About Me
I am a Professor of Economics at the Macquarie Business School, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. I serve as an Editor of Journal of Population Economics (Springer), and Section Editor for the Springer Handbook Handbook of Labor, Human Resource and Population Economics. I lead the research cluster on Development, Health, Inequality and Behavior at Global Labor Organization (GLO). I am a founding member of the Australasian Development Economics Association. I serve at the International Health Economic Association (iHEA) as a member of the iHEA Equity Diversity Inclusion Promotion & Monitoring Group. I am affiliated with the Health Economics Study Group at University of York and am a member of the Society of Economic Measurement.
My work focuses on the intersection of health, economics, and social equity, aiming to address critical challenges like income inequality, social determinants of health, and nutrition security. Using applied econometrics and policy evaluation, I seek to develop evidence-based solutions that improve health outcomes for marginalized communities. I am passionate about translating research into actionable insights that drive meaningful policy change and advance health equity globally.
My recent work incorporates causal inference and machine learning to evaluate the impact of economic policy on health and well-being. I have developed new techniques for assessing well-being, including the Australian Quality of Life (AQoL-8D) measure, multidimensional deprivation indices and measures of sub-national purchasing power parities for food. I have conducted studies on intra-household decision-making, health behaviors in the context of HIV/AIDS, retirement health, and nutrition insecurity, intergenerational transmission of health, child malnutrition and impact evaluation of policy interventions. My research has been published in highly ranked peer-reviewed journals including Health Economics, Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organisation, American Journal for Agricultural Economics, Social Science and Medicine, Energy Economics, Macroeconomic Dynamics, Review of Income and Wealth, Feminist Economics, Journal of Biosocial Sciences, Value in Health, Quality of Life Research, British Medical Bulletin, Economic Record among others.
News:
2024: Paper accepted in Pharmacoeconomics
2024: Paper published in BMJ - Open
2024: Paper published in Industrial Relations
2024: Paper published in Feminist Economics
2023: Published in Plos One
2023: Published in Pharmacoeconomics
2023: Published in Ear and Hearing (Available here)
2023: Join us for the Australian Development Economics Workshop (June 2023) at Macquarie University, 7-8 June 2023. For more information visit the conference website.
2022: Accepted in Health Economics
2021: Recent paper published in Economics and Human Biology (Available here)
2021: Recent paper published in Economic Record (Available here)
2021: Recent paper published in Energy Economics (Available here)
2021: Research on PPL and mental health has been covered by Sydney Morning Herald on 11/02/2021 here.
2020: Paper analysing mental health outcomes of paid parental leave has been published in Health Economics (available here)
2019: Join us for the first "Workshop on the Economics of Health Behaviour" at Macquarie University, Sydney 11-13 November 2019. For more information visit the Conference website.
2019: Join us for the "Sydney Development Economics Seminars" from 1st August, 2019. This is a fortnightly seminar series across four universities based in Sydney (UNSW, Macquarie University, University Technology Sydney and University of Sydney) with the objective of providing a ‘social tea’ towards facilitating collaborations among development economists. For more information drop an email to me or (Shyamal Chowdhury (USyd); Sarah Walker (UNSW); Esther Mirjam Girsberger (UTS).