About Me

I am currently appointed as Associate Professor at the Macquarie Business School, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. I serve as an Editor of Journal of Population Economics (Springer).

I am interested in issues relating to the economics of health, well-being and economic development. My dominant research theme is applying microeconomics to evaluate the mechanism by which social determinants of health, and preference heterogeneity in individual/household decision-making towards informing the design of the economic policy. I have developed new techniques to study well-being i.e., health-related quality of life (the Australian Quality of Life (AQoL-8D); multidimensional deprivation. My recent and ongoing research uses causal inference and machine learning techniques to study the impact of economic policy on the health and well-being of individuals. I have empirically modelled: intrahousehold decision making; health-related knowledge and behaviour in the context of HIV/AIDS; health and well-being in retirement; economic policy and behavior; national and sub-national purchasing power parities (PPPs) using demand estimations; health and nutrition insecurity; malnutrition and child health.

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, Journal of Biosocial Sciences, Value in Health, Quality of Life Research, British Medical Bulletin, Economic Record among others.

Previously, I have worked at the Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics and Department of Economics at Monash University, Melbourne and Center for Health Economics, Monash Business School at Monash University I received my PhD in Economics from the Australian National University, Canberra.

I am affiliated with the Health Economics Study Group at University of York, Centre of Development Economics and Sustainability at Monash University, Global Labor Organization (GLO) and International Health Economic Association (iHEA). At GLO, I lead a research cluster Development, Health, Inequality and Behavior. At iHEA, I am a member of the iHEA Equity Diversity Inclusion Promotion & Monitoring Group.

I am the Section Editor for the Springer Handbook Handbook of Labor, Human Resource and Population Economics for the section on "Health".

News:

  • 2022: Accepted in Health Economics

  • 2022: Request for R&R in Feminist Economics

  • 2021: Request for R&R 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", Macquarie University, Sydney 11-13 November 2019. For more information visit 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).