Research at a glance

The School of Economics and Finance has a proud and robust research portfolio. In 2011, we ranked first in Queensland and third in Australia for Applied Economics, as determined by the Government's Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) exercise - a national initiative that assesses research quality within Australia's 41 eligible higher education institutions. Furthermore, across all branches of economics, we received a world-class ranking.

Our chief investigators, together with a growing research student community, have achieved substantial grants and project funding for work covering a diverse range of activities, including environmental and behavioural economic issues and infrastructure financing projects.

Our expertise

Several of our high-profile research leaders have received international recognition for their work, and have been major research-income generators and producers of high quality and high impact outputs:

• Stan Hurn is a founding member and a council member of the Society for Financial Econometrics
• Benno Torgler was ranked in the top 20 German-speaking economists in the world
• Tim Robinson and Clevo Wilson have established the foundations of a strong research theme in environmental and resource economics.

We also have a strong research platform in:

• econometric modelling
• asset pricing and investments
• corporate finance
• environmental and resource economics
• public economics.

Visitors

We have a well-established record of attracting locally and internationally renowned visitors on a regular basis to engage and support our research activities. We have hosted more than 180 international visitors, with many of these coming from the world's top universities. We have also been involved in hosting:

• three major international conferences
• many workshops and symposiums
• nine free public lectures, two of which were delivered by Nobel Laureates, Sir Clive Granger and Robert F Engle.

Our visitors for 2011 include:

Name	Organisation	Date of visit
Dr Andreas Loeffler	University Paderborn (Germany)	31 December 2010 - 26 March 2011
Professor Rudolf Kerschbamer	University of Innsbruck (Austria)	5 January - March
Professor Philipp Engler	Freie University (Germany)	3 February - 8 April
Dr Yumei He	Southeast University (China)	25 January - 8 February
Dr David Gomez	University of Oviedo (Spain)	3 March - 30 August
Professor John Howe	University of Missouri (USA)	8 - 15 April
Professor Russell Davidson	McGill University (Canada)	10 - 13 April
Professor Kenneth Lindsay	University of Glasgow (Scotland)	17 April - 1 May
Professor Murray Kemp	University of Melbourne (Australia)	25 - 29 April
Major General Mick Slater	Queensland Reconstruction Authority (Australia)	29 April
Associate Professor David Veredas	Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management (Belgium)	8 - 15 May
Emeritus Professor Philip Brown	The University of Western Australia (Australia)	9 - 13 May
Dr Hiranya Nath	Sam Houston State University (USA)	16 - 27 May
Professor Oskar Kurer	Friedrich-Alexander University (Germany)	26 May - 3 June
Dr Michele Belot	Nuffield College (England)	June
Dr Dacheng Xiu	Princeton University (USA)	11 - 13 July
Emeritus Professor Kenneth Wallis	University of Warwick (England)	1 - 22 October

Research culture

We have deliberately given priority to strengthening our research culture by increasing the number of research activities designed to facilitate intensity, quality and concentration in research. These include:

• an active weekly staff seminar
• a brown-bag seminar and economics discussion group for discussing work-in-progress
• rigorous research workshops at the National Centre for Econometric Research with contributions from high profile national and international visitors.

In addition, we also maintain two on-line working paper series:

• the School of Economics and Finance Discussion Papers and Working Paper Series
• the NCER Working Paper Series.

Recent research appointments

Over the past three years, we have been strategic in our efforts to enhance our research profile and outcomes. We have appointed several new staff members who have a strong commitment to research and its associated activities. These appointments include:

• Daniel Smith (Simon Fraser)
• Janice How (Auckland)
• Peter Verhoeven (Auckland)
• Annastiina Silvennoinen (UTS)
• Sean Wu (UQ)
• Jayanta Sarkar (Louisana Tech)
• Dipanwita Sarkar (Louisiana State).

Research students

Our list of PhD graduates and their destinations is impressive, with graduate destinations ranging from the private sector in Sydney, London and New York, to academic positions in top universities such as the University of Manchester. Our students are highly engaged in our research culture, and have participated in co-authoring many of our research outputs.

We have a particularly strong Honours program with 49 graduates completing the program between 2003 to 2008. Two standout achievemers are Tim Christensen and Nemanja Antic, two former honours students, who have been awarded full PhD scholarships to Yale and Princeton respectively.

Our current research higher degree students are well on the way to being rewarded with similarly impressive resumes.

Recent research award winners

Our research staff have recently being recognised through the Vice-Chancellor's Awards.

Vice-Chancellor's Awards For Excellence

Associate Professor Clevo Wilson: Research

Vice-Chancellor's Performance Awards

Professor Adam Clements: Research Publications