2020

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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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:

• Simon Angus on Wired 1
• Simon Angus on Wired 2
• Fox News
• Daily Mail
• Klaus Ackermann on ABC

Coverage was picked up by AAP and syndicated to 122 outlets nationally. This includes:

• Nine News online
• Herald Sun

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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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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