2021
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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