Macro Policy Meeting Presenter Bios
Markus Brueckner
Markus Brueckner is Professor in the Research School of Economics of the Australian National University. In 2020 he received the Young Economist Award from the Economic Society of Australia. His research interests are in macroeconomics, international economics, and economic growth and development. Markus has published widely in leading international journals. He was a consultant on numerous projects for the World Bank, IMF, and UNDP.
Yunpeng Deng
Yunpeng Deng is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UNSW Sydney. He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Melbourne. His research lies in macroeconomics, with a focus on the interactions between monetary and fiscal policy. In particular, he studies how portfolio choices by governments, central banks, and households shape the transmission and optimal design of policy.
Ding Dong
Ding Dong is an Assistant Professor of economics at the School of Business, Hong Kong Baptist University. His research sits at the intersection of macroeconomics and macro-finance, focusing on the origins and transmission of second-moment shocks such as uncertainty and turbulence, and on how heterogeneous beliefs shape asset markets and policy transmission. His work has appeared in the Journal of Monetary Economics and the Journal of Economic Theory, and he currently has several papers on topics including information acquisition, inflation disagreement, speculation, and asset bubbles. He is Co-PI of the China Household Survey of Expectations. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from HKUST in 2024 and B.A. from Nanjing University in 2017.
Nick Garvin
Nick specialises in microdata research for economic and financial-system policy, with a focus on housing. He has 15 years of research experience at e61, RBA and APRA on topics related to household mobility, superannuation, financial stability, financial markets, and payments, and has been an econometrics lecturer at UNSW. Nick holds a PhD in Economics from Pompeu Fabra University and Bachelor Degrees in Economics and Psychology from Macquarie University.
Isaac Gross
Dr Isaac Gross is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at Monash University and holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Oxford. Before joining Monash, he worked at the Reserve Bank of Australia and wrote for The Economist. His research spans macroeconomics and the housing market, with particular interests in Australian monetary policy and public policy.
Alexander Haas
Alexander is an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in Economics at Monash University. His research interests are in macroeconomics, monetary economics, and macro-finance, with a particular focus on monetary and fiscal policy in the context of frictions in financial intermediation and liquidity. He received his DPhil (PhD) in Economics from the University of Oxford in 2024, advised by Andrea Ferrero. In recent years, he has also been affiliated with and conducted research at the Bank of Spain, Bank of England, European Central Bank, and DIW Berlin.
Jonathan Hambur
Jonathan Hambur is the Deputy Head of the Economic Research Department at the RBA. He holds an MSc in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics from the London School of Economics and PhD from ANU, and is a research associate in the ‘Micro-Heterogeneity and Macroeconomic Performance’ program ANU CAMA. His research focuses on using microdata to better understand macroeconomic questions, particularly around productivity and labour markets.
Yan Liang
Yan Liang is a Senior Lecturer at Deakin Business School, Deakin University. His research explores how productivity and resource allocation shape economic performance, with a focus on macroeconomics, international trade, and public policy. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and an MA from the University of Tokyo.
Nalini Prasad
Nalini Prasad is a Senior Lecturer at UNSW Sydney. She got her PhD in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her interests are in macroeconomics and open economy macroeconomics. She previously worked at the Reserve Bank of Australia.
Michelle Rendall
Michelle Rendall is a Professor of Economics at Monash University. She received her PhD in Economics from the University of Texas at Austin in 2008. Her research focuses on macroeconomics and labour economics, with particular interests in human capital, gender, inequality, structural transformation, and economic development. Her work has been published in leading journals including Econometrica, the Economic Journal, International Economic Review, and Review of Economic Dynamics. Her current research examines topics including gender differences in education and labour markets, peer effects, technological change, occupational choice, and the role of human capital in shaping economic outcomes.
Petr Sedláček
Petr is a Professor of Economics at the UNSW Business School. Prior to joining UNSW, he was a Professor at the University of Oxford, where he is still an Associate Member. His research focuses on labor markets, productivity growth and business dynamism. Petr has advised the European Commission and his research has attracted several grants and awards, including the Future Fellowship of the ARC.
Aarti Singh
Aarti Singh is an Associate Professor in the School of Economics at the University of Sydney. Her research combines microeconomic data with quantitative macroeconomic models to study income risk, household decision-making, and the distributional effects of monetary and fiscal policy. She is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control and the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking.
Lu Wang
Lu Wang is a Lecturer in Economics at the University of Western Australia. Her research interests are in macroeconomics, monetary economics, and financial markets, with a particular focus on how market frictions and liquidity shape asset prices, market participation, and macroeconomic outcomes. Her work has been published in the Journal of Economic Theory and the European Economic Review.
Benjamin Wong
Benjamin Wong is an Associate Professor at the Monash Business School. He has research interests in macroeconometrics and time series analysis, with a focus on issues related to estimation, inference and interpretation of sources of business cycle fluctuations. A theme of his work has been the development of tools to inform policy analysis through the estimation and understanding key inputs for macroeconomic policy analysis, such as the output gap and trend inflation. He was previously a research economist at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and is a regular visitor at central banks and policy institutions. He holds a PhD in Economics from The Australian National University and has published work in international peer reviewed journals such as the Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of International Economics, European Economics Review, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking etc..
Hiroki Yamamoto
Hiroki Yamamoto is Head of Economic Studies Group at the Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan. His research interests include monetary policy, inflation expectations, and empirical macroeconomics. His current research examines how monetary policy news is perceived by economic agents and how those perceptions affect long-run inflation expectations. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo and a master’s degree in economics from the University of Texas at Austin.
Dan Zhu
Professor Dan Zhu is a Professor at the Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics, Monash University. She hold a PhD in Financial Mathematics and Actuarial Science from the Economics department, University of Melbourne. Dr Dan Zhu's research interests include numerical methods for sensitivity analysis, financial mathematics, optimization of stochastic dynamical systems, and Bayesian analysis.