Education of Economists for a Changing World

Facilitator: Prof Gigi Foster, UNSW

2025 RC Mills Lecture

sponsored by University of Sydney School of Economics

Speaker: Prof Julie Berry Cullen, University of California

Julie Berry Cullen is a public finance economist whose primary research interests are the economics of education and fiscal federalism. She received her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1997, was on the faculty at the University of Michigan until 2004, and has been at the University of California, San Diego, ever since. She has served in a variety of editorial positions, including as co-editor at the Journal of Human Resources and Journal of Public Economics, and in policy advisory roles for the states of California and Michigan. She has authored papers investigating the intended and unintended consequences of school finance reforms, school choice policies, and school accountability systems. Her work has been published in leading outlets such as American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Econometrica, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Public Economics, and Review of Economics and Statistics.

Declining Diversity and Enrolment in Australian Economics Education: Challenges and Insights from Recent RBA Research

Over the past three decades, there has been a stark decline in the size and diversity of the economics student population in Australia. Year 12 economics enrolments have fallen by around 70 per cent since the early 1990s. Alongside the decline in numbers, the gender balance has diminished such that male students outnumber females two-to-one, and the shares of economics students from low socio-economic backgrounds and regional locations have also fallen substantially (Dwyer 2024). These trends pose significant challenges for the level of economic literacy in the population and the pipeline of future economists.

Speaker: Tanya Livermore, Senior Manager, Public Education, Reserve bank of Australia

Economics from inside Government

What is the role of economics in government and how does economic policy made by Government shape our lives?

Moderator: NSW Treasury

Case study presentations and panel discussion by NSW Treasury and Commonwealth Treasury

This session aims to promote a broader understanding and awareness of Treasuries as public economic institutions, both NSW and Commonwealth, and the role each play in the state and country’s economy. It will focus on how Treasuries play a key role in shaping economic policies and how these policies aim to make a positive impact on society and create better outcomes for communities. The session will also serve to encourage young people to enter the field of economics and promote this area as a rewarding, attractive and diverse career pathway in government.

Discussion

  • How does economic work influence and improve the lives of the community?
  • Why should people be interested in entering the field of economics?
  • What are some challenges, priorities, and successes of working in government?
  • What it’s like working for government, why they chose economics and what they enjoy the most about their job

The Economics of Housing Policies

Facilitator: Prof Rachel Ong ViforJ, Curtin University

Australis is grappling with a significant and persistent housing affordability problem that some have described as a national crisis. Over the past three decades, the dwelling price to income ratio has climbed rapidly, especially in major cities. The private rental sector continues to be plagued by rental affordability stress and tenure insecurity, especially for low-income groups. There are around 170,000 households on the public housing waitlist, and the number of homeless persons has risen from 95,000 to 122,000 in the two decades to 2021.

The current policy focus is primarily on addressing constraints to new supply. Whilst such constraints are undoubtedly important, there are system-wide complexities driving our housing challenge that include, but go beyond, new supply concerns. This special session will feature various policies beyond new supply measures that influence housing outcomes, including monetary policy (James Graham), stamp duty and land taxes (Gianni La Cava), and the income tax treatment of the family home (Peter Siminski). Together, these papers address the challenges of housing unaffordability, inefficiency and inequality perpetuated by current policy settings. In doing so, the session will shed light on the multidimensionality of Australia’s housing challenge, all of which require policy consideration.

Speakers:

Monetary policy and the home ownership rate

James Graham, University of Sydney

James Graham is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney, specialising in Macroeconomics. His research focuses on housing markets, household behaviour, and cyclical fluctuations in the macroeconomy. He has incorporated both empirical analysis and quantitative macroeconomic modelling in studies of house prices, homeownership, credit conditions, household spending, neighbourhood choice, education, labour markets, and monetary and fiscal policies. His work speaks to both academic and policy audiences, with a recent focus on the challenges of housing affordability in Australia. James graduated with a PhD in Economics from New York University in 2020. Since then, he has published in leading academic economics journals, and he is currently the Editor of New Zealand Economic Papers. He previously worked at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and has held research internships at the Bank of England, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

The effects of stamp duty on home purchase, mobility and prices

Gianni La Cava, e61 Institute

Gianni La Cava is the Research Director at the e61 Institute. Gianni previously held several senior positions at the Reserve Bank of Australia, including establishing and leading a research team – Micro Analysis and Data (MAD) – dedicated to examining macroeconomic issues using microeconomic data. He also worked at the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland. Gianni holds a PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics and a Bachelor of Arts/Commerce from the University of Sydney.

Housing, economic inequality and tax progressivity in Australia

Peter Siminski, University of Technology Sydney

Peter Siminski is a Professor of Economics at UTS. His research is in applied microeconomics and microeconometrics in the fields of inequality and economic mobility, education, health, labour and public economics. Much of his work applies modern impact evaluation techniques to estimate the causal effects of Australian government policies and programs on people’s lives. The measurement of inequality and intergenerational economic mobility is a key theme of his work, and the topic of a new ARC Discovery Grant held with Roger Wilkins, Nathan Deutscher and Bhash Mazumder. He has published in leading journals such as the American Economic Review, AEJ: Applied Economics, the Journal of Labor Economics, and the Review of Economics and Statistics. He is Co-Editor of the Economic Record.

Trump Tariffs and International Trade

History and Role of Indigenous Economic History

Chair: Prof Hugh Harley, University of Sydney

Celebrating Women Economists in the Past 100 Years

This session honours the contributions of women economists who have shaped the discipline over the past century in Australia — across academia, public policy, and industry. Speakers will reflect on the legacies of pioneering figures, highlight ongoing challenges, and discuss the progress made in fostering a more inclusive economics profession. The session aims to inspire the next generation by showcasing the impact and leadership of women in economics, both past and present.

Speakers:

Professor Deborah Cobb-Clark, University of Sydney

Dr Luci Ellis, Chief Economist at Westpac Banking Group

Dr Jenny Gordon, Non-resident Fellow at the Lowy Institute and Honorary Professor at the Centre for Social Research and Methods at the Australian National University

Policies to support Australia’s superpower opportunity

Presentations and discussion in this session will include:

  • Australia’s comparative advantage in a decarbonising world, and its ‘superpower’ green export opportunities;
  • the Australian and international implications of superpower exports — economic and environmental;
  • the macroeconomic implications of policies for decarbonising the Australian economy and supporting superpower exports; and
  • a closer look at green iron as a potential superpower industry.

Speakers:

Australia’s comparative advantage in renewable energy

Dr Reuben Finighan

Reuben holds a PhD in Political Economy from the London School of Economics and a Masters of Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, as a Fulbright, Frank Knox, John Monash, and Leverhulme scholar. He has co-authored papers with Harvard Professor Robert Putnam, Ross Garnaut AC, and Lord Nicholas Stern, and previously worked at the University of Melbourne in applied economics and as Chief Economist for the Universal Commons.

Policies to correct market failures and to harness Australia’s comparative advantage in green iron exports

Dr Ingrid Burfurd

Ingrid has a PhD in Economics from the University of Melbourne, and has worked in the public service, academia, and the not-for-profit sector. She was a Senior Associate at the Grattan Institute, a Lecturer at RMIT University, and a Senior Economist in the Victorian Public Service. She served as a Senior Expert Advisor on the UNFCCC’s review of the Clean Development Mechanism. Ingrid’s research has been published in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, the Journal of the Economic Science Association, Experimental Economics, the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Environmental Research Letters, and the Australian Economic Review.

Carbon pricing when an emissions trading scheme is off the table

Professor Philip Adams

Philip is Professor and past-Director at the Centre of Policy Studies (CoPS), now at Victoria University and previously Monash University (2004-2013). Philip was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 2016 and was awarded the GTAP Research Fellow distinction for the term of 2016 to 2019. He holds a Masters Degree and a Ph.D., both in economics, from the University of Melbourne.

History and role of ESA

Facilitator: Prof Hugh Harley, University of Sydney

An Evolving Record: A Centennial History of the Economic Society of Australia

This presentation recounts some of the trials and tribulations of the Economic Society of Australia over the past 100 years. The Society’s original aims of promoting economic education remains the same, so too does its loose, federated structure and non-exclusivity. The Society’s greatest years in terms of influence were the 1970s and 1980s with membership approaching 3000. The 1990s posed an existential challenge with the rise of business education and the creation of competitive think-tanks. However, the Society responded to the decline in membership by launching initiatives to bring young professionals and women into the fold.

Dr Alex Millmow, Research Adjunct, Federation University

Dr Alex Millmow was an associate professor in economics at the School of Business at Federation University Australia over the period 2010 until 2019. He is now an honorary research adjunct fellow at Federation University, Australia. Alex’s research interests include the making of the Australian economic profession and the role of economic ideas in steering public policy. In 2004 he completed his doctorate at the Australian National University on ‘The Power of Economic Ideas: The Rise of Macroeconomic Management in Australia’ which was subsequently published. Alex has also published over 50 journal articles Including the Economic Record, Economic Papers, Economic Analysis and Policy and the History of Economics Review. He is the current President of the History of Economic Thought Society of Australia (HETSA) and the President of the Victorian branch of the Economic Society of Australia. In 2017 he published A History of Australasian Economic Thought (Routledge: London) and in 2020 an intellectual biography of the Anglo Australian economist Colin Clark entitled The Gypsy Economist.

Centennial anniversary of the Economic Record: A bibliometric retrospective

The Economic Record is the main journal of the Economic Society of Australia. It was established in 1925 and in 2025 celebrates its 100th anniversary. Motivated by this special event, this study presents a bibliometric analysis of the Economic Record. The objective is to provide a general overview of the journal between 1925 and 2024, with a special focus on the last decades. To do so, the work uses the Web of Science (WoS) and the Scopus databases to analyze all the bibliographic material of the journal. Additionally, it also uses the visualization of similarities (VOS) viewer (Van Eck and Waltman, 2010) and the bibliometrix software (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017), to graphically map the bibliometric results.

Prof. Jose Merigo, University of Technology Sydney

José M Merigó is a Professor at the School of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Before joining UTS, he was a Full Professor at the Department of Management Control and Information Systems at the University of Chile. Previously, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Manchester Business School, University of Manchester (UK) and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Business Administration at the University of Barcelona (Spain).

He has published more than 500 articles on journals, books and conference proceedings. Since 2015 he is recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics (Thomson & Reuters) in Computer Science (2015-2020) and Cross-Field (2021-present). He has also appeared in many other international rankings including the Standford/Elsevier Top 2% Scientists List, Research.com, ScholarGPS, and AD Scientific Index.

Webpage: https://profiles.uts.edu.au/Jose.Merigo

Fiscal Policy and Tax Reform

Inequality

Facilitator: Prof Alison Preston, The University of Western Australia