Dr Sonja de New (née Kassenboehmer) is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Health Economics at Monash Business School. Her research focuses on mental health economics and policy evaluation with a particular focus on the mental health of disadvantaged populations.
Her research projects investigate the impact of insecure work and financial stress on decision-making, skills, productivity and life outcomes. She is also working on several projects related to risky behaviours, in particular, the role of economic disadvantage and the evaluation of various policy changes to reduce risky behaviours.
Some of her current projects seek to understand which factors led to the increasing number of opioid deaths in Australia and how to stop this trend. Her work rigorously evaluates in a causal manner both intended and unintended effects of recent supply-and demand-side interventions to suggest new policies to curb the high rates of opioid use disorder and associated deaths.
Understanding which active policies are effective and ineffective will ultimately help policymakers reduce government expenditure and societal costs and assist medical personnel and frontline responders to save lives.
I currently rank in the top 10% of all economists worldwide, top 6% of female economists worldwide and am among the top 42 female economists in Australia (based on the internationally renowned Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) project, which uses the RePEc bibliographical database to rank individuals based on quantity and quality of publications measured by journal impact factors, citations and downloads).
My articles can be found in such journals as the Economic Journal, Industrial and Labour Relations Review, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization, Labour Economics, Journal of Human Capital, Oxford Economic Papers, Economics Letters and Journal of Economic Psychology.
