Melbourne Institute Leadership Team
Director
Professor A. Abigail Payne
Professor Payne is the Director of the leading Australian institute of applied economic and social research. The Melbourne Institute has a team of more than 50 academic researchers that are engaged in research on various microeconomic and macroeconomic topics including health, labour, education, housing, social disadvantage, macro, and public economics. Professor Payne holds a PhD from Princeton University, a J.D. from Cornell Law School, and a Bachelor’s Degree (with honours) from Denison University. Professor Payne moved to Australia from North America where she previously held positions in Canada and the US. Professor Payne has a longstanding research interest in empirical public economics issues with a focus on how government policy affects spending and performance. She also studies charitable giving, the role of government funding on service provision, and how tax policy affects giving and the delivery of public services. Her scholarship demonstrates how best to use big data for economic research, she has initiated several key projects in Australia that relate to entrenched disadvantage, charitable giving, and educational performance. Professor Payne is actively involved in Australian economic and social policy as a member on multiple State and Commonwealth Government and University of Melbourne committees. Internationally she is a member of the Ifo Institute’s Scientific Advisory Council (SAC) and a number of boards and co-editorships. She continues to collaborate with researchers around the world on economic and social issues.
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Deputy Director
Professor Roger WilkinsProfessor Roger Wilkins is the Income and Economic Wellbeing Program Coordinator and Deputy Director of the Institute. He is also HILDA Survey Co-Director, and is responsible for the annual HILDA Survey Statistical Report and the Australian income component of the World Inequality Database. His research interests include the nature, causes and consequences of labour market outcomes; the distribution and dynamics of individuals’ economic wellbeing; and the incidence and determinants of poverty, social exclusion and welfare dependence.
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Program Coordinator
Professor Marco CastilloProfessor Marco Castillo is the Child Development and Education Program Coordinator. He is a Professor of Economics at Texas A&M University and IZA Research Fellow. His research interests include children’s decision making and educational attainment. Professor Castillo conducts field experiments in a wide range of policy-relevant topics like human capital accumulation, energy conservation, crime recidivism, and charitable fundraising.
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Program Coordinator
Professor John de NewProfessor John de New is the Labour Markets and Employment Program Coordinator. His work focuses on applied labour, health, education economics and financial wellbeing. He is a Research Fellow of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course and co-CI of the ARC Discovery Project ’Economic stress, non-cognitive skill development and life outcomes.’ Professor de New leads the MI-Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) research collaboration on Financial Wellbeing and is Data Editor of the Australian Economic Review.
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Program Coordinator
Professor Guyonne KalbProfessor Guyonne Kalb is the Labour Markets and Employment Program Director. She is a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course. Her research interests include labour supply issues (especially related to women); the interaction of labour supply, social security and taxation; labour supply and childcare; and the impact of childcare/parental activities on child development and health. Professor Kalb is an Associate Editor for Economic Record and Fiscal Studies.
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Program Coordinator
Professor Guay LimProfessor Guay Lim is the Macroeconomic Modelling, Forecasting and Policy Analysis Program Coordinator. Her team is responsible for the Consumer Attitudes, Sentiment and Expectations (CASiE) survey and the associated monthly summary Indicators and Reviews of the state of the Australian economy. Professor Lim’s ongoing research projects investigate the decline in the labour share of national income, low wage growth and high house prices, including policies to promote inclusive growth and to stabilise business cycles. She is a member of the CAMA RBA Shadow Board and an Advisory Board member of the Australasian Macroeconomics Society.
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Program Coordinator
Professor Ragan PetrieProfessor Ragan Petrie is the Public Economics Program Coordinator. She is a Professorial Fellow at the Melbourne Institute and a Professor of Economics at Texas A&M University (USA), and is involved with analysis of the ATO ALife data. Professor Petrie is Co-Editor of Experimental Economics and was a Board Member of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP) of the American Economic Association.
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Program Coordinator
Dr Rajeev SamarageDr. Rajeev Samarage is the Data and Analytics Program Coordinator and a Senior Research Fellow in data analytics at the Melbourne Institute. Dr. Samarage has over ten years’ experience in data preparation, linking and analysis. His research interests include the translation of novel data analytical techniques from engineering to economic analyses, expanding the use of alternate data sources in analysis, text analysis and language processing, the ethical use of machine learning and the applications of image processing in social research. Dr. Samarage oversees the security requirements of the Melbourne Institute Secure Environment.
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Program Coordinator
Professor Lisa CameronProfessor Lisa Cameron is the Disadvantage and Wellbeing in the Asia-Pacific Program Coordinator. Her research focuses on issues of social welfare and poverty in Australia and throughout Asia. She is particularly interested in the welfare of disadvantaged and marginalised groups. Her work in this area includes analyses of poverty and wellbeing, economic development in Asia, and evaluations of social welfare programs and gender inequality. She is an Affiliated Professor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). In 2013 she was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences.