Media and events
This years’ department awards for teaching were announced at the department meeting on July 14.
Associate Professor Xiaojian Zhao was awarded a commendation.
Ms Zhongwen Chen received the award for best TA.
Ms Icy Guo received a commendation in the TA awards.
Dr Mita Bhattacharya presented the paper 'A cross-country study on the resilience of electricity consumption to COVID-19 contaminant policies', at WEA International, July 2022 in San Diego (virtual presentation).
Dr Laura Puzzello organised a three- day workshop between July 18-20 on Meeting AEA replication standards using Quarto and GitHub. The workshop was aimed at all members of the department as well as PhD students. The workshop was instructed by Ms Cynthia Huang.
On August 4 2023 Associate Professor Xiaojian Zhao is organising the Monash Business School Workshop to Further Interdisciplinary Research on Motivated Cognition in Virtual Reality. He is also one of the speakers along with Ms Zhongwen Chen from the department.
The focus of the workshop is to encourage speakers from different disciplines to share their expertise and create new opportunities in the interdisciplinary dialogue and collaborations. It attempts to explore the use of VR technology and machine learning to conduct a fully controlled economic experiment of human behaviours that could be difficult to achieve in the standard fields and laboratories.
Professor Yves Zenou has presented at the following institutions during May and June 2023.
- Economics seminar series, New York University at Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), May 1, 2023.
- Center for Behavioral Institutional Design (C-BID) seminar series, New York University at Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), May 4, 2023.
- Workshop on social and economic networks, AMU-AMSE, Marseille, June 1-2, 2023.
- Seminar in economic development, Paris School of Economics, June 12, 2023.
- Seminar at the department of economics, Stockholm University, June 15, 2023.
Professor Sascha Becker has been appointed Joint Managing editor of The Economic Journal.
Congratulations to Dr Stefanie Fischer who has been promoted to Associate Professor and Dr Isaac Gross who was promoted to Senior lecturer.
A number of new staff are due to arrive in the coming months. We look forward to making them feel welcome!
Dr Ricardo Dahis arrived July 31.
Dr Maxime Gravouille arrives later in the year.
Professor Moshe Hazan arrives September 1.
Dr Filip Premik arrives September 1.
Previous media and events
2023
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2022
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December
As always, there are many awards to celebrate at this time of year.
First, congratulations to Associate Professor Xiaojian Zhao for receiving the Dean's Award for Excellence in Research 2022.
And to Dr Anupama Sethi for a Dean's Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning.
Further, we congratulate Professors Sascha Becker and Russell Smyth on being elected to the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA). In total, 34 leading scholars in the social sciences were elected this year.
Dr Zac Gross has been awarded the Vice-Chancellor's Citation For Outstanding Contributions To Student Learning – Early Career. See the full list of awardees.
Congratulations to Zac for this well deserved recognition!
Associate Professor Simon Angus and colleagues have received the 2022 Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) Award for Innovation and Excellence in Research. The annual Network Awards recognise and reward innovation and excellence in Australian business schools, highlighting the sector’s positive social impact and contribution. Congratulations.
Professors Kaveh Majslesi and Paul Raschky have been named top researchers in the fields of Economics and Development Economics by the Australian Research Magazine.
Also, Professor Majslesi’s paper “Cultural Origins of Investment Behavior” was chosen as the “Best Paper in Asset Pricing and Investments” (one of the two categories of awards, the other being corporate finance) at the Financial Management Association Asia-Pacific Conference 2022 that was held at Monash Business School between 11–13 December.
This year’s Christmas lunch was held at the Bleakhouse Hotel in Albert Park on December 14th. It was a great day with 60 staff, PhD students and visitors attending.
Professor Yves Zenou took part in the UNSW-UQ Economic Theory Festival: Bounded Rationality, Information and Markets in Sydney on December 5–6, 2022. He also presented at the departmental seminar, University of New South Wales in Sydney on December 7, 2022.
Further, he took part in a workshop on social networks at the Fondation de Treilles outside Nice in France on November 7–12, 2022.
Associate Professor Simon Angus was interviewed about internet access in Iran.
Associate Professor Guillaume Roger contributed to an article on energy bills in the New Daily.
The latest series of Monash Business School podcast “Thought Capital” on climate change features amongst others Associate Professors Anke LeRoux and Guillaume Roger from the Department of Economics.
Congratulations to Professor Zhijun Chen, Associate Professor Laura Puzello, and Associate Professor Paulo Santos on their recent promotions!
Professor Erte Xiao was elected as Asia-Pacific regional vice-president of ESA (Economic Science Association).
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September
Associate Professor Guillaume Roger is supervising postdoctoral students, Sergei Balakin and Ningyi Sun. They are funded by an ARENA grant and with contributions from the Grid Innovation Hub. Welcome!
Senior lecturer Mita Bhattacharya presented a paper titled 'Outsourcing Efficiency of Power Plant Operation in the US', at the Annual Conference organized by Western Economic Association International., June 29, 2022.
Online workshop
The 4th Monash-Warwick-Zurich Text-as-Date workshop took place online in early September. It was organised by Associate professor Elliott Ash (ETH Zurich) and Professor Sascha O. Becker.
Social inclusion and diversity in Economics
The Women in Economics Network Victoria and the Department of Economics at Monash University organised a panel discussion and Q&A on Social Inclusion and Diversity in Economics on August 16. The session was moderated by Senior Lecturer Solmaz Moslehi.
This session explored career pathways that students with different socioeconomic backgrounds can take after studying Economics or related disciplines. The event featured a panel discussion of inclusive and diverse careers in economics and a Q&A with the panellists, who shared their different career journeys. Students also had the opportunity to meet our panellists in our post-panel networking session. The event was part of Learning and Teaching Committee’s activities.
Panellists included:
- Riki Polygenis, Assistant Secretary of the Financial and Monetary Policy Branch at Commonwealth Treasury.
- Stoja Andric, Senior Project Manager, Victorian Department of Education and Training.
- Isabelle Layton, Senior Policy Advisor in the Victorian Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions.
Sascha Becker
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung covered Professor Sascha Becker’s research on forced migration ("uprootedness hypothesis") in their June 5 edition.
Mita Bhattacharya
Senior lecturer Mita Bhattacharya was interviewed by Monash Impact on the topic of energy supply and energy poverty in Australia: “Australia finally sees the danger as energy poverty risk looms.”
Lionel Frost
Associate Professor Lionel Frost was featured in Monash Lens on the topic of water resilient cities: “Tapping into Aboriginal knowledge to create a water-resilient future for Australia's cities.”
Ranjan Ray
Professor Ranjan Ray took part in the Monash University podcast “A different lens” on the topic of “The Shifting Sands of Global Power” – Is the world more dangerous now than it’s ever been? Listen here.
Congratulations to Professor Zhijun Chen, Associate Professor Laura Puzello, and Associate Professor Paulo Santos on their recent promotions!
Professor Erte Xiao was elected as Asia-Pacific regional vice-president of ESA (Economic Science Association).
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June
Dr Mita Bhattacharya has been awarded a grant for the 'Decision Engine to Support the Path to Net Zero', CRC-P project, under the RACE2030 program, with Mark Wallace from Monash University, Jahangir Hossain from the University Technology of Sydney, and Atiq Zaman from CurtinUniversity.
Dr Mallory Avery and Professor Andreas Leibbrandt have together with Jeffrey Flory from Claremont McKenna College, USA, received US$100,000 funding from the Russell Sage Foundation for their project "Does Work from Home Work for Diversity? Evidence From a Field Experiment"
Ass. Professor Wayne Geerling is presenting the lecture “Using Squid Game to Teach Game Theory” at the TeachECONference 2022 at the Centre for Teaching and Learning Excellence, University City London in June 2022.
He has also co-created a new website devoted to the same topic: www.economicsofsquidgame.com
Professor Yves Zenou is presenting at the ‘Lunch seminar TOM (Theory, Organisation and Markets)’ at Paris School of Economics in Paris, France on June 1, 2022.
And at the ‘Labour and public economics seminar’, Paris School of Economics, Paris, June 2, 2022.
Monash Lecture series in Behavioural economics
In 2022, Monash Lecture Series in Behavioural Economics continues to invite leading scholars to give online lectures on some frontier topics in the field of behavioural and experimental economics.
This year, we have successfully delivered two lectures by Roland Benabou on “Beliefs and Misbeliefs: The Economics of Wishful Thinking” and David Rand on “The Psychology of Fake News”. The recorded lectures are available on YouTube.
Department of Economics Careers Panel
The Careers Panel was held on the 23rd of March to a full auditorium. It was organised in partnership with the Graduate Development Team and was very successful. The speakers showcased the diversity in careers paths and highlighted that economists come from diverse backgrounds and the students had the opportunity to ask questions.
Ass. Professor Wayne Geerling has presented the following lectures:
“Economics Education Research: What I Do And Why It Matters”, Business Education Research Group (BERG) Symposium (February 2022).
“Finding Innovative Ways to Engage Your Students In Era 4.0”, Monash Business School Deep Dive (February 2022).
“Using Squid Game to Teach Game Theory”, Wiley Webinar (February 2022).
“Using Squid Game to Teach Game Theory”, Robert Morris University Teaching Conference, Pittsburgh, America February 2022).
“Making the ‘Dismal Science’ Less Dismal Through Experiential Learning”, Monash Education Academy (March 2022).
“Teaching in the 4.0 Era: The Use of Media in the Classroom”, Guangzhou University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China (March 2022).
“Teaching in the 4.0 Era: The Use of Media in the Classroom”, Technische Hochschule Deggendorf, Germany (March 2022).
Professor Yves Zenou presented at the AME Labour Economics Seminar, Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI), Stockholm, Sweden on May 5, 2022. And the Departmental Seminar at the Carey Business School, Johns Hopkins University (online) on April 27, 2022.
Finally, his presentation on early childhood was delivered at the Victorian Treasury's New Directions in Economic Policy seminar series on 12 April 2022.
Professor Sascha O. Becker has been appointed as member of theBoard of Editors at the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.
Simon Angus, Klaus Ackerman, Paul Raschky
The research of A/Professor Simon Angus, Dr Klaus Ackerman and Professor Paul Raschky from the Monash IP Observatory has been featured in Monash Lens: “Cyberwar: Keeping track of the battle to keep Ukraine online”
Sascha Becker
Professor Sascha Becker was interviewed by Tim Phillips on the Vox/CEPR podcast about his research on the economic impact of mass displacement in history, both on refugees and communities.
Listen to the full episode here.
He was also interviewed by The real Jason Duncan in an episode on YouTube called “Leaving your company in good hands - the root of all success” .
Mita Bhattacharya
Dr Mita Bhattacharya’s research on the use of end-of-life-tyres titled 'From dead tyres to liquid fuels', was published in 'Sustainability Matters' with co-authors from the Faculty of Engineering. This research was funded by the Tyre Stewardship.
Wayne Geerling
Ass. Professor Wayne Geerling’s article “Squid pro quo: using Squid Game to engage economics students”, was published in ‘The Campus Times Higher Education’.
Yew-Kwang Ng
Professor Yew-Kwang Ng was interviewed by SBS Radio's Mandarin program on the current Federal Election.
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February
Stefanie Fischer and Corey White
Dr Stefanie Fischer and Dr Corey White discussed abortions and the new restrictive abortion bans in Texas in The New York Times.
Wayne Geerling
A/Prof Wayne Geerling has done a series of interviews to promote his new working paper: “Using Squid Game to Teach Game Theory” (ABC, 3AW, Herald Sun; 7News TV: AusBiz).
The story has been picked up by dozens of media outlets worldwide and been translated into Bahasa-Indonesian, Italian and Vietnamese.
Claudio Labanca
Dr Claudio Labanca appeared on the Monash University podcast, What Happens Next? to speak about the effects of migration on the labour market opportunities of native workers.
Further, he discussed his research on the labour market effects of the migration induced by the Arab Spring uprisings on the academic Faculti platform.
Ranjan Ray
Professor Ranjan Ray was interviewed by Social Science Encyclopedia on aspects of his policy driven research on India.
Social Science Encyclopedia is well known internationally for publishing books in the area of Social Science. They have recently started a new web-based initiative featuring recorded interviews with internationally renowned researchers.
Professor Raj’s research on “Goods and Services tax: Estimating Optimal rates” with Dr Amita Majumder and Associate Professor Sattwik Santra was featured in Ideas for India.
Professor Raj was also interviewed on the research platform Faculti about his work on Covid-19.
Paul Raschky
Professor Paul Raschky was named Field Leader in Development Economics by The Australian Research Magazine.
Liang Choon Wang
The research of Associate Professor Liang Choon Wang and Professor Yves Zenou on "Gender inequality and caste: Field experiment evidence from India" was featured in Ideas for India.
Yves Zenou
Yves Zenou was also named Field Leader in Economics and Economic Policy by The Australian Research Magazine.
The 33rd PhD Conference in Economics and Business
The 33rd PhD Conference in Economics and Business, organised by Prof Pushkar Maitra, was held online in November. The conference included 160 registered participants, 30 presenters from 20 universities and discussants from 10 universities. Panel discussions were organised and moderated by Prof Ranjan Ray, Prof Stephen King and Monash Business School Head, Prof Simon Wilkie.
MEEW21
Monash Environmental Economics workshop MEEW21 was held on November 23-24th 2021.
The 2021 Monash Environmental Economics Workshop, organised by our Energy, Environment and Resource Economics Research Group and jointly hosted by the Department of Economics and CDES, was again a great success.
In its fifth iteration, MEEW took on a hybrid format featuring keynotes by A/Prof Lana Friesen (UQ) and Ms Susan Madden (Murray Darling Basin Authority and NSW Assistant Commissioner for Natural Resources) as well as a jam-packed program across energy, environment and natural resource economics topics. With over 70 online and in-person participants the excitement to reconnect and discuss research with colleagues across Australia after the long lock-down was palpable.
Australasian development economics workshop
On 25-26 November, the 16th annual Australasian Development Economics Workshop was held in a hybrid format, sponsored by the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
SEEDEC
The Symposium on Economic experiments in developing countries (SEEDEC) was co-hosted by FAIR at the Norwegian School of Economics and the Department of Economics at Monash Business School on 7 October, 2021.
The ninth annual SEEDEC symposium brought together a community of scholars who employ laboratory experimental methods for research in low and middle-income countries.
Monash Lecture series in Behavioural economics
The department of Economics initiated the Monash Lecture Series in Behavioural Economics which aims to invite leading scholars to give online lectures on some frontier topics in the field of behavioural and experimental economics.
In 2021, we successfully delivered three lectures by John List on “Voltage Effect”, Colin Camerer on “Individual Behaviour and Game Theory” and Juan Carrillo on “Neuroeconomic Theory”. The recorded lectures are available on Youtube.
In 2022, we will have Prof Roland Benabou from Princeton University to kick off the lecture series on 15 March, 9-11am.
Prof Sascha Becker has joined the Editorial Board of the /Journal of Economic
History (JEH).
Prof Becker also gave a keynote lecture at the 5th annual conference of the
Asian and Australasian Society of Labour Economics (AASLE) held at Peking University on 9-11 December, 2021.
He also presented his paper “Scholars at Risk: Academic networks and High-skilled emigration from Nazi Germany at Osaka University in Japan (online) on 6 December, 2021.
At the University of British Columbia in Vancouver Prof Becker gave a talk (online) on “Shallow Christianity and the rise of Hitler” on 1 October, 2021.
On 21September 2021 he presented a research paper at the Institute for International Economic Studies in Stockholm.
Finally, on 9January, Prof Becker spent from 2am- 4am Melbourne time presenting a paper and discussing another paper at the (online) Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA) meetings.
Prof Yves Zenou presented a paper at the Asian-Pacific Industrial Organization Society (APIOS) Conference (online), National University of Singapore, 13-14 December, 2021
He also held the Theory Seminar (online) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, on 24 September, 2022.
Dr Claudio Labanca is co-organizing the inaugural workshop in Empirical Public Economics with Australian National University (ANU). This event, which will be hosted by the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute in Canberra on March 18 and 19, will bring together scholars and policy makers to discuss current issues and research in public economics.
This workshop is the first one of this type to be organized in Australia. It will set the seeds for a new community of researchers in public economics, and it will provide a great opportunity for our colleagues to showcase their research to policy makers, thus increasing its impact.
The keynote speaker is Professor Claus Thustrup Kreiner, of the Center for Economic Behaviour and Inequality, Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen. Professor Thustrup Kreiner is co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics and an expert on the use of large administrative datasets for research and policy insight.
Sascha Becker delivered the 2021 Noel Butlin Public Lecture at the Asia-Pacific Business and Economic History Conference at the University of Western Australia in February. The title of Sascha's lecture was 'Forced Displacement in History'. The conference and public lecture are annual events hosted by the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand. Lionel Frost is current President of the Society.
Professor Sascha Becker gave the Noel Butlin Lecture at the Asia Pacific Economic and Business History Conference 2021, (virtually) in Perth, on 11 Feb 2021.
Senior Lecturer Michelle Rendall gave a talk at The Oxford University Business Economics Programme on technology innovation, inequalities and gender (https://oubep.econ.ox.ac.uk/oubep_seminars/technology-innovation-inequalities-and-gender/)
Professor Yves Zenou gave the keynote speech at the Economic Society of Uruguay (SEU) annual meeting on December 23, 2020.
He also gave a seminar talk at the Cambridge-INET Networks Webinar Series on November 27, 2020 and a seminar talk at the New Zealand Economics eSeminar Series on November 13, 2020.
Finally, Professor Zenou participated in the Monthly Applied Economics Webinar, HKUST, NUS, Taiwan National, and University of Tokyo on February 25 2021.
Professor Sascha Becker wrote a piece in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung entitled “How religion shaped Economic history” with colleagues Jared Rubin and and Ludger Wössmann.
He and Marco Lecci have also started a new Economics podcast called GrowthChat where they cover topics in Economic growth and Economic History.
They interview Economists and other social scientists about their recent research papers and publications. The aim of the podcast is to share the invaluable work that researchers do, making it accessible to the general public and students, independently of their background and preparation.
So far seven interviews have been recorded and are available on Spotify, YouTube and Itunes. New episodes will be released every ten days.
Thought Capital
A new season of the Monash Business School podcast Thought Capital, 'Connecting the dots of COVID-19', is out now.
Participants in this season include Monash Business School Head Professor Simon Wilkie, former Dean Professor Stephen King, Adjunct Professor Tony Venables, Associate Professor Giovanni Caggiano, Associate Professor Gaurav Datt and Associate professor He-Ling Shi and a number of other colleagues from across the Business School.
You can find Thought Capital on Spotify, Itunes or wherever you listen to podcasts.
- In a recent paper called 'Geographic diversity in economic publishing' by Associate Professor Simon Angus, Associate Professor Kadir Atalay from University of Sydney, Associate Professor Jonathan Newton from Kyoto University and Senior Lecturer David Ubilava from University of Sydney, it is shown that Monash University has the highest concentration of editorial power in the 'rest of the world' meaning outside North America and Europe.
The authors say: "The most powerful institution in the world outside of North America and Europe, Monash University, is only as powerful as the 32nd most powerful institution in North America, but would rank 8th if it were located in Europe."
- On that note, we are happy to announce that Professor Sascha Becker has been appointed Associate Editor at the Journal of the European Association, from 1 Jan 2021.
He was also elected to the Executive Board of the Asian & Australasian Society of Labour Economics.
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2021
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September
Simon Angus, Paul Raschky
Associate Professor Simon Angus, Professor Paul Raschky and Dr Klaus Ackermann (EBS) of the Monash IP Observatory, have contributed data and insights to more internet shutdown reporting around the world:
Gaurav Datt
Up to 94 per cent of households in India’s third-largest state, Bihar, have been adversely affected by the pandemic, according to 'Lives and Livelihoods in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic in rural Bihar' a joint study by Associate Professor Gaurav Datt (CDES, Monash University), Dr. Swati Dutta and Dr. Sunil K. Mishra (Institute for Human Development, India). This was widely covered in the media including Le Monde, New Indian Express, The Economic Times, countercurrents.org, News18, The Hindu, Business Today, Gulf News and The Logical Indian .
Vinod Mishra
Associate Professor Vinod Mishra was quoted in the news story on SBS News on the "Rethinking Permanent Skilled Migration" report by Grattan Institute.
A SBS Hindi News story featured Dr Mishra’s views on the recommendations of Joint Parliamentary Committee's final report on skilled migration.
A panel of students on the Academic Affairs Committee have selected Associate Professor Wayne Geerling as the deserving recipient of the Faculty Teaching Award (Business & Economics Faculty). The award is for academic staff members who have provided outstanding teaching in each faculty, creating a better learning experience for students.
Over the course of 2021, Dr Geerling has been nominated by many students. Here are some of the reasons his nominations stood out to the panel:
- Keeping students engaged by using clips, music videos and game shows during the teaching.
- In particular, the use of the inquisitive and Kahoot programs in helping students grasp modern technology theory.
- His continued enthusiasm in a time where students needed it as well as an ability to adapt to teaching in lockdown and empathising with his students’ situations.
- Encouraging students to prioritise their mental health and reassuring them of available support.
- Organising social events during lockdown in a time where students were vulnerable to isolation and loneliness.
It was no easy task for the panel to pick winners from hundreds of staff members who have worked tirelessly this year in extraordinary circumstances, yet the comments made by students about his teaching in 2021 stood out a perfect embodiment of what they set out to recognise.
Associate Professor Geerling also received a purple letter for ECC1000 in semester 1, 2021. These are awarded to the top performing units in the student evaluations of teaching (SETUs). Congratulations!
Sascha Becker
Professor Sascha Becker presented the paper "Scholars at Risk: Academic Networks and High-Skilled Emigration from Nazi Germany" at the University of Goettingen in the Netherlands on 21June and on 22June at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel.
He also presented the paper "Shallow Christianity and the Rise of Hitler" at the Ifo Institute at the University of Munich, Germany on 5August. All presentations by Zoom.
Mita Bhattacharya
The paper 'Energy productivity across different regions: Drivers and convergence analysis', by Ms Sidker Arjita, Dr Mita Bhattacharya and Dr John Inekwe was presented at WEA International, a virtual presentation by Ms. Sidker Arjita.
Wayne Geerling
Associate Professor Geerling ran an online teaching webinar with G. Dirk Mateer from the University of Texas: "Engaging Your Economics Students in All Modalities" on 21 July.
He also gave a keynote address: "Teaching Economics in English to ESL Students in the 4.0 Era: The Use of Media in the Classroom" at the Language Teaching and Learning in the 4.0 Era: Opportunities, Challenges and Strategies conference at Ha Noi University of Science and Technology, on 28 July.
Dr Geeling delivered an online seminar: "Breaking Down the Language Barrier: Using Pop Culture from Across the Globe to Teach Microeconomics", at the Developments in Economics Education Conference in Edinburgh on 2 September.
He will deliver an online seminar: "Diversifying the Use of Pop Culture in the Classroom: K-Pop Music" at the University of City London CTaLE Seminar, in London on 28 September.
Claudio Labanca
On August 26 and 27, a team of Dr Victoria Baranov (Melbourne University), Dr Claudio Labanca (Monash Economics) and Dr Denni Tomaasi (Monash EBS) organised and hosted the 23rd edition of the Labour Econometrics Workshop.
This workshop provides an opportunity for researchers in labour economics and applied econometrics to share and discuss their latest research. The workshop is the major conference for labour studies in Australia and it is hosted by a different Australian university each year. This year the virtual event was co-hosted by Monash Business School and the University of Melbourne. This was the first time the event had been hosted at Monash University since its inception 23 years ago. The conference featured keynote speeches by Professor Gordon Dahl from UC San Diego and Professor Kelsey Jack from UC Santa Barbara. More details on the event (including videos of the keynote talks) are available on the event website.
Guillaume Roger
Associate Professor Guillaume Roger was invited to testify at a Parliamentary Hearing on 6September held as part of the 'Inquiry into the current circumstances, and the future need and potential for dispatchable energy generation and storage capability in Australia'. He spoke about the economics of storage, and specifically about how little we know about it and how much work is required.
Xiaojian Zhao
Monash Laboratory for Experimental Economics (MonLEE) is organising the 2021 Monash Zoom Mini-Workshop of Motivated Beliefs on 30 October. Learn more and register now.
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- In a recent paper called 'Geographic diversity in economic publishing' by Associate Professor Simon Angus, Associate Professor Kadir Atalay from University of Sydney, Associate Professor Jonathan Newton from Kyoto University and Senior Lecturer David Ubilava from University of Sydney, it is shown that Monash University has the highest concentration of editorial power in the 'rest of the world' meaning outside North America and Europe.
The authors say: "The most powerful institution in the world outside of North America and Europe, Monash University, is only as powerful as the 32nd most powerful institution in North America, but would rank 8th if it were located in Europe."
- On that note, we are happy to announce that Professor Sascha Becker has been appointed Associate Editor at the Journal of the European Association, from 1 Jan 2021.
He was also elected to the Executive Board of the Asian & Australasian Society of Labour Economics.
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June
Eight candidates from the department of Economics were successful in being promoted this year. Two to the highest (E) level. The department wishes to congratulate all staff promoted this year.
- Associate Professor Arthur Campbell was promoted to Professor.
- Associate professor Paul Raschky was promoted to Professor.
- Senior Lecturer Wayne Geerling was promoted to Associate Professor.
- Lecturer Ayushi Bajaj was promoted to Senior Lecturer.
- Lecturer Gordon Leslie was promoted to Senior Lecturer.
- Lecturer Xiaodong Fan was promoted to Senior Lecturer.
- Scholarly Teaching Fellow Dr Anupama Sethi was promoted to Lecturer.
- Scholarly Teaching Fellow Dr Kris Ivanoski was promoted to Lecturer.
Professor Sascha Becker
Professor Becker gave zoom seminars at Harvard University on the 11th of March and at Northwestern University. on the 5th of May 2021.
He also gave his first face-to-face seminar in more than 12 months, at
QUT Brisbane on the 8th of April 2021.
Mita Bhattacharya
Senior lecturer Mita Bhattacharya presented a paper entitled 'Drivers of energy poverty in the ASEAN+6 region (Australia, the People's Republic of China, India, Japan, Korea and New Zealand): Evidence from nonparametric estimates across countries' (co-authored with John Inekwe and Eric Yan), at the WEAI conference, Virtual Platform, on 18 March.
In conjunction with the Faculty of Engineering, Dr Bhattacharya recently completed a report on the assessment of liquid fuel, chemicals, and porous material production from the end-of-life tyres for the Tyre Stewardship Australia.
The techno-economic work concludes that subject to the right policy setting, a 60 tonne per day processing plant will become cash-positive in four years with about 80 cents per litre oil production cost while avoiding these from going to landfill.
A dedicated supply chain needs to exist to make pyrolysis plants viable at defined locations. Also, defined regulatory policies in support of the pyrolysis process will facilitate the introduction of pyrolysis plants which are technically not complicated.
Giovanni Caggiano
Professor Caggiano is due to give talks at the following universities:
- 12 August 2021 at Queensland University of Technology.
- 27 August 2021 at Auckland University of Technology.
- 1 September 2021 at Macquarie University.
He was also a speaker on the 8-9 April 2021 at the Applied Time Series Workshop, Federal Reserve of St Louis.
Lionel Frost
From the 26th of March to the 5th of April, Associate Professor Lionel Frost was part of a panel discussion on A new suburban ambition – the past and future of the Australian suburb, organised by MADA as part of Melbourne Design Week.
Gennadi Kazakevitch
Dr Kazakevitch now has a regular weekly (Monday) Economic News segment on Radio SBS (Russian). This is the link to the most recent one.
Kushneel Prakash
Dr Kushneel Prakash is the recipient of the 2020 Mollie Holman award for best doctoral thesis completed in the Faculty of Business and Economics. His thesis is entitled 'Three Essays on Subjective Wellbeing' and his supervisor is Professor Russell Smyth. Dr Prakash is now at the Melbourne Institute.
Ranjan Ray
Professor Ray presented a paper (written jointly with Parvin Singh) entitled "Regionally Disaggregated Estimates of Global Income Inequality with Evidence on Sensitivity to Purchasing Power Parity" at the World Congress of the International Economic Association (IEA). The IEA World Congress was scheduled to be held in Bali last year but was postponed to this year due to COVID-19 and is being held online. A link to the recording that has been uploaded on the IEA website. Parvin Singh did her master's degree in Economics from Monash. The full Conference programme is available on the IEA website.
Dr Udeni De Silva Perera recently completed her PhD thesis under the joint supervision of Professor Brett Inder (from EBS as her primary supervisor) and Professor Ranjan Ray (from Economics as her Associate supervisor). Her thesis is entitled, 'Essays On Child Growth In Sri Lanka: An Empirical Analysis Of The Effects Of Sectors, Interventions And Natural Disasters'. She received her PhD degree at a Convocation held in May that both Professor Inder and Professor Ray attended. Congratulations to Dr Udeni de Silva Perera.
Michelle Rendall
Senior lecturer Dr Michelle Rendall gave a seminar at Melbourne Institute on 14 May on 'Gender and Disadvantage in the Evolution of Test Score Gaps' (with Dr Jaai Parasnis and Dr Molly Paterson).
Yves Zenou
Professor Yves Zenou gave the keynote lecture at the 19th International Workshop on "Spatial Econometrics and Statistics" in Nantes, France (online) on 31May.
He also delivered a departmental seminar (online) at the University of Antwerp on 28 April and at the University of Ottawa on 26 March.
Lionel Frost
Associate Professor Lionel Frost was interviewed on ABC Radio Grandstand, as part of the AFL's Sir Doug Nicholls Round that recognises the contribution of Indigenous Australians. Dr Frost spoke about his research on the formation of the AFL's Racial Vilification Code.
He was also featured in Monash Lens, “How First Nations AFL players worked to fight racial vilification on and off the field.”
Wayne Geerling
Associate Professor Wayne Geerling spoke to Monash impact on the topic of using popular culture in teaching Economics.
Vinod Mishra
Associate Professor Vinod Mishra was featured in the SBS news story on 11 May regarding Australia’s Federal budget 2021.
He also gave his response to the Prime Minister's comments that opening international borders is not his immediate priority. On SBS on 12 May.
Further, a news story in Deutsche Welle (DW) Hindi edition quoted his views on the Australian prime minister's appeal that workers should return to offices now.
Ranjan Ray
Professor Ranjan Ray’s report on how the pandemic has affected some economies more than others has appeared in Monash Impact.
Yves Zenou
Professor Yves Zenou was featured In Monash Impact on social networks and political opinions.
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- In a recent paper called 'Geographic diversity in economic publishing' by Associate Professor Simon Angus, Associate Professor Kadir Atalay from University of Sydney, Associate Professor Jonathan Newton from Kyoto University and Senior Lecturer David Ubilava from University of Sydney, it is shown that Monash University has the highest concentration of editorial power in the 'rest of the world' meaning outside North America and Europe.
The authors say: "The most powerful institution in the world outside of North America and Europe, Monash University, is only as powerful as the 32nd most powerful institution in North America, but would rank 8th if it were located in Europe."
- On that note, we are happy to announce that Professor Sascha Becker has been appointed Associate Editor at the Journal of the European Association, from 1 Jan 2021.
He was also elected to the Executive Board of the Asian & Australasian Society of Labour Economics.
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March
The Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching is awarded to Associate Professor Vinod Mishra and Associate Professor Simon Angus as part of the Directors of Education team.
The Dean's Citation for outstanding contribution to Student Learning is attributed to Dr Claudio Labanca and Dr Kris Ivanovski.
Senior Lecturer Ratbek Dzhumashev has been awarded the Empirical Economics Lawrence R. Klein Award for outstanding papers in the field of Empirical Economics.
This biannual prize is awarded for the best paper published in the journal Empirical Economics. The Empirical Economics Springer prize was awarded for the first time by Springer in 2006,and was renamed in honour of the Nobel prize winner Lawrence R. Klein in 2013.
The 2019/2020 Lawrence R. Klein Award goes to:
Abebe Hailemariam (Monash Uni), Ratbek Dzhumashev (Monash Uni) and Muhammad Shahbaz for the joint paper "Carbon emissions, income inequality and economic development" published in Empirical Economics (2020) 59:1139–1159.
Professor Sascha Becker has been appointed Associate Editor at the Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE), the only QJE Associate Editor south of the Equator.
Senior Lecturer Michelle Rendall became a fellow of CEPR in January.
Dr Claudio Labanca is co-organizing the inaugural workshop in Empirical Public Economics with Australian National University (ANU). This event, which will be hosted by the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute in Canberra on March 18 and 19, will bring together scholars and policy makers to discuss current issues and research in public economics.
This workshop is the first one of this type to be organized in Australia. It will set the seeds for a new community of researchers in public economics, and it will provide a great opportunity for our colleagues to showcase their research to policy makers, thus increasing its impact.
The keynote speaker is Professor Claus Thustrup Kreiner, of the Center for Economic Behaviour and Inequality, Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen. Professor Thustrup Kreiner is co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics and an expert on the use of large administrative datasets for research and policy insight.
Sascha Becker delivered the 2021 Noel Butlin Public Lecture at the Asia-Pacific Business and Economic History Conference at the University of Western Australia in February. The title of Sascha's lecture was 'Forced Displacement in History'. The conference and public lecture are annual events hosted by the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand. Lionel Frost is current President of the Society.
Professor Sascha Becker gave the Noel Butlin Lecture at the Asia Pacific Economic and Business History Conference 2021, (virtually) in Perth, on 11 Feb 2021.
Senior Lecturer Michelle Rendall gave a talk at The Oxford University Business Economics Programme on technology innovation, inequalities and gender (https://oubep.econ.ox.ac.uk/oubep_seminars/technology-innovation-inequalities-and-gender/)
Professor Yves Zenou gave the keynote speech at the Economic Society of Uruguay (SEU) annual meeting on December 23, 2020.
He also gave a seminar talk at the Cambridge-INET Networks Webinar Series on November 27, 2020 and a seminar talk at the New Zealand Economics eSeminar Series on November 13, 2020.
Finally, Professor Zenou participated in the Monthly Applied Economics Webinar, HKUST, NUS, Taiwan National, and University of Tokyo on February 25 2021.
Professor Sascha Becker wrote a piece in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung entitled “How religion shaped Economic history” with colleagues Jared Rubin and and Ludger Wössmann.
He and Marco Lecci have also started a new Economics podcast called GrowthChat where they cover topics in Economic growth and Economic History.
They interview Economists and other social scientists about their recent research papers and publications. The aim of the podcast is to share the invaluable work that researchers do, making it accessible to the general public and students, independently of their background and preparation.
So far seven interviews have been recorded and are available on Spotify, YouTube and Itunes. New episodes will be released every ten days.
Thought Capital
A new season of the Monash Business School podcast Thought Capital, 'Connecting the dots of COVID-19', is out now.
Participants in this season include Monash Business School Head Professor Simon Wilkie, former Dean Professor Stephen King, Adjunct Professor Tony Venables, Associate Professor Giovanni Caggiano, Associate Professor Gaurav Datt and Associate professor He-Ling Shi and a number of other colleagues from across the Business School.
You can find Thought Capital on Spotify, Itunes or wherever you listen to podcasts.
- In a recent paper called 'Geographic diversity in economic publishing' by Associate Professor Simon Angus, Associate Professor Kadir Atalay from University of Sydney, Associate Professor Jonathan Newton from Kyoto University and Senior Lecturer David Ubilava from University of Sydney, it is shown that Monash University has the highest concentration of editorial power in the 'rest of the world' meaning outside North America and Europe.
The authors say: "The most powerful institution in the world outside of North America and Europe, Monash University, is only as powerful as the 32nd most powerful institution in North America, but would rank 8th if it were located in Europe."
- On that note, we are happy to announce that Professor Sascha Becker has been appointed Associate Editor at the Journal of the European Association, from 1 Jan 2021.
He was also elected to the Executive Board of the Asian & Australasian Society of Labour Economics.
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2020
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December
Huge media covering for Google/Fitbit merger
The departmental working paper 'Data-driven mergers and personalization' by Associate Professor Zhijun Chen, Professor Chongwoo Choe, JiaJia Cong from Fudan University and Noriaki Matsushima from Osaka University, on the Google/Fitbit merger had a huge media impact earlier this spring and was cited widely.
The authors warned of the risk of Google misusing millions of people’s health data.
The paper was cited as the main theoretical evidence in the Amicus Brief submitted in September to the European Commission by a group of leading competition economists as an objection to the Google/Fitbit merger.
Chongwoo Choe and Zhijun Chen contributed to the brief which was published as a CEPR policy article, "Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumers".
Following the submission, the group of competition economists including the Monash academics launched a campaign in public media, including the Financial Times, to advocate our concerns on the merger. On October 15th, Zhijun Chen was invited by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to present the paper and discuss the policy implications of the merger. He also presented the paper in the department IO seminars on October 1, and then on the influential Digital Platform Online Seminars in Toulouse School of Economics on November 3. The presentation is available here.
Here are some examples of media coverage of the research.
- Academics alarmed over Google's Fitbit buy, The Daily Mail (UK)
- Academics warn that Google's Fitbit acquisition must be stopped, Mobile Marketing Magazine
- TECHTrying to block Google’s acquisition of Fitbit over health privacy, ExBulletin
- Academics alarmed over Google's Fitbit buy, 7News
- Monash University academics call for Google Fitbit acquisition to be blocked, News.com.au
- Academics alarmed over Google's Fitbit buy, The West Australian
- Academics alarmed over Google's Fitbit buy, The Canberra Times
- Top Monash economists urge EC, ACCC to reject Google-Fitbit deal, iTWire
- Health data for sale? Why everyone should worry about Google’s Fitbit takeover bid, The New Daily
- Why everyone should care about Google’s Fitbit takeover bid, News Chant
Sascha Becker
Professor Sascha Becker’s research has been featured in two vox articles:
- The first focuses on the effect of unequal voting rights on policies.
- The second explores the effect of public employment using evidence from West Germany’s post war capital.
Ross Booth
- Senior Lecturer Ross Booth was interviewed in The Guardian on why postponing the Australian Open tennis championships is a good idea.
Gennadi Kazakevitch
- Senior Lecturer Gennadi Kazakevitch was featured on Radio SBS on the latest interest rate cut by the RBA.
Gordon Leslie
- Dr Gordon Leslie was interviewed by The Australian in “Power price falls a promising sign of reform success” printed on 20 October. He discussed the early retail electricity market responses to new price protection policies that came into effect on July 1 2019.
Vinod Mishra
- Associate Professor Vinod Mishra appeared live on the Facebook page of Apna Friends TV Channel on 21 October to talk about the impact of COVID-19 on small business in Australia and the various measures put in place by Government to help small business. Watch the recording of the live event.
- Vinod Mishra also appeared in a SBS Hindi news story featuring his view on the tax relief provisions in this year’s Federal Budget.
- Further, in an article in Rashtriya Sahara (राष्ट्रीय सहारा) Hindi newspaper, Hastakshep (हस्तक्षेप) section, he discussed the drop in India's GDP.
- Finally, he appeared in an interview with PTC Punjabi TV Channel on the Australian economy officially entering in to recession after three decades of uninterrupted growth.
Melbourne Trade workshop
The 4th Melbourne Trade Workshop was held virtually on two consecutive Fridays on Dec 4 (10am-1:15pm) and Dec 11 (11am-2:15pm) on the Gathertown platform.
The workshop was jointly organised by Monash Business School and the Trade and Development unit at The University of Melbourne. This year featured speakers were Senior Research Economist Doireann Fitzgerald (Minneapolis Fed) and Professor Marc Muendler (UCSD).
Monash organiser Senior Lecturer Laura Puzzello says: “We had between 16-20 participants per session, great speakers and curious participants. Talks provided insights on firms' expansion strategies, wage inequality in open economies and the role of globalisation in explaining the recent surge in deaths by fentanyl in the US, among others. We had fun, but all very much look forward to live interactions.”
AusClio
On 9 October 2020 Professor Sascha Becker and Dr Weijia Li hosted AusClio by zoom, the 2020 Australasian Cliometric Workshop. It focused on the implications of religion, violence and political economy (death and taxes in short!).
Speakers included Senior Lecturer Laura Panza from the University of Melbourne, Professor Pauline Grosjean from UNSW, Mark Hup from UC Irvine, Assistant Professor Felipe Valencia Caicedo from The University of British Columbia, Dr Tim Kooijmans from RMIT and Senior Lecturer John Tang from the University of Melbourne. More information can be found here.
Sascha Becker also organised the #ASREC24 Conference, the world's first-ever nonstop 24-hour conference. It took place on 20 November and included 48 presentations of 30 minutes each.
PhD conference
We had over 160 registered participants, 30 presenters from 20 universities, and discussants from over 10 universities.
- Many thanks to Professor Pushkar Maitra for taking the lead in organising the event and to the scientific committee for putting together a great agenda.
- Leo Bao and Veasna Kheng were excellent HDR student presentations.
- Professor Sascha Becker won a prize for best discussant.
- From Economics, members of the scientific/organising committee were Associate Professor Zhijun Chen, Professor Ranjan Ray, Dr Solmaz Moslehi andProfessor Pushkar Maitra. From other groups, the members were Professor Gael Martin (EBS), Professor David Johnston (CHE), Senior Lecturer Li Ge (B&F), Professor Xueyan Zhao (EBS).
- Graduate Student helpers: David Kreitmeir, Nicola Thomas, Van Tran, Abby Zhang, Jiacheng Wang
- Discussants from the department: Associate professor Paul Raschky, Dr Weijia Li , Associate Professor Lionel Frost, Professor Sascha Becker , Senior Lecturer Chengsi Wang, Dr Gordon Leslie and Dr Solmaz Moslehi.
- Helped out by serving as session chairs: Professor Nick Feltovich, Professor Russell Smyth, Associate Professor Zhijun Chen, Senior Lecturer Mita Bhattacharya, Associate Professor Choon Wang, Professor Phil Grossman.
- Panel Discussion organised and moderated by Professor Ranjan Ray; Stephen King (who is adjunct with us) and Dean of the Business and Economics Faculty, Professor Simon Wilkie participated.
Thank you to everyone!
- Senior Lecturer Chengsi Wang gave an online seminar at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology on 20 November and at Nanjing University on 25 November. He will also present at Hitotsubashi University on 8 December 2020.
- Chengsi Wang is also co-organising the joint online seminar series on digital economy with Hong Kong Baptist University, Renmin University of China and National University of Taiwan. At a recent webinar hosted by Monash on 29 October, Professor Julian Wright from ANU presented the paper 'Data-Enabled Learning and Competitive Advantage.' The discussant was Zhijun Chen.
- Professor Yves Zenou presented at the Cambridge INET Network Seminar Series on November 27, 2020.
At the New Zealand Economics eSeminar Series on November 13, Yves Zenou presented the paper 'Mixing in early childhood'.
- Dr Claudio Labanca has received a Monash ECR Small Grant, PI, 2020 (AUD 2200, with Michela Giorcelli) and a UCLA Burkle Center Faculty Research Grant, PI, 2020 (USD 5,000, with Michela Giorcelli).
- Associate Professor Zhijun Chen, Professor Chongwoo Choo and Senior Lecturer Chengsi Wang were awarded an Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant (DP210102015), for $266,000 for 2021-2023. Project No./title: DP210102015 - Big data: implications for competition, privacy and regulation.
- In a recent paper called 'Geographic diversity in economic publishing' by Associate Professor Simon Angus, Associate Professor Kadir Atalay from University of Sydney, Associate Professor Jonathan Newton from Kyoto University and Senior Lecturer David Ubilava from University of Sydney, it is shown that Monash University has the highest concentration of editorial power in the 'rest of the world' meaning outside North America and Europe.
The authors say: "The most powerful institution in the world outside of North America and Europe, Monash University, is only as powerful as the 32nd most powerful institution in North America, but would rank 8th if it were located in Europe."
- On that note, we are happy to announce that Professor Sascha Becker has been appointed Associate Editor at the Journal of the European Association, from 1 Jan 2021.
He was also elected to the Executive Board of the Asian & Australasian Society of Labour Economics.
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September
Mita Bhattacharya
- Mita was interviewed by SBS on Australia's trade opportunities with Asia-Pacific region during the recovery process.
- Her research was featured on a piece on Monash Impact on COVID-19 and the future of the Indian energy sector in Monash Impact.
Giovanni Caggiano
- Giovanni was featured in "How to Boost Australian Jobs: Construction and Manufacturing", Monash Business School Impact, 10 June 2020.
Gaurav Datt
- Gaurav Datt was interviewed by SBS Hindi, broadcast on September 2, 2020.
Gennadi Kazakevitch
- Suppress or eliminate? An interview with Gennadi was part of this article by Sarah Basford in Lifehacker on COVID-19 strategies.
- Gennadi recorded an interview in Russian for Radio SBS on economic systems in post-communist countries, following Monash’s press release on his online masterclass.
Vinod Mishra
- SBS news story featured this interview (Hindi audio) about the drop in the Australia-India trade.
- SBS Hindi also ran a news story about the online summit between Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the future of long-term trade relations between the two countries.
Paul Raschky
- Has been named the field leader in Economics in the Australian Special report.
- The Department of Economics at Monash is named the lead institution. "They are the researchers with the highest number of citations from papers published in the last five years in the 20 top journals in their field. In each field we also name Australia’s top research institution, the one with the most citations in the top 20 journals in the field in the last five years."
Yves Zenou
- 'Why depression can be contagious with lasting effects into adulthood' for Monash Impact.
- Yves Zenou received further traction in the media on his recent research findings that teen girls have stronger friendships than boys. The study was discussed on 3AW, 6PR, 2GB, Sunrise and The Today Show.
Mita Bhattacharya
The following article is listed within the most cited articles published since 2017, extracted from Scopus:
- Bhattacharya, M., Churchill, S. A., & Paramati, S. R. (2017). The dynamic impact of renewable energy and institutions on economic output and CO2 emissions across regions. Renewable Energy, 111, 157-167.
Sascha Becker
- Sascha was invited as guest editor for the inaugural Quarterly Digest onForced Displacement by the World Bank/UNHCR Joint Data Centre (JDC). He had to select recent research on the long-term consequences of forced displacement and highlight some salient themes in his editorial note. The Quarterly Digest can be accessed here.
- He received an 'Excellence in Refereeing Award' from the Review of Economic Studies:
- Sascha also gave the following webinars:
- Quantitative History Webinar, Hong Kong University
- Deakin University, Melbourne
- UWA Perth
- U Javeriana Bogota
- APEN Workshop Melbourne
- UCL/Oxford Webinar on Comparative Economics
- Goethe-University Frankfurt
Giovanni Caggiano
Giovanni has given the following webinars:
- Bank of Lithuania, 24 July 2020. Title of the talk 'Financial Uncertainty and Real Activity: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly'
- Centre for Applied Economic Analysis, ANU, 17 June 2020. Title of the talk: 'Financial Uncertainty and Real Activity: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly'
Gaurav Datt
- Guarav Datt has been appointed to the Editorial Board of the Indian Economic Review, Journal of the Delhi School of Economics, published by Springer.
- The discussion paper, 'Missing women in China and India over seven decades: an analysis of birth and mortality data from 1950 to 2020', was presented at the Department of Economics, Monash Business School, Discussion paper number 12/20, jointly with Cun Liu and Russell Smyth.
Jonathan Levy
Jonathan has recently joined the Department as a postdoc working with Lata Gangadharan, Erte Xiao and Phil Grossman.
Jonathan is a recent PhD from UTS. His main research interests are in the field of applied microeconomic theory and experimental economics. He has a particular interest in understanding how different economic policies affect organisational behaviour. Here is his personal website: https://sites.google.com/view/jonathanlevy
His personal interests include playing table tennis (used to play competitively) and football. He also enjoys playing the piano.
When we return to our offices, he will have office space at Clayton.
Welcome Jonathan!
Symposia on Behavioral Economics of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Experimental Economics and the Journal of the Economic Science Association will publish parallel Symposia focused on COVID-19.
Topics could include various methodological issues associated with running experiments during a pandemic, some new software (provided it is tested/validated), natural experiments involving the pandemic, effects on behavior, productivity and diversity, as well as experimental evaluations of epidemiological models and their assumptions.
In line with the scopes and aims of the respective journals, longer articles and those addressing fundamental research questions should be directed to Experimental Economics, while shorter articles and replications should be directed to JESA. The editors of Experimental Economics can suggest a transfer to JESA if they see this as a better fit.
At JESA, we particularly welcome replications of well-known experiments in non- laboratory settings, including failed replications, as well as papers discussing the problems that might arise when transiting to a non-laboratory environment, and the issue of linking data collected in the laboratory, online and in the field.
The deadline for submission is 15 December 2020. However, we welcome submissions at any point to the submission deadline and they will be evaluated as soon as they are submitted and published online as soon as they are accepted. We plan the Symposia to appear in an issue in late 2021/early 2022 and to consist of 6-7 papers.
Papers should be submitted using the Experimental Economics and JESA submission portals, selecting the Symposium as the submission type.
Please do not hesitate to contact any of the editors should you have questions regarding these Symposia.
We look forward to reading your manuscripts.
Sincerely,
Editors
Experimental Economics and JESA
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June
Simon Angus and Paul Raschky (together with Klaus Ackermann from Econometrics) have been interviewed/featured by a number of national and international news outlets regarding their work on Internet pressure during the COVID-19 pandemic. Coverage includes:
Coverage was picked up by AAP and syndicated to 122 outlets nationally. This includes:
Paul Raschky was also interviewed by ABC News Radio Melbourne and SBS evening news
- Sascha O. Becker talked about the enduring effects of the communist experience in
Germany on “A Correction Podcast” (14 May 2020). - He also co-authored a newspaper article with L Mergele and L Woessmann for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on the 30th of March: “Es liegt nicht alles am Sozialismus: Der Graben zwischen Ost und West ist älter als die DDR“
- Mita Bhattacharya was interviewed by the Australian Newspaper (3 May, 2020) and Bloomberg (13 May, 2020). Her research on the Australian energy market during the COVID-19 pandemic was mentioned in these two outlets.
- Ross Booth took part in a live interview on 26 May with TV station CGTN Beijing on the effect of COVID-19 on Sport.
- Gaurav Datt wrote "Containing COVID-19 in Bangladesh" (with Asad Islam and Sisira Jayasuriya) on East Asia Forum (28 April 2020).
- "Financing of fiscal response to Covid-19: A red herring?" (with Ayushi Bajaj), Ideas for India (12 April 2020).
- Isaac Goss was interviewed by The New Daily on the coronavirus technical recession.
- Gennadi Kazakevitch was interviewed by Sarah Basford for her article on Jobseeker's Mandatory Requirements, on the Lifehacker Australia. Watch the interview here.
- SBS featured Vinod Mishra’s interview about the new economic recovery package announced by PM Scott Morrison.
- SBS News story also interviewed Vinod Mishra about the possible scenarios of Economic recovery in post-COVID-19 Australia.
- Vinod Mishra, Ayushi Bajaj, Gaurav Datt, Lata Gangadharan, Asad Islam, Sisira Jayasuriya, Jaai Parasnis and Ranjan Ray wrote the article “Nine Concerns About the Centre's 1.7 Lakh Crore Package" in The Wire making some policy recommendations to the Indian government's efforts to deal with the COVIDー19 pandemic.
- Matthew Olckers published his article “Can friendship networks help pinpoint those most in need?” in Monash Impact.
- Ranjan Ray was featured in The Wire and East Asia Forum.
Department meeting
The next Department meeting is scheduled for 24 July 2020, 11am to 12:30pm. Whether it will be an on-campus meeting or totally remote attendance will depend on the social distancing advice at that time.
Applied Young Economist Webinar (AYEW)
In mid-April, Ashani Amarasinghe (Monash Economics and SoDa Laboratories) started the Applied Young Economist Webinar (AYEW) (co-hosted with Ivan Yotzov from Warwick University).
The idea of the AYEW is to provide a platform for PhD candidates and Post-Doctoral researchers to connect, interact and engage with each other, while sharing their enthusiasm for the discipline of Economics. It brings together young economists located in various geographies, conducting empirical research in various fields of Economics, to one virtual location where their high-quality research and ideas can be shared with a broad audience - including faculty members - that extends beyond their home universities.
The webinar has evolved into a continuous global webinar series that runs two sessions per week (one for each major time zone). Ashani and Yvan have received a large number of submissions and most presentation slots for the remainder of the year are already booked out.
In less than two months, almost 500 people registered their interest and more than 50 webinars have been scheduled, with speakers from over 30 institutions across four continents. So far, the webinar had presenters from institutions such as Oxford, UPF, ANU, UWA, Hertie School, Bank of Mexico and Monash, and the upcoming list includes universities such as PSE, University of Melbourne, UNSW, Pittsburgh, IHEID Geneva, Vancouver, Frankfurt and Tilburg, to name a few.
All information, including details of upcoming presentations, can be found here. For any inquiries, contact Ashani directly (ashani.amarasinghe@monash.edu).
Asia-Pacific Prize in Economic History
Congratulations to Weijia Li, winner of the biennial Asia-Pacific Prize in Economic History for the best dissertation on Asia-Pacific economic history worldwide. Awarded by the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand, the prize recognises outstanding postgraduate research in economic history.
Weijia's dissertation, Meritocracy in Autocracies: Origins and Consequences was awarded by UC Berkeley in 2018. The dissertation studies both the economic consequences and historical origins of bureaucratic capacity. A novel dataset is used to trace the evolution of historical institutions over 1,300 years. New tools of text analysis are applied to the Twenty-Five Histories, the most important source of Chinese history. The dataset uncovers a key empirical regularity: a meritocratic bureaucracy arises only after emperors establish a strong ‘separation of powers’ among provincial officials, an institution that helps to solve the trade-off between loyalty and competence. The joint emergence of market economy and a meritocratic bureaucracy during the ‘Tang-Song Transition’, the watershed moment in Chinese history, is formally modelled. The model also sheds light on different paths of state development in historical China versus the Ottoman Empire.
A summary of the dissertation will appear in the July issue of Australian Economic History Review.
Lionel Frost
President, Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand
Other events
- Dyuti Banerjee’s publication 'Anticorruption reforms, tax evasion, and the role of harassment' published in Journal of Public Economic Theory, is among the top 10 per cent most downloaded papers.
- Sascha Becker was appointed member of the Editorial Board of a newly founded journal, the Journal of Economics, Management and Religion (JEMAR)
- Sascha Becker has been awarded the Excellence in Refereeing award from the Review of Economic Studies. "The winners of the Excellence in Refereeing Award for 2019 have been selected for their contribution in providing the journal with multiple timely, constructive, and insightful referee reports over the past year."
- Giovanni Caggiano gave a professional development seminar at the Economic Society of Australia on 28 May on the topic of the macroeconomic effects of global uncertainty.
- In April, Frank Wolak and Gordon Leslie delivered an online seminar to members of the Australian Energy Market Commission on designing electricity markets to integrate large amounts of intermittent renewable energy sources.
- Congratulations to our former Honours student Mitch Harvey (class of 2018) who was awarded a full scholarship to study for a Ph. D in Political Economics at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. Mitch did his honours thesis under the supervision of Giovanni Caggiano. After graduating in 2018, he worked for the Department as a teaching assistant, and took a Real Analysis class at Monash. Giovanni Caggiano, Chongwoo Choe, Vai-Lam Mui, Christis Tombazos and Liang Choon Wang wrote letters for him for his applications. We wished Mitch the best in his study in the years to come.
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March
Australian Energy Markets Initiatives Workshop will run at the Caulfield Campus on 26-27 March hosted by the Centre for Global Business Australian Electricity Markets Initiative. The workshop focuses on designing efficient network pricing and features several international speakers. Keynote speakers are Professor Frank Wolak, Director, Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University and Professor Estelle Cantillon, Research Director at the Université libre de Bruxelles.
Monash Environmental Economics Workshop (MEEW) will run on 9-10 June 2020. The workshop brings together Australian and international researchers working on diverse topics in environmental, resource and energy economics.
This is the fifth year the workshop has run and we are expanding its format with more international participants and two keynotes: Professor Juan Camilo Cárdenas from the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia and Professor Christopher Costello from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The workshop is a collaboration between the Department of Economics, the Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability and Monash Business School. For further information please contact Anke Leroux.
Technology and the future of labour: historical and contemporary perspectives" is co-organised by Sascha O. Becker and Assistant Professor Hyejin Ku (UCL) on Thu 21 May 2020 and Fri 22 May 2020 at the British Academy in London.
Past events
Gaurav Datt visited India in January and gave several seminars at the Institute of Economic Growth on January 6; Delhi School of Economics on January 9 and at the National Council of Applied Economic Research on January 10.
The seminars were on 'Progressivity and Redistributive Effects of Income Taxes in India' and 'Distribution-sensitive Multidimensional Poverty Measures'.
In January, Vinod Mishra visited the Indian Institute of Management Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, India. While there, he worked on a collaborative research project and interacted with staff and PhD students. He also presented a paper on the relationship between Economic Growth and Income Inequality in their seminar program.
Yves Zenou gave the keynote lecture at the Asian-Australasian Society of Labour Economics (AASLE) Annual Congress, Singapore, 12-14 December 2019.
He also presented at a departmental seminar at the National University of Singapore (NUS), December 10, 2019.
Yves presented at the University of Hong Kong, Economics Department seminar, Hong Kong, November 12, 2019 and gave a Department seminar at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), Economics Department seminar, Hong Kong on November 13, 2019.
On February 7, 2020 he gave a Departmental seminar at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney.
Yves Zenou became a Council member of the Econometric Society.
He was elected as Member of Executive Board of the Asian and Australasian Society of Labour Economics (AASLE).
Together with Daiji Kawaguchi he is co-editing a Special Issue on the “Asian and Australasian Association of Labour Economics, 3rd annual conference, Singapore, 12-14 December 2019,” Labour Economics, November 2020 (expected).
He will serve as Programme Committee Member of the World Conference in Labor Economics (EALE, SOLE and AASLE), Berlin, Germany, June 2020.
Sascha O Becker’s recent paper on Investment in education after World War II was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal newsletter as a highlight from the research presented at the American Economic Association’s annual meeting.
Writing in The Irish Times (“Brexit is a culture war with economics as collateral damage”), Chris Johns cites the paper by Alabrese, Becker, Fetzer and Novy (2019): "Analysis reveals that “voting Leave is associated with older age, white ethnicity, low educational attainment, infrequent use of smartphones and the internet, receiving benefits, adverse health and low life satisfaction”, Eleonora Alabrese, Sascha Becker, Thiemo Fetzer and Dennis Novy report in Who Voted for Brexit? (European Journal of Political Economy, 2019).”
- Arthur Campbell and Yves Zenou received an Australian Research Council Discovery Project, “Social Network Analysis: Social Media, Peer Effects and the Environment” of AUD$282,727.
- Michelle Rendall has received an ARC DP20 grant titled “Talent Mismatch: Evidence from Australian Administrative Tax Records" for AUD$136,355.
Satya Borgohain
Richard Kima
Stefan Meyer
Behnud Mir Djawadi
We are hosting a number of long-term visitors at the moment across both campuses.
Satya Borgohain recently joined SoDa labs as a Research Fellow after graduating with a Masters in Data Science from Monash. He currently works at the intersection of big data and machine learning within the political and social science domain and is helping build robust data pipelines for alternative data analysis using different methodologies at SoDa.
He works closely with Associate Professors Simon Angus and Paul Raschky, with Dr Klaus Ackermann and Dr Nathan Lane. His research primarily focuses on mining social media networks, creating dashboards for global internet activity (IP Observatory) and text classification of government entities along with full stack application development. He will also deliver an upcoming workshop on web scraping in collaboration with Monash Data Fluency in April 2020.
David Jackson is a PhD student from Stockholm University under the supervision of Professor David Stromberg. He is visiting Monash for the academic year 2019-2020 under the supervision of Professor Yves Zenou.
His thesis is about bargaining and networks both from an empirical and theoretical perspective.
Dr Richard Kima joined Monash University in November 2019 for a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship in macroeconomics. He works with Associate Professor Giovanni Caggiano and Professor Efrem Castenuovo from the University of Melbourne, on an ARC-funded project entitled 'Uncertainty, Financial Frictions, and the Australian Business Cycle'.
“I am pleased and fortunate to work with both Giovanni and Efrem, benefiting from their extended experience in the field. Within the project, we primarily aim at developing and estimating state-of-the-art macroeconomic models,” he says.
Richard is originally from Burkina Faso, West Africa, and recently completed his PhD in Economics at the University of Southampton in the UK.
Dr Stefan Meyer is currently working as a Research Fellow on a project to improve food security in the northern uplands of Laos. After being based in Vientiane for three years, he joined Monash in October 2019. Together with Dr Paulo Santos (and others), he developed and implemented RCTs to test the impact of a rodent control contest, the use of economic games as a learning tool and the provision of village training grants on the livelihoods and food security of smallholder farmers. Before this project, Stefan worked for three years in Malawi on research projects to analyse the economics land degradation and the food-energy-water nexus. His contributions to the projects were both to research and implementation. His main research interests are the behavioural aspects of development and agricultural economics.
Dr Behnud Mir Djawadi is currently a Research Fellow at the Chair for Corporate Governance at Paderborn University in Germany and head of the university’s experimental Business and Economic Research Laboratory (BaER-Lab). Since 2016, he has been the Secretary of the “Society for the Advancement of Behavioural Economics (SABE)” which is one of the most established international associations of scholars devoted to behavioural economics.
His research interests include behavioural and experimental economics, as well as organisational behaviour, judgment and decision-making, health economics, public economics, personnel economics and business ethics.
He is visiting Monash until June 2020, working on a joint research project about the refugee crisis in Germany with Professor Klaus Abbink. In the research they simulate how the Muslim share of the total population in Germany will grow in the next decades as a response to the 2015/2016 influx, using different scenarios and common demographic techniques and assumptions to project populations in the future. This is Behnud’s third visit to the department.
Eva Moreno Galbis is a professor of economics at Aix-Marseille University and a junior member of the prestigious Institut Universitaire de France.
She is a labour economist who has extensively published on migration issues, retirement choices and aging population and the impact of new technologies on the labour market.
She will be visiting Monash University (Caulfield Campus) until July 2020.
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