Shaping the future of economics: Monash Business School graduates awarded top academic honours

Dr Nkosana Mafico and Dr Yayi Yan

Dr Nkosana Mafico and Dr Yayi Yan are helping find solutions to some of the most challenging economic problems of our time.

Their ground-breaking work has earned them top honours in this year’s Monash University graduate research excellence awards, which shine a light on students pushing the boundaries to create lasting impact in their fields.

Balancing profit and purpose

In the business world, doing good and doing well can sometimes be two very different things.

But Dr Mafico has leveraged his personal experience to help organisations better align their social and commercial goals.

Born in Zimbabwe, Dr Mafico migrated to Australia when he was 10 years old, saying that milestone experience sometimes caused him to question his cultural identity.

“I wondered how life would have been if we had stayed in Zimbabwe and how my Australian upbringing had shaped me,” he said.

In his thesis with the Department of Management, Dr Mafico investigates how strategic business decisions are affected by ‘intercultural experience’ - the knowledge people gain through interactions with different cultures.

“My research focuses on hybrid organisations that have multiple objectives, such as social enterprises that seek to make money and help people simultaneously,” he says.

“(It) highlights how these experiences influence the way immigrant social entrepreneurs run their social enterprises. It also unpacks the strategic challenges they face because of the interplay between migration, social status and inequality.”

Associate Dean of Graduate Research, Professor Matthew Hall, said Dr Mafico's research would better prepare social entrepreneurs and help investors at the early stages of a new venture.

The work has earned Dr Mafico a prestigious Mollie Holman Award – one of Monash University’s highest academic honours, conferred annually to a handful of doctoral graduates for exceptional research.

Dr Mafico described the experience as “humbling”.

“I am deeply grateful for the wonderful support I received from my supervisors and the faculty at the Business School. The constructive feedback and discussions created a nurturing environment that enabled my ideas to take root and flourish,” he said.

Solving economic puzzles

When Dr Yayi Yan first stumbled across the field of econometrics while studying for his Master’s degree in Financial Engineering, he was instantly hooked.

“I was fascinated by its ability to enhance our understanding of diverse economic and financial phenomena, and evaluate economic theories in light of real-world observations,” he said.

“My research is about developing new models to provide better descriptions of the real world that can help to explain some of the complex problems in the economics literature.”

His work is already making waves, with scholars and PhD students lining up to use his time-varying VAR and regime-switching models in their own research.

“I believe that in the future, my models may have some influence in relevant fields,” he said.

Prof Hall said, in a time of increasing global uncertainty, Dr Yan's work was important because it focused on the best way to analyse data that is subject to external shocks.

“Dr Yan's work will enable better understanding and prediction of important economic and financial variables such as the rate of inflation and unemployment,” he said.

Dr Yan said he was “thrilled and grateful” to receive a Vice-Chancellor’s Commendation for Thesis Excellence - one of just five awarded each year to recognise outstanding thesis excellence.

“I am deeply honoured to receive the Vice Chancellor's commendation, as it validates my research efforts,” he said.

Read more about our 2023 Dean’s Student Excellence Awards