Strategic priority two

To strengthen our ability to lead in applied economics research and to address big challenges, while preserving our areas of existing research leadership.

Economics is about understanding ‘why’ – tackling challenges at their source to create positive social change. We aim to increase the positive impact of our research to create change that will be felt for generations to come. In line with The University of Queensland Act, we strive to honour our commitment to social responsibility in practice. We fulfil this commitment by providing theoretical, econometric and empirical tools to help address the challenges our world faces in an age of economic, social, technological and environmental disruption. The School is proud of our strengths in economic theory and econometrics, which received the highest rank available in the 2018 Excellence in Research for Australia exercise. We aim to maintain our leadership in these areas while continuing to build our applied economics capability. This will improve our ability to provide applied economics education, which in turn will help enhance the employability of our students.

Our research aims to create change that will be felt for generations to come.

We will continue to play to the comparative strengths of our researchers and our emphasis will remain on achieving high-quality outputs across all research areas and promoting collaboration. We aim to strengthen and grow our PhD program and will expand our offerings to include more interdisciplinary and policy oriented PhD projects with co-supervision and co-funding arrangements with our internal and external partners.