Professor Flavio Menezes from the School of Economics has been elected as President of the Economic Society of Australia QLD.
The Society’s Annual General Meeting elected the new management committee, which also includes Professor Rodney Strachan, the Head of the School of Economics, as an Executive Director, in addition to the heads of other departments of economics in Australia and government and private sector economists.
Professor Menezes thanked members for their support and acknowledged the contribution of the past present, Tim Wonhof.
Professor Menezes said that the original aim of the society of encouraging the study of economics and of its applications to the conditions of Australia, advanced by Professor Copland in 1925, during the establishment of the Economic Society, remains surprisingly contemporary.
While the perceived relative importance of economics to inform public policy or business decisions has somewhat diminished over the last two decades, Professor Menezes said this is somewhat a paradox, as economics as a discipline has never been so useful.
"In the space of three decades, we moved from being able to only study societal problems to actually solve them," Professor Menezes highlighted.
Professor Menezes said that the theme of his presidency will be ‘why economics matters.’ The Society will run a number of events in 2016, including a presentation by the Reserve Bank of Australia’s Deputy Governor, and will co-sponsor events with the three economics departments in Brisbane.
