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The Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (often simply referred to as "The Melbourne Institute") is an Australian economic research institute based in Melbourne, Victoria. The institute is a department of the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Melbourne.
The Melbourne Institute was formed in 1962 as the Institute of Applied Economic Research under the leadership of Professor Ronald Henderson. It was the first economic research institute in an Australian university. Henderson built up an organisation with about 40 staff by the early 1970s. It engaged in a wide range of research areas including macroeconomic forecasting, financial economics and social economics, and is best remembered for its work on poverty and the development of the Henderson Poverty Line. The name of the institute was later changed to Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (IAESR). [1]
After the Henderson era, Duncan Ironmonger acted as director for five years, before Professor Peter Dixon was appointed director.
After some restructuring, the new Melbourne Institute based its operation around Dixon's ORANI model of the Australian economy. In the early 1990s Peter Dixon and a number of his senior colleagues left the institute to join Monash University. This necessitated a second period of adjustment and restructuring initiated by Professor Richard Blandy who was director from 1992 to 1994.
Professor Peter Dawkins, took up his position of director in January 1996. In that year, the director and his senior management team, in association with the staff and the advisory board, developed a strategic plan with the unifying theme being the link between economic performance and social outcomes. The first version of this plan was for the period 1996–2000 and it is updated annually. In that year, the name of the institute was changed to Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research. [1]
Professor John Freebairn was appointed director in 2005 and returned to the Department of Economics in 2007. Stephen Sedgwick, former board member of the Asian Development Bank was director from August 2007 until July 2009. In April 2010 Professor Deborah Cobb-Clark was appointed the director and Ronald Henderson Professor.
The Melbourne Institute manages the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) household panel survey, a national longitudinal study of household economies, labour force participation and family change. It is also undertaking a panel study of General practitioners examining the determinants of medical workforce shortages, undertakes detailed labour market research, is examining the relationship of poverty and human capital and examines the economic impacts of intellectual property. The institute produces regular reports which track consumer sentiment and economic activity (both reports get widespread media comment in Australia), and annual rankings of the standing of Australian Universities and of individual disciplines. The institute hosts a biennial conference with a focus on economic performance and social outcomes.
Development economics is a branch of economics which deals with economic aspects of the development process in low income countries. Its focus is not only on methods of promoting economic development, economic growth and structural change but also on improving the potential for the mass of the population, for example, through health, education and workplace conditions, whether through public or private channels.
Poverty in Australia deals with the incidence of relative poverty in Australia and its measurement. Relative income poverty is measured as a percentage of the population that earns less in comparison to the median wage of the working population.
Warwick James McKibbin is an Australian Professor of Economics at the Australian National University who works across a wide range of areas in applied policy. He has published more than 200 scholarly articles and several books and is internationally known for his contribution to global economic modelling.
David Anthony Vines, is an Australian economist teaching at Oxford University.
Helen Dolly Hughes was an Australian economist. She was Professor Emerita at the Australian National University, Canberra, and Senior Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, Sydney. Hughes has been described as Australia's greatest female economist.
The German Institute for Economic Research or more commonly DIW Berlin is a economic research institute in Germany, involved in basic research and policy advice. It is a non-profit academic institution, financed with public grants from the Berlin Senate Department for Economics, Technology and Research and the Federal Department for Economics and Technology. DIW Berlin was founded in 1925 as the Institute for Business Cycle Research and was later renamed.
Crawford School of Public Policy is a research-intensive policy school within the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific at The Australian National University which focuses on Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. The school was named after Sir John Crawford, and its current director is Professor Helen Sullivan.
Professor Wei-Jun Jean Yeung is a Taiwanese sociologist and demographer, now is the professor of Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. She chairs the Family, Children, and Youth Research Cluster in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in NUS.
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Belinda Probert is an educator and social scientist who has advised non-government organisations and state and national governments in Australia. Her academic research and writing has been in the areas of employment policy, gender equity, and work and welfare reform, including households and the domestic division of labour. She has held senior leadership roles in several universities as well as with the Australian Research Council, where she was a member and Deputy Chair of the Research Training and Careers Committee (1993–1998), and member of the Social, Behavioural and Economic Sciences Expert Advisory Committee.
The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey is an Australian household-based panel study which began in 2001. It has been used for examining issues such as the incidence of persistent poverty; assets and income in the transition to retirement; the correlates and impact of changes in physical and mental health; and an international comparison of wealth and happiness. The survey is widely used by Australian and international researchers in the fields of economics, social science and social policy and by the Australian Government. The HILDA survey is managed by a small team from the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne and the national fieldwork is carried out by ACNielsen and Roy Morgan Research. The survey is funded by the Australian Government through the Department of Social Services.
Haroon Bhorat is Professor of Economics and Director of the Development Policy Research Unit (DPRU) at the University of Cape Town. His area of research has concentrated on labour economics and poverty/income distribution mainly in his native South Africa, and recently, been expanded to other parts of Africa - in which he is world-renowned authority.
Paul William Glewwe is an economist and Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota. His research interests include economic development and growth, the economics of the public sector, and poverty and welfare. He formerly was the Director of the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy and served as co-chair of the education programme of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL).
Deborah A. Cobb-Clark is an Australian economist. She is currently working as a Professor in the University of Sydney and as a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course. She has also worked in Bonn, Germany at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) since 2000, where she holds the position of director of the Program in Gender and Families.
Xin Meng is a Chinese economist and professor at the Research School of Economics, College of Business and Economics (CBE), Australian National University (ANU). She is also a member of the Association for Comparative Economic Studies, the American Economic Association, the Society of Labor Economics and Royal Economic Society. Her main research interests include Labour Economics, Development Economics, Applied Microeconomics and Economics of Education. She focuses on researching issues about the Chinese labour market during transition, the influence of corporations and gender discrimination, the economic assimilation of immigrants and the economic implications of major catastrophes. Meng was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 2008.
Imran Rasul is a professor of economics at the University College London, managing editor of the Journal of the European Economic Association, and co-director of the Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. His research interests include labour, development and public economics and he is considered to be one of the leaders within social norms and capital economics.
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