that are foundations for further study. We need to look at whether some of the very small units should be retained, or replaced with more cost-effective offerings. It is the nature of the times that some will be asked to do a bit more, or to do things a bit differently, than in the recent past. However, we will do this in a way that still protects generous time for research and service, which has been so important to the success of our department.

Professor Michael Ward

There is great news to celebrate in the 2018 Australian Research Council ERA quality rankings – we rated "well above world standard" (the top ranking) in all categories: economics overall, economic theory, applied economics, and econometrics. Moreover, Monash is in the top-50 in a variety of international rankings this year: ARWU 42, QS 45, Tilburg 33, RePEc 38. While one should be suspicious of the quirks of any ranking, doing well in so many with such different methodologies gives a robust signal of quality.

Our journey over the past decade is remarkable. Ten years ago, we likely would not have been in the top 100 internationally in any ranking. The initial ERA in 2010 rated us 2 (below world standard) in theory, 3 (at standard) in applied, and 4 (above standard) in econometrics. To move from that to the top rating of 5 (well above world standard) in all categories in less than a decade is a testament to everyone’s hard work, excellent recruiting, good working conditions, and support from the Faculty and University.

Of course, what really matters is that we do research that matters. If we continue to focus on that, the rankings will follow.

Krisztina Orban has formally accepted a lectureship with us.

Krisztina has been offered the opportunity of a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship at the NBER, and she will formally commence at Monash following that. She plans to take an adjunct appointment with us during the postdoc period and visit Monash during the winter.

Thanks to those involved in various stages of selection: Anke, Arthur, Choon, Giovanni, Michelle, Phil, Pushkar, Russell. There is a lot of hard work behind the scenes to make this happen. Even with an ad going up in mid-December we had about 300 applications, nearly 20 interviews, and then of course the campus visits. The support of our professional staff both in the department and in HR was great -- again there is a huge amount of essential professional work required that few see.

Professor Michael Ward