In Brief

Tilak Abeysinghe is currently an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore, Senior Research Advisor of Marga Institute, and Senior Advisor of Gamani Corea Foundation, Sri Lanka. He was a Senior Research Advisor at the Asia Competitiveness Institute, National University of Singapore.

He was a professor in the Department of Economics, National University of Singapore. He joined the Department in 1988 and retired in July 2019.  In the Department he served as the Director of the Singapore Centre for Applied and Policy Economics and Executive Committee member of the Department. He held other important administrative responsibilities such as Deputy/Acting Headship, Director of Economics Graduate Program and member of the Faculty Tenure and Promotion Committee. He was also a Visiting Professor at Kyoto University and Peradeniya University.

He obtained his Ph.D. in Economics/Econometrics from the University of Manitoba and worked for the United States Agency for International Development (Colombo) before joining NUS. He has researched on a range of theoretical and applied econometric topics. Applied work includes the Singapore economy, housing affordability, stress and cancer, quantitative health research, welfare spending and fiscal sustainability, quality adjusted labor input, subnational economies of Sri Lanka, and supply chain issues in Sri Lanka. He has published in various reputable international outlets like Journal of Econometrics and NBER paper series.

A major line of his research has been the econometric modelling of the Singapore economy, forecasting and policy analyses. As the coordinator of the Econometric Studies Unit since 1992 he has built a number of econometric models, one of which appears in the Routledge book, The Singapore Economy: An Econometric Perspective. Policy analyses based on these models have appeared in news media frequently. He coordinated a keenly awaited monthly newspaper column in The Straits Times, “Ask NUS economists”. He has supervised 11 PhD students and a large number of Masters and Honours students.