2019
November
Is it time to back a female athlete to go 'sub-130'?
Simon Angus wrote about his predictions for marathon running in Monash Impact as Eliud Kipchoge ran a marathon in under two hours for the first time ever and Brigid Kosgei broke the women’s marathon world record.
‘Motherhood penalty’ starts even before kids, study finds
Al Jazeera featured Sascha Becker’s research on discrimination against women in the labour market and the penalty women pay for motherhood.
Debt making us work longer and spend less
Radio National interviewed Zac Gross on their weekly show “The Money” on the consequences of household debt.
India's largest commercial bank opens a branch in Melbourne
Vinod Mishra was very busy in the media, participating to SBS no less than seven times. India’s largest commercial bank State Bank of India, is opening a branch in Melbourne, Australia. Here is a news story by SBS Hindi on how this move will benefit Indian diaspora in Australia.
India tops the list of migrants worldwide: UN
SBS Hindi News story featuring his interview (in Hindi) about the causes and consequences of outward migration from India.
Can Indian exit polls be trusted?
SBS News on the issue of various reasons why opinion polls and surveys fail to predict election outcomes.
'No surprises for migrants in the near future'
SBS Hindi regarding the outcome of Australian Federal Elections.
'Narendra Modi will form the next government but not with a big majority'
SBS News story about Indian Elections 2019.
BUDGET 2019: Government's tax relief will 'make a big difference to Indian community'
SBS Hindi news coverage of the Federal Budget.
The challenge of India's growing inequality
Ranjan Ray and Gaurav Datt were featured in the East Asia Forum on the growing challenge of inequality in India.
As inequality rises, so does the relevance of A.B. Atkinson's work
The Wire featured Ranjan Ray’s article on the work of A.B. Atkinson.
Conference on Randomised Controlled Trials, 12-13 December at Monash Conference Centre
Co-hosted by the Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability (CDES) and Centre for Global Business (CGB) for researchers who conduct randomised controlled trials in both developing and developed countries.
The keynote addresses will be delivered by Professor Dean Karlan (Northwestern University), Professor Catherine Wolfram (University of California, Berkeley) and Professor Christopher Woodruff (University of Oxford).
IMF World Economic Outlook, 19 November
On November 19 Dr Malhar Nabar, Deputy Division Chief of the World Economic Studies Division in the IMF's research department will discuss the IMF’s latest views on the global outlook, risks and policy priorities. He is invited by the CDES to present at Park Hyatt Melbourne at 6 pm.
Past events
2019 Monash Workshop on Digital Economy and Industrial Organization was organised by Chengsi Wang, Zhijun Chen, Arthur Campbell and Chongwoo Choe on October 16. Here are some of the photos from the day:
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Monash Education Academy Inter-Faculty Transformation Grant
Jaai Parasnis is part of an inter-faculty team of eight researchers from four faculties. Awarded $68,607 over two years for project 'Tolerance of Uncertainty and Ambiguity (ToU/ToA): Identifying mechanisms for integrating this critical Future Education skill into higher education (HE)'. Feedback from the Panel: “This is an important concept and an under-researched area that has potential to benefit many students and faculties. Excellent approach and the application was well-written.”
- This semester, Masters students for the Industry Economics unit had guest lecturers Richard York (ACCC) and Stephen King (Productivity Commission) for two weeks.
- Mita Bhattacharya (the CE for this unit and the Masters' Coordinator) says: "This has been a positive experience for the students. In the absence of an internship in Economics within this program, students had direct learning experience on related issues on competition and regulation from these Senior Government Officials. Towards the end of their lectures, both Richard and Stephen have covered briefly the role of these premier organizations and their research within the Australian economy."
- Matthew Olckers is Arthur Campbell’s and Yves Zenou’s postdoc on network economics. He started in September 2019. His research interests include social networks, development economics and household finance. He is particularly interested in the intersection of economics and computer science, such as using mechanism design in practical applications or using alternative data sources to answer questions about poverty and development. Matthew is originally from South Africa and completed his PhD at the Paris School of Economics.
- During his long service leave, Gennadi Kazakevitch travelled to Belgium and France to take part in the International Russian Poetry competition “Emigrant Lira”. He was awarded the first prize, “Golden Manneken Pis” (the symbol of Brussels), in the translator category, for his translations from English and American Poetry into Russian.
Gennadi receiving the first prize in the translator category.
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July
- Technology adaptation in Bangladesh
Asad Islam, Philip Ushchev, Yves Zenou and Xin Zhang wrote an article for Vox Column on how information matters for adopting a new technology in Bangladesh.
- Non-financial incentives for volunteer tutors
Asad Islam’s research on non-financial incentives for volunteer tutors, with Choon Wang , Sakiba Tasneem and M.A Malek was also featured on B-hub.
- Gennadi Kazakevitch has been a frequent commentator on Radio SBS in Russian
- Ranjan Ray has lately made two contributions to The Wire
- "The Unrealistic Optimism of Indians on Prospects of Upward Social Mobility", on 14 June 2019
- "Recognising the Challenge of Income Inequality in India", appeared on 23 April 2019
- Tales of the City
Professor Tony Venables, who visited the Department in May, was featured in a Monash Impact Exchange video where he discussed his career and research with Deputy Dean Richard Hall.
The 14th Annual Australia New Zealand Workshop in Experimental Economics
To be held on 25-26 November at Monash, Clayton Campus, this workshop will give researchers interested in experimental and behavioural economics an opportunity to present their latest research, receive constructive feedback in an informal environment and network with other researchers. Keynote speakers are Professor Marie Claire Villeval from CNRS-GATE, University of Lyon and Professor Bertil Tungodden from NHH Norwegian School of Economics.
Past events
- The 3rd Melbourne Trade Workshop was held on 5 August. Co-hosted by the Departments of Economics at the University of Melbourne and the Monash Business School, the workshop brought together researchers working on issues in international economics and established closer contacts between Melbourne-based trade economists and their international counterparts. This year's keynote speakers were Andrew Bernard (Tuck Business School at Dartmouth) and Mine Senses (John Hopkins).
Sascha O. Becker gave three lectures at the 7th Summer School for Quantitative History, as well as a keynote lecture at the 7th Summer Symposium in Quantitative History, both held in Yantai, China in July, organised by the University of Hong Kong, Tsinghua University and the School of History, Renmin University of China.
In June, Sascha O. Becker and Jared Rubin co-organised a CEPR conference on ‘Economics of Religion’ in Venice, Italy, featuring 22 presentations and three keynote lectures by Maristella Botticini (Bocconi), Robert Barro and Rachel McCleary (Harvard) and Timur Kuran (Duke). One of the papers, presented by co-author Roland Hodler, included our own Paul Raschky. View photos of the event here .
- Wayne Geerling gave an introductory lecture on economics for Monash College students on 25 July. The lecture was filmed and is intended to be used as promotional material to attract international students from China.
- Lionel Frost, along with his ARC Discovery Project team (Andrea Gaynor, Ruth Morgan, Martin Shanahan, Jenny Gregory, Margaret Cook, and Peter Spearritt), is the author of a new virtual exhibition at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Drought, Mud, Filth, and Flood: Water Crises in Australian Cities, 1880s-2010s considers the historical relationship of various kinds of water crises (from shortage to flood, pollution to drainage) to the urban water systems of Australia's five mainland state capitals from the late nineteenth century to the present.
- Asad Islam was awarded a grant for his project ‘Addressing financial inclusion in rural India: the role of information and peer pressure’, with Marcel Fafchamps and Deb Pakrashi, International Growth centre.
- Ranjan Ray has been invited as a guest speaker to the one-day symposium ‘Measurement and Micro Econometrics’, organised by the Economic Policy Analysis Program at Griffith Business School, to be held in Brisbane on 27 August 2019.
- In response to an invitation from the editors of the East Asia Forum (EAF) based out of the Crawford School of the ANU, Gaurav Datt and Ranjan Ray have written a jointly authored piece entitled ‘India’s Inequality Challenge’ that has appeared in the EAF. The East Asia Forum is a policy focussed platform for issues related to public policy and is a joint initiative of two academic research networks: the East Asian Bureau of Economic Research (EABER) and the South Asian Bureau of Economic Research (SABER).
- Yves Zenou gave a keynote lecture for the 'Second Workshop in Urban and Regional Economics' at Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, Colombia, 10-12 July 2019. He also gave a 20-hour course on the economics of networks at the Universidad Javeriana.
Andrew Bernard
Professor Andrew Bernard is visiting for two weeks from Monday 29 July. He featured as a keynote speaker in the Melbourne Trade Workshop on 5 August, met PhD students on 6 Aug and provided a prominent visitor talk on 7 August.
Professor Bernard is an expert in international trade and investment and specialises in firm responses to globalisation. He has been named by Thompson Reuters as one of the ‘Most Highly Cited Researchers’ every year since 2014 and is among the 100 most cited economists.
He received a National Science Foundation grant to study firm responses to international trade. In addition to being published in top academic journals such as the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Review of Economic Studies, his research has been featured on CNN, CNBC, Good Morning America, MSNBC, NPR's Morning Edition, Marketplace Morning Report, the BBC, and in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, the Economist, Nikkei, Fortune, and Business Week.
Vincent Boucher
Associate Professor Vincent Boucher from Laval University in Quebec, Canada is currently visiting the Department at the Caulfield campus, invited by Yves Zenou. He will be with us until December. Vincent’s research focuses on social interactions and social networks. He is particularly interested in our ability to measure the impact of social interactions using networked data.
Mario Samano
Associate Professor Mario Samano from the Applied Economics Department at HEC Montreal, Canada, will be visiting from 6 September until December. He is invited by Gordon Leslie and will be based at Caulfield. His research focuses on empirical industrial organisation and applied econometrics and he is especially interested in energy topics. One of his most important papers was on Intermittency and the value of renewable energy and was published in the Journal of Political Economy in 2016.
Ngo Van Long
Ngo Van Long (McGill University) visited the Department from 18 July to 9 August. Long is currently Professor and James McGill Professor at McGill University. His main research interests are in economic dynamics and dynamic games, applied microeconomic theory, international trade theory, and resource and environmental economics. He gave a short course on dynamic games and applications on 1 August.
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April
Simon Angus has broken the all-time high for media citations for the Business School with his article on when the sub two-hour barrier might be broken for marathons. The article was picked up by over 200 media outlets around the world.
“I was getting questions from all over the world and I did four or five radio interviews and several people that I really admire have taken it up”, says Simon. Although the men’s sub 2 hour marathon record is the obvious headline, Simon hopes the biggest impact the article will have that there is a female equivalent record.
“I hope there will be a female equivalent of the men’s record. My suggestion in the paper is at 130 minutes for women. I hope someone takes that up to give females the world over a clear target to go for.”
Read more here: https://www2.monash.edu/impact/articles/breaking-through-the-sub-two-hour-marathon-barrier/
Nathan Lane’s research on South Korea’s policies in the 1970’s was featured in: https://voxdev.org/topic/public-economics/where-are-we-economics-industrial-policies
Jaai Parasnins Teaching, Gender and Labour Market Incentives (with David Carroll and Max Tani): Working paper available here This research is covered in media as an article in The Conversation, reprinted in SBS Insight and The Mandarin.
Monash Economic Historians
Several members of the Department presented papers at Decline and Rise: Asia since the Industrial Revolution, a joint conference of the All-UC Group in Economic History and the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand (EHSANZ), at Caltech on February 8-9.
Edwyna Harris (with Sumner La Croix) gave a paper on 'Understanding the early crisis of colonisation in South Australia: New evidence on wages, prices, and welfare, 1838-1845'; Weijia Li on 'Meritocracy, decentralization, and local dual leadership: Theory and historical evidence'; Lionel Frost (with Luc Borrowman, Charles Fahey and Dmytro Ostapenko) on 'Railroads, land settlement, and land values: Evidence from semi-arid Australia'. Nathan Lane was to present on 'Manufacturing revolutions - industrial policy and networks in South Korea', but unfortunately could not attend due to ill-health.
There is a strong tradition of scholarship in economic history at Monash. John McCarty, who held the inaugural Chair in Economic History from 1968 to 1996, was a founding editor of Australian Economic History Review: An Asia-Pacific Journal of Economic, Business & Social History. Monash-based editors of AEHR include Boris Schedvin, Tony Dingle, David Merrett, Edwyna Harris, and Lionel Frost. Harris and Frost continue to serve on the editorial board; Frost is the current president of the EHSANZ.
Wayne Geerling researches European economic history and resistance to authoritarian regimes.
Gary Magee was listed as Australia's Research Field Leader in two fields: Economic History and History.
Ross Booth Masterclass on Sport - Sri Lanka
Ross Booth ran a Monash Masterclass on Sport - Australian Football and Cricket: some economic insights in Colombo Sri Lanka in February.
The Masterclass focused on some economic insights into 3 aspects of the Australian Football League (AFL) and Cricket Australia (CA):
- Television Ratings (AFL)
- AFLW - Women’s League
- Bonus Points in State Cricket
Is sport more attractive to watch when the outcome is uncertain? How competitively balanced should we expect AFLW to be? Has the introduction of bonus points in state cricket led to more aggressive play?
54 people attended including alumni, industry representatives and Monash University students on study tour
More photos here S:\Buseco\Engagement-Marketing\Engagement\Alumni Relations\Alumni Events\International\2019\Sri Lanka 21 Feb 2019\photos
Wayne Geerling ran two very successful economics education workshops in February across both Clayton and Caulfield campus where 64 people attended. The seminars will be repeated later in the year.
Asad Islam, on behalf of South Asia Research Network (SARN) at the Centre for Global Business, organized a conference in collaboration with the CDES in Colombo in economic development in South Asia on 7-8 January. More details about the conference are in the link below: http://www.ips.lk/ips-monash-conference-highlights-new-research-economic-development-south-asia/
Future events
- The 31st annual conference of Chinese Economics Society Australia will be held on 15-16 July 2019.
For the full list of upcoming seminars, please refer to: https://www.monash.edu/business/economics/impact-and-engagement/conferences,-seminars-and-events
We are very pleased to welcome the following visitors to our department:
James Murphy, Professor of Economics, University of Alaska Anchorage, visited the Department 4 – 11 March. Professor Murphy is on the Editorial Board of the
Journal of Environmental Economics and Management and does research in the fields of experimental economics, natural resource and environmental economics.
In addition to meeting with staff and PhD students, Professor Murphy presented his paper ‘Tying enforcement to prices in emissions markets: An experimental evaluation’ in the BET seminar series. The paper presents results from laboratory emissions permit markets designed to investigate the transmission of abatement cost risk to firms’ compliance behavior and regulatory enforcement strategies.
Professor Anthony (Tony) Venables is visiting us for four weeks starting March 18. Tony Venables is Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford where he also directs the Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Econometric Society.
Former positions include Chief Economist at the UK Department for International Development, professor at the London School of Economics, research manager of the trade research group in the World Bank, and advisor to the UK Treasury.
Tony was the keynote speaker at the Economics of Cities workshop, help on March 25-26, at Monash Caulfield Campus. The workshop is jointly organised by CDES and Infrastructure Victoria. Professor Yves Zenou and Associate Professor Asadul Islam also presented at the workshop. During his visit, Tony will be located in H4.55, Economics, Caulfield Campus.
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