• MonashU
• HonoursEconomics
• Matching2016

(quick link to this site: http://tinyurl.com/HonsMatching2016)

Welcome to the Matching website for Economics Honours students 2016. The aim is to share supervisor and project information for 2106 Honours students. For any questions or inquiries, please contact the Honours Research Unit Coordinator, Russell Smyth ( russell.smyth@monash.edu ).

Research Topics + Supervisors

NOTE: these topics and supervisors are subject to review/updating for 2016. If you have a supervisor in mind who is not listed, then feel free to contact them directly.

Klaus Abbink (Clayton)

• Email: klaus.abbink@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Behavioural Economics: Mistrust games
  2. Behavioural Economics: Risk assessment in sudden death situations

Simon Angus (Clayton) website

• Email: Simon.Angus@monash.edu

• Computational Science, Complexity Science, Data science, Networks, Evolutionary game theory, Agent Based Modelling
• Topics:

  1. Economics of innovations & technology:

     • [Computer Modelling] Extending the 'Bit-Economy' (see here)

     • [Data mining/Empirical/Networks] History of economic innovations around the industrial revolution from a very large dataset on technology publications (ask me for some slides)

     • [Theory and/or numerical simulation] The role of technology in the early development of man (see here)

  2. Large, new, interesting Data
     • [Data mining/Empirical/Networks] What fraction of culture is determined by our ancestry? -- evidence from Google Trends (ask me to explain more)

     • [Data mining/Empirical/Networks] A massive data set on the internet: activity, penetration and speed, globally. High spatial and temporal resolution. (watch this)

  3. Any integrated economic modelling problem with important feed-backs, non-linearities and complexity science

     • Consider extensions/additions to the projects listed here: http://tinyurl.com/MonIEMProjectGallery2010

  4. Modelling economic networks: strategic interactions on networks, dynamic economic networks
  5. Evolutionary economics (evolutionary game theory, replicator dynamics, Schumpeterian perspective of economic change)

Mita Bhattacharya (Caulfield)

• Email: Mita.Bhattacharya@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Industrial Production, Economic Growth and Energy Policies in Developing Countries
  2. Topics related to trade reform, industrial competitiveness and growth for both developed and developing countries

Ross Booth

• Email: Ross.Booth@monash.edu (Clayton)

• Topics:
  1. Any aspect of the economics of a sport, or a sports league?
  2. Any current issue is worthy of consideration!
  3. Some recent topics have been - The effect of limited free agency in the AFL; The effect of free agency in US professional sports; Competitive balance in F1 Grand Prix racing; Uncertainty of match outcome and TV ratings; Measuring the effect of marquee players on the demand for Australian professional soccer; Is left-footedness an advantage in the AFL?

Zhijun Chen (Caulfield)

• Email: zhijun.Chen@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Industrial Organization
  2. Competition Policy

Wenli Cheng (Caulfield)

• Email: Wenli.Cheng@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Chinese economy
  2. Finance and economic development

Horag Choi (Caulfield)

• Email: horag.choi@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. International Macroeconomics

Gaurav Datt (Clayton)

• Email: gaurav.datt@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Development economics, especially poverty and inequality analysis

Qingyuan Du (Caulfield)

• Email: qingyuan.du@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Global imbalance, especially large current account surpluses and high savings rates in eastern asian countries
  2. Exchange rate, what determines the equilibrium level of a country's real exchange rate. What should be the optimal nominal exchange regime for a country?
  3. Chinese economy

Nick Feltovich (Clayton)

• Email: nicholas.feltovich@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Experimental game theory
  2. Bargaining theory
  3. Bargaining experiments
  4. Macroeconomics experiments

Lata Gangadharan (Clayton)

• Email: lata.gangadharan@monash.edu

• Topics
  1. Experimental Economics
  2. Behavioural Economics

Phil Grossman (Clayton)

• Email: philip.grossman@monash.edu

• Topics
  1. Experimental economics
  2. Behavioural economics
  3. Charitable giving
  4. Leadership

Youjin Hahn (Clayton)

• Email: youjin.hahn@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Health Economics
  2. Economics of Education
  3. Other general labour and public economics

Edwyna Harris (Clayton)

• Email: edwyna.harris@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Environmental Economics - general
  2. Environmental Economics - Irrigation water allocation and pricing
  3. Economic History - general
  4. Economist History - Australia
  5. Institutional Economics
  6. Law and Economics

Asad Islam (Caulfield)

• Email: asadul.islam@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Economics of education
  2. Social network
  3. Field Experiments
  4. Agricultural economics
  5. Economics of immigration
  6. Commercial sex work in Bangladesh
  7. Program and policy evaluation

Gennadi Kazakevitch (Clayton)

• Email: gennadi.kazakevitch@monash.edu

• In 2016 I will be taking no new students, and will only continue supervising a second year masters student's project.

Elias Khalil (Clayton)

• Email: elias.khalil@monash.edu

• Topics (please note - all in theory):
  1. Behavioral economics (the role of context in decision making; regret; myside-bias; temptations; identity)
  2. Ethics and Economics
  3. Happiness and income
  4. Political economy

Andreas Leibbrandt (Clayton)

• Email: andreas.leibbrandt@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. All kinds of experiments (field, lab, artefactual)
  2. Research collaborations with Australian governmental departments on various topics (feel free to ask!)
  3. Cooperation and Social Preferences (when do people cooperate, when are they selfish, which institutions help increase cooperation)
  4. Competitiveness and Gender Differences (do women shy away from competition? Does this explain the gender wage gap?)

Matt Leister (Clayton)

• Email: matthew.leister@monash.edu

• Areas of interest: Microeconomic Theory, Industrial Organization (Theory), Social and Economic Networks, Information Economics
• Topics:
  1. Intermediation and Market Structure
  2. Information Acquisition, Information Markets
  3. Auctions

Anke Leroux (Caulfield)

• Email: anke.leroux@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Effect of Market Liberalization in Xieng Khuang Province (Lao PDR) using synthetic control approach
  2. Efficiency gains in the allocation of conservation contracts

Gary Magee (Caulfield)

• Email: Gary.Magee@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Any aspect of Economic History

Pushkar Maitra (Clayton)

• Email: pushkar.maitra@monash.edu

• Areas of interest: Development Economics
  • Specific projects:
    1. Economic growth and obesity in developing countries
    2. Health impacts of tobacco consumption in developing countries

Sephorah Mangin (Caulfield)

• Email: Sephorah.Mangin@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Macroeconomics (theory)
  2. Economic growth (theory)
  3. Unemployment, macro labor

Vinod Mishra (Berwick)

• Email: vinod.mishra@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Financial Markets (Stock market efficiency, Structural breaks, Co-integration)
  2. Applied Industrial organisation
  3. Survey data analysis

Solmaz Moslehi (Caulfield)

• Email: Solmaz.Moslehi@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Macroeconomics and Growth
  2. Public and political economics
  3. Family economics

Vai-Lam Mui (Clayton)

• Email: Vai-Lam.Mui@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Political economy (theory)
  2. Besides theoretical work on political economy, I would be interested in supervising a project on the political economy of the Eureka rebellion that took place in 1845 right here at Ballarat, Victoria. This event has been used by prominent scholars such as Acemoglu and Robinson (2013, Journal of Economic Perspectives) as an important example of how “the organization of resource wealth” and citizen revolts can shape the evolution of economic and political institutions. The importance and legacy of the Eureka rebellion, however, is a subject of debate. More importantly, we need a better understanding regarding how strategic considerations, as well as political and economic incentives, shape the courses of actions that relevant players took. This project will be jointly supervised by me and Professor Russell Smyth. The goal of project is to use economic theory—in particular basic game theory and recent work in political economy—to conduct a theory-informed case study of the Eureka rebellion, paying special attention to the question of why key players did NOT take certain course of actions available to them.

Laura Puzzello (Caulfield)

• Email: laura.puzzello@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Empirical international trade
  2. Outsourcing in the global economy

Birendra Rai (Clayton)

• Email: Birendra.Rai@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Irrationality and unawareness
  2. Economics of language

Paul Raschky (Caulfield)

• Email: Paul.Raschky@monash.edu

• Topics:
  • Empirical (applied econometric) analysis of topics in:
    • Economic valuation study as part of the CRC for Water Sensitive Cities
    • Political economy
    • Environmental economics
    • Economics of natural disasters
    • Economics of the media

Anmol Ratan (Clayton)

• Email: anmol.ratan@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Behavioral Economics; models of individual decision making in risk/uncertainty
  2. Experimental Economics: Protocols, Procedures, Unidentified influences, External Validity
  3. Reading course: Students bring their topics of interest in above, present and discuss their work to wider audience and develop a research problem
  4. Developing experiments for economic analysis

Paulo Santos (Caulfield)

• Email: Paulo.Santos@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Job insecurity and intra-family transfers in a developing country
  2. Subjective expectations of returns to education among Aboriginal Australians
  3. Intrahousehold inequality in consumption

Russell Smyth (Clayton)

• Email: russell.smyth@monash.edu

• More about my research at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Russell_Smyth

• Research topics:
  • Education, health, labour, and development economics
  • Energy economics
  • Subjective wellbeing/economics of happiness
  • Empirical legal studies/law and economics
  • Most topics to do with the Chinese economy.

Christis Tombazos (Clayton)

• Email: christis.tombazos@monash.edu

• Topics:

In 1968 Kenneth Arrow wrote "The notion that, through the workings of an entire system, effects may be very different from, and even opposed to, intentions is surely the most important intellectual contribution that economic thought has made to the general understanding of social processes." This notion provides an excellent premise for the sort of tractable and interesting honours projects that I would be interested to supervise. Examples include a good deal of policies devised by governments, corporations, universities, and other large institutions.

I would also consider supervising topics in International Economics and Political Economy that may not fall into the theme of the previous paragraph.

David Treisman (City/Caulfield)

• Email: David.Treisman@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Asset Pricing - including emerging financial markets
  2. Financial Economics - general, financial markets, governance, institutions, corporate finance etc.
  3. Interactions of Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
  4. International Finance - including international factor movements and international business
  5. Political Economy

Rebecca Valenzuela (Caulfield)

• Email: Rebecca.Valenzuela@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Poverty and Inequality Measurement
  2. Measurement of Living Standards

  3. Expenditure Patterns of Households& Impact on Welfare

  4. Issues associated with Ageing Population
  5. Home Ownership Patterns in Australia
  6. Costs of Raising Children/Family Economics

Choon Wang (Clayton)

• Email: liang.c.wang@monash.edu

• More about my research at https://sites.google.com/site/liangchoonwang/research

• Research topics:
  • Education, health, labour, public, and development economics:
    • School autonomy, test performance, and housing prices
    • The impact of affirmative action on pro- and anti-social behaviours
    • Climate change and infectious diseases
    • Commercial sex work
  • Some recent students under my supervision wrote about:
    • The effects of after-school classes on private tutoring, mental health, and college attendance rates
    • The effect of affirmative action on workplace sabotage
    • The capitalisation of high-achieving public high schools in local property prices
    • Hedonic pricing of race horses
    • The effect of TV watching on BMI

Erte Xiao (Clayton)

• Email: Erte.Xiao@monash.edu

• Topics:
  1. Experimental economics
  2. Behavioural economics

Examples of research projects: social norms, understanding how monetary and non-monetary incentives affect prosocial behaviour... See more at https://sites.google.com/site/ertexiao/home

Hee-Seung Yang (Clayton)

• Email: heeseung.yang@monash.edu

• More about my research at https://sites.google.com/site/heeseungyang/home

• Topics:
  1. Public Finance
  2. Labour Economics
  3. Health
  4. Examples: government social insurance programs, pensions, marriage market, labour supply/demand, job polarization and health care reforms

Siew Ling Yew (Clayton)

• Email: Siew.Yew@monash.edu

• Topics:
  • Economic growth
  • Macroeconomics and public finance

Supervisors unavailable in 2016

• Stephen King (Apologies - I am not here second semester).