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# The Building of Economics at Adelaide

Sir William Mitchell (1861-1962)

#### **Th e Building of Economics at Adelaide 1901 - 2001**

Kym Anderson and Bernard O'Neil

Modern undergraduate economics teaching at the University of Adelaide began in 1901. Th e University was founded in late 1874 and fi rst off ered subjects in March 1876. Twenty–fi ve years later a core Economics undergraduate subject was introduced, and that year saw the fi rst two B.A. students and fi rst LL.B. student graduate after completing the subject. Th us it was that Adelaide became, in 1901–02, one of the world's earliest providers of tertiary economics and commerce courses.

# THE BUILDING OF ECONOMICS AT ADELAIDE

1901-2001

#### **Reprints Collection: Economics**

As well as being established to publish high quality refereed new works the University of Adelaide Press selects previously published books by staff for reprinting both electronically and as softcover books.

*Strengthening the Global Trading System*

 *Indonesia in a Reforming World Economy*

*Reforming Trade Policy in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands*

*The Economics of Quarantine*

*Global Wine Markets, 1961-2003*

*The Building of Economics at Adelaide* (Barr Smith Press imprint)

Kym Anderson and Bernard O'Neill \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

# THE BUILDING OF ECONOMICS AT ADELAIDE

1901-2001

#### **Published in Adelaide by**

The University of Adelaide Press Level 1, 254 North Terrace University of Adelaide South Australia 5005 press@adelaide.edu.au www.adelaide.edu.au/press

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This book is a facsimile republication. Some minor errors may remain. Originally published by the School of Economics, University of Adelaide.

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© Kym Anderson and Bernard O'Neill 2002, 2004, 2009

First published 2002 Reprinted with minor corrections and updates 2004 Republished 2009

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#### **Subject Keywords**:

University of Adelaide School of Economics History – Economics Study and Teaching (higher) South Australia Adelaide History – Economists South Australia Biography

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**ISBN** 978-0-9806238-5-7 (electronic) **ISBN** 978-0-9806238-6-4 (paperback)

Cover image: iStockphoto Cover concept: Fiona Cameron Cover design: Chris Tonkin

# **Contents**

# **List of charts and tables**


#### **Appendix 3: Tables**



### **Preface**

 A century of activity for an institution is a milestone too significant to go unacknowledged. Even though the resources needed to write a full historical account of the first century of economics at the University of Adelaide were not available, it was decided to at least collate available information on the people who have been involved and the teaching and research programs developed since the first undergraduate subject in Economics was offered in 1901 – not least so as to provide some historical context for the 2002 External Review of the School of Economics. Since the previous External Review was fourteen years earlier, and because the pace of change has been far greater since the late 1980s than earlier in the century, more attention is given to that period than a balanced history would warrant. Descriptions of the many and varied contributions of the 100 or so faculty members employed over the century is not possible, but brief 12–line biographies are provided in Appendix 1 for the 40 per cent of those lecturers who became full Professors at Adelaide or elsewhere.

Thanks are due to the several research assistants who helped compile this information. Lona Fowder was instrumental in getting data compilation underway during an internship in the 2001–02 summer. Those who built on that beginning include Peta Anderson, John Breckenridge, Amy Stever, Liang Choon Wang and Wendy Zweck, with the help of staff of the University of Adelaide Archives and the University's Barr Smith Library including Les Howard and those in the Special Collections section. To all of these people, and to those past and present staff members whom we approached for views and information, we are extremely grateful.

While we have been careful to check all the facts presented, mistakes or omissions are inevitable given that the material has been drawn from a wide range of incomplete records. We apologise for any such errors, and welcome feedback so that the School's records can be corrected as and when they are being updated.

School of Economics and Visiting Research Fellow Executive Director, CIES History Department Universityof Adelaide University of Adelaide

**Kym Anderson Bernard O'Neil**

# **A chronology of the building of Economics at Adelaide\***


<sup>\*</sup> Earlier dates of significance are 1874 (foundation of the University of Adelaide); 1876 (classes start in March); 1878 (a Political Economy subject is introduced in the B.A. and M.A. degrees, taught by Rev. William Fletcher, Hughes Professor of English Literature); and 1896 (Professor William Mitchell creates an optional M.A. field of Philosophy and Economics with an optional subject called Principles of Economics).

#### **Chronology (continued)**


#### **Chronology (continued)**


#### **Chronology (continued)**

up to that time), leaving no Professors in the Department immediately after it has been externally reviewed.


# **Chapter 1**

### **Birth and adolescence, 1901–1949**

#### **The Mitchell years**

 Modern undergraduate economics teaching at the University of Adelaide began in 1901. The University was founded in late 1874 and first offered subjects in March 1876. Twenty–five years later a core Economics undergraduate subject was introduced, and that year saw the first two B.A. students and first LL.B. student graduate after completing the subject. Adelaide was thus a very early provider of tertiary economics education. It was preceded only by the University of Pennsylvania, which introduced a Bachelor of Science in Economics a decade earlier, and by the London School of Economics which was established in 1895. Simultaneously, a Faculty of Commerce was established at Birmingham University in 1901 (Turner 1904), followed in 1903 by Alfred Marshall's success in getting tripos status for economics at the University of Cambridge.

 That is not to say there were no precursor subjects on offer at Adelaide prior to 1901. From 1878 lectures in Political Economy were offered to B.A. and M.A. students by the Reverend William Roby Fletcher (Hughes Professor of English Literature). While it is not clear how frequently these subjects were taught or how many students enrolled, numbers must have been small initially because in 1880 the library had just two books in the field (both by John Stuart Mill). The older universities of Sydney and Melbourne also introduced political economy subjects in the late 19th century. And they, like Adelaide, complemented those offerings with university extension courses in economics for non–degree students, whose evening classes continued until well into the 20th century (Goodwin

1966). Then in 1896 William Mitchell provided, within the field of Philosophy and Economics, a subject for M.A. students called Principles of Economics. But it was not until 1901 when the B.A. degree was reorganised that modern economics was made available to undergraduates.

Meanwhile, the South Australian business community was pressing also for the provision of commercial education at the tertiary level. Unlike the other Australian colonies, South Australia was established for commercial reasons rather than penal settlement. The colony came into being in 1836 through a joint venture between the British government and a private joint stock firm called the South Australian Company. Within three years a Chamber of Commerce had formed, and by 1869 a Chamber of Manufactures also was established (Viney 1936). These were the first such employer organisations in Australasia, and from the outset there was a strong awareness of the mutual spillovers between commercial and industrial activities locally and more broadly. In particular, their members recognised the need for tertiary education. Indeed the University of Adelaide's formation as early as 1874 was made possible largely through the financial bequest of Walter Watson Hughes, whose wealth emanated from his maritime trading interests and mining activities. The commercial successes of other notable South Australian identities, including Sir Thomas Elder, Peter Waite and Robert Barr Smith, also paid dividends in terms of generous gifts to the new University.

While practical business courses had been available for some time,1 more–advanced courses in such fields as accounting and

<sup>1</sup> One example dates from the arrival in Adelaide in May 1838 of Jacob Pitman and his family. Pitman's brother, Isaac, was the inventor of what became known as Pitman's shorthand. Jacob brought with him 100 copies of the just– released 12–page booklet entitled *Stenographic Soundhand*, and within a few years shorthand classes were being advertised in Adelaide. Also, Roseworthy Agricultural College had a course on how to maintain farm records; and the University was involved at the secondary school level of commercial education through the curricula of the Public Examinations Board (Jones 1967).

business law were sought by the business community.2 So, just one year after the Economics undergraduate subject began in 1901, Adelaide introduced Australia's first university course in commercial studies. It began as an Advanced Certificate in Commerce in 1902, but was upgraded to a Diploma in Commerce in 1908.3 One core subject in the course, Economics and Commercial History, was taught by Professor Mitchell, whose students attended his weekly lecture–tutorial in Economics for the B.A. and LL.B. The other five compulsory subjects were Accounting, Banking and Exchange, Business Practice, Commercial Law, and Commercial Geography and Technology.

Thus it was that Adelaide became, in 1901–02, one of the world's earliest providers of tertiary economics and commerce courses. This achievement was despite the fact that the University of Adelaide was still tiny: in 1900 it was endowed with just 5 acres of land (compared with more than 100 acres each for the universities of Sydney and Melbourne) and one building (now known as the Mitchell Building) to house its five schools, less than 20 lecturers, and 465 enrolled students not counting the Elder Conservatorium of Music (Duncan and Leonard 1973).

The focus on economics and commerce was given an early boost by a significant endowment in 1903 by the prominent Adelaide businessman Joseph Fisher. It came in the form of a perpetual gold medal for the top student in accounting each year, plus funds for a lecture to be delivered in alternate years and published. There was also an intention that the remuneration of 'lecturers, examiners, and professors' engaged in commerce education be enhanced. The fund was £1000, which is equivalent to around \$500 000 in terms of 2002 spending power. At the time of the centenary of the University of Adelaide in the mid–1970s, the endowment was augmented by a further \$10 500 by the 'Joseph

 2 See the 17 January 1901 issue of Adelaide's leading newspaper at the time, the *Register.* 

<sup>3</sup> The Certificate course was an extension of the Elementary Commercial Examination that followed the Primary, Junior, Senior and Public Examinations in commercial subjects at schools. The University of Sydney established a similar commerce certificate in 1904 (Goodwin 1966, p. 554) and upgraded it to a diploma in 1906 (Groenewegen and McFarlane 1990, p. 42).

The Building of Economics at Adelaide

Fisher Trustees'. The 49 Joseph Fisher Lectures that have been delivered since 1904 have been presented by a mixture of prominent economists in academia and government, senior politicians including two Prime Ministers, and influential Australian bankers and businessmen. Twelve of the past lecturers appear in *Who's Who in Economics* (Blaug 1999), 13 were knighted and one was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics (James Meade). Most shared Joseph Fisher's interests in liberal markets and small, non–interventionist government.4

As of 1901, Economics was one of eight full–scale subjects of which students were required to complete six towards their B.A. degree (in addition to other subjects or half–subjects). The other full subjects were English, French, German, Greek, Latin, and two courses in History. Initially economics was only to be taught in alternate years. The lecturer until 1916 was the formidable William Mitchell, who was the Hughes Professor of English Language and Literature and of Mental and Moral Philosophy before he went on to become the University's Vice–Chancellor from 1916 to 1942 and Chancellor from 1942 to 1948. In keeping with polymaths of the 19th century, during his teaching career Mitchell lectured in psychology, logic, ethics, the history and systematics of philosophy, English language and literature, education, anatomy and zoology, in addition to economics.5 Following the appointment of other specialists in the humanities, Mitchell's title was altered in 1912 to

 4 As a contribution to the centenary of economics at Adelaide and of the Federation of Australia, the first 48 lectures were reprinted in a two–volume collection, together with brief biographies of each of the lecturers (Anderson 2001). See Table 22 for a list of the lectures and lecturers.

<sup>5</sup> Mitchell once quipped that he occupied not a Chair but a sofa! In 1901 he was one of a staff of eight professors and twelve lecturers, plus eight teachers at the Elder Conservatorium of Music. The academic staff numbers had grown by one, seven and two respectively by 1902. It was the appointment of Robert Langton Douglas to the Chair in Modern History and English Language and Literature in 1900 that enabled Mitchell to devote attention to Economics. Other great teachers in the academy at that time included Reverend Walter Howchin, Professors William Bragg, Jethro Brown, (Sir) Douglas Mawson, Edward Rennie, (Sir) Edward Stirling, George Cockburn Henderson and Archibald Watson, several of whom also lectured as widely as Mitchell.

Professor of Philosophy and Economics. So even though he is better recognised for his contributions to the University more widely, Mitchell was in effect the University's first Professor of Economics (albeit very much part–time).

In the first year that Economics was offered, Mitchell presented hour–long lectures at 5 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Lecture days and times varied in subsequent years but were usually held in the evening or at night so that part–time students could attend after work.

The 1901 revision of the B.A. also established a fourth year of study, an Honours year, in which the field of 'History and Economics' could be studied. (M.A. students also could undertake a thesis in that subject area.) In order to undertake an Honours degree, candidates in History and Economics had to have passed English History, Modern European History, a foreign language (ancient or modern) and Economics among their six subjects for the Ordinary degree. Honours candidates in 'Mental and Moral Science' needed to have passed undergraduate Psychology, Logic, Ethics, History of Philosophy, Economics and another subject. M.A. degree candidates were to have a knowledge of 'Mental and Moral Philosophy' as in the Honours degree and of 'Elements of Economics' and a special subject called 'Principles of Economics' (being one of the six special subjects available since 1896 as part of the 'Philosophy and Economics' field). However, no–one enrolled for the B.A.(Hons), M.A. or M.A.(Hons) degrees in Economics before the courses were revised again for 1907 (Edgeloe 1992).

The course fees for Economics in 1901 were £4/4/– plus £2/2/– for the examination. The Honours degree fees were, respectively, £10/10/– plus £3/3/–. Consistent with today's practice of relatively high fees for an M.B.A., the fee for completing the Advanced Certificate in Commerce was £14/12/6.6

In 1901 the students were examined on Mitchell's lectures plus Marshall's *Economics of Industry* and John Stuart Mill's *Political* 

 6 Since the average adult male wage today is about 230 times that in 1901, in nominal dollar terms, the fee of £14/12/6 is equivalent to \$6800 and hence well above the annual HECS fee that B.Ec. or B.Com. students are currently paying.

*Economy*. In 1905 Gibbins's *History of Commerce in Europe* was added to the examination list. Honours students in Modern History and Economics were examined in six subjects of which Economics was one. The books on which they would be examined were Adam Smith's *Wealth of Nations*, Bastable's *Public Finance* and Cunningham's *Growth of English Industry and Commerce*. In Mitchell's time there was a limited range of modern economics and commerce books and few journals on those subjects.

Attending the University in 1901 were 257 undergraduates, 234 non–graduating students, and 288 students at the Elder Conservatorium of Music. How many people enrolled in Economics in its first year is not known, but 13 Arts students passed the two 3– hour examinations in November 1901, including Dorothea Landon Poole who was thus the first female to pass.7 Three Law students also passed those exams in Economics that year followed by 11 more by 1910. The first students to graduate after passing Economics were George Alfred Hancock and John Colville (Arts) and Richard William Bennett (Law) in 1901, the year that they sat the exam.

In 1904 the Faculty of Arts was established with several departments, one of which was the Department of History and Economics. That structure remained until 1946 when the Department of Economics was separated from History. A further separation took place in 1952, when a new Faculty of Economics was formed comprising two departments, one for Economics and one for Commerce.

 7 *Calendar of the University of Adelaide, 1902*. At that time the relatively large number of women working in commercial enterprises made the pathway for female students in economics and commerce a little more acceptable than it otherwise might have been. An example was Constance Davey, who graduated from the University in 1915 with a B.A. Honours degree which included Economics. She had a distinguished career as a educational psychologist in the State Public Service and as a Lecturer and Research Fellow at the University. Her book, *Children and their Law–makers: A Social Historical Survey of the Growth and Development from 1836 to 1950 of the South Australian Laws Relating to Children*, was published in 1956, subsequent to her work at the University under a Federal grant for research into physical, biological and social sciences. She received an OBE in 1955.

The Arts degree was revised again in 1906 and the new B.A. regulations from 1907 required a student to pass in six subjects over three years. Of the 16 subjects available, four had to be taken from a list of nine subjects including Economics. The History and Philosophy Honours students needed to pass Economics for their degree. The Ordinary and Honours M.A. degrees had similar requirements for the study of Economics. Barely a handful of students undertook an M.A. (seven in 1906) and how many took Economics is not known. At the undergraduate level, an indication of the place of Economics is that of the 388 undergraduates in 1907, there were 117 B.A. students of whom 17, including four women, passed Economics.

Meanwhile, the Advanced Certificate in Commerce was under the control of a University–appointed Board of Commercial Studies. From the outset Mitchell was on the Board along with the Vice– Chancellor William Barlow, Professor Bragg, a representative of the Institute of Accountants, and the president and vice–president of the Adelaide Chamber of Commerce among other business and commercial identities. In 1908 the Board had 16 members, whereas the business of the Faculty of Arts was managed by just 12 people. Four people served on both management committees.

The Board of Commercial Studies in 1908 brought in a Diploma in Commerce (Dip.Com.) to replace the Advanced Certificate. Certificate holders were able to upgrade to the diploma by sitting for the examination in Economics and Commercial History. Of the 11 people awarded a Dip.Com. in 1908, nine had upgraded their qualifications. In the next year another certificate holder did so followed by four more in 1910, the last year that this provision applied. Diploma graduates were entitled to use the post– nominal letters 'ACUA' denoting their being an 'Associate in Commerce of the University of Adelaide' or a variant thereof.8

The inclusion of accounting as a subject in the certificate and the diploma reflected the needs of the local business community.

<sup>8</sup> Diploma holders in other fields used the post–nominal letters AUA (Associate of the University of Adelaide). The ACUA was the most desired professional qualification for commercial teachers in South Australia (Jones 1967, p. 159).

The Adelaide Society of Accountants, which formed in 1885, was the first professional accounting body in Australia. The South Australian Society of Accountants came into being in 1903. It and the Federal Institute of Accountants (SA Branch) merged to form the Australian Society of Accountants (SA Branch) in the 1920s. There was even an Accountant Students Society (SA Branch). Typifying the link between the University and the general community, as seen in the ongoing relationship with the Workers' Educational Association, in 1914 the Accountant Students Society enquired about using rooms on the campus.9

From 1909 Professor Mitchell's course in Economics for the diploma was the same as for the B.A., at least in terms of content. It involved 50 economics lectures over five terms with a 1–hour lecture each week at 7.30 p.m. The diploma students took the three terms of Economics Part I which dealt with 'the theory of values and its application to the consumption, the production, and the distribution of wealth, and with public policy'.10 In the next year the diploma students would have two terms of lectures on 'public finance and an outline of economic history' as presented for the B.A. subject Economics Part II. The diploma courses were also available to non– graduating students. It was a popular course: 104 students were enrolled in the diploma in 1911, 126 in 1912 and 127 in 1913.

As well as Professor Mitchell, other lecturers included Bazett David Colvin (Accountancy and Business Practice), William Neill (Banking and Exchange) and Robert J.M. Clucas (Commercial Geography and Technology).11 Lecturers from the Faculty of Law presented the Commercial Law course. For example, Professor Salmond took the course for 1906 and Percy Johnstone B.A., LL.B. was the lecturer in 1910.

<sup>9</sup> University of Adelaide file 153/1914.

<sup>10</sup> *University Calendar for 1909*, p. 207.

<sup>11</sup> Robert Clucas, the University Librarian from 1900 to 1930 after working for the colony's Education Department, had passed the Economics subject in 1901 and was appointed to lecture in Commerce in 1904 even though he did not gain his B.A. until 1908. He lectured in Economic Geography for 25 years. Clucas introduced both the Dewey decimal system and the card index catalogue system in place of the book catalogue for the library.

William Ham was appointed a part–time Assistant Lecturer in 1913 to help Mitchell in teaching economics. Ham was a secondary school teacher who had obtained Division I passes in Economics. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Economic Society by 1921, Ham was also occasionally a non–graduating student in Arts subjects. His appointment ceased in 1922 but in the following year he qualified for the newly created Diploma in Economics and Political Science.

When Mitchell became Vice–Chancellor in 1916, the University used a small grant from the State government to appoint Herbert Heaton as the Director of Tutorial Classes that the University provided for the Workers' Educational Association and as the first full–time Lecturer in Economics in 1917 (Duncan and Leonard 1973, p.71). His interest in economic history paralleled that of Mitchell. Prior to his arrival in Adelaide, Heaton had followed his study for a B.A. degree at Leeds University (1911) with a stint as an Assistant Lecturer in Economics at Birmingham University (where he obtained a M.Com. in 1914) and as a Lecturer in History and Economics at the University of Tasmania from 1914. Among other things, he lectured weekly in Adelaide's diploma course where his subject was 'Industrial Practice'.12

#### **The inter–war years**

In the period immediately after World War I the University focused on expanding its interests in the sciences and technology. Thus agriculture, human physiology and pharmacology, dentistry and zoology received more attention than other subject areas. However, another restructuring of the B.A. degree in 1920 enabled Heaton to incorporate a stronger course in Economics. The two–part course that had evolved since 1901 formally became the subjects Economics I and II, and Economic History was instituted as a second– or a third–year subject (Edgeloe 1992). This stronger

 12 Heaton was awarded a D.Litt. from Leeds University in 1921 for his publication on the history of Yorkshire's woollen and worsted industries (Bourke 1990, p. 59).

emphasis on Economics meant that the two–year Dip.Com. was now quite distinct with 'Economics and Commercial History' becoming a one–year subject specifically for the diploma.

In addition to the part–time William Ham, Heaton was assisted by Dorothea Pavy (a D.Sc. from LSE) who was appointed as an Assistant Lecturer in Economics in 1922 for that one year.13 Ham, too, finished teaching that year and was succeeded in 1923 by Alexander Mackay, who took up a full–time position as Assistant Lecturer in Economics and Lecturer in Public Administration and Finance (a Dip.Com. subject introduced in 1921). Like Ham, Mackay had been a teacher in a State school system (from 1908 to 1916 in New South Wales). After interrupting his teaching career by a period of war service, he resumed his studies at the University of Sydney and graduated with first–class Honours in Economics in 1923.

Soon after, Heaton resigned in frustration at not being able to do more for Economics and Commerce at the University. To the dismay of many of his students, he did not return to teaching at the University after he took leave in 1924–25. After being passed over for promotion at Adelaide, he accepted a Chair of Economic and Political Science at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada (Bourke 1990, pp.63–64). Albeit indirectly, Heaton was the first example of an economist from the University entering the world stage: in 1927 he moved to a Chair at the University of Minnesota and 'built a

 13 Emily Dorothea Proud graduated with a B.A. from Adelaide in 1906. Her sister, Katherine Lily Proud obtained a Dip.Com. in 1910 (the first female to graduate with a Dip.Com.). Dorothea (1885–1965) taught at Adelaide's Kyre (now Scotch) College for 5.5 years and in 1912 she became the first Catherine Helen Spence Scholar which was endowed to promote the study of sociology by women in South Australia. In 1913 she went to the London School of Economics where she published in 1916 a study on *Welfare Work: Employer's Experiments for Improving Working Conditions in Factories*, for which she received a D.Sc. Lloyd George, then Minister of Munitions, wrote the Preface for the book and in 1915 he asked her to assist him in organising the welfare section of the Ministry of Munitions. In 1917 she was awarded a CBE and she married Lieutenant Gordon Pavy. Returning to Adelaide, where a son (1920) and a daughter (1926) were born, she finished her part–time Law degree studies in 1928. She went into practice full–time with her husband but also lectured to social science students at the University (Mackinnon 1986).

reputation as one of the most eminent economic historians in the English–speaking world' (Duncan and Leonard 1973, p. 71).

As well as founding and promoting the Adelaide University Commerce Students Association, Heaton worked hard to establish a branch of the Economic Society of Australia and New Zealand in Adelaide. The Society was established following a resolution at the Adelaide meeting of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science in 1924. The South Australian Branch of the Society was founded at the University in 1925. The chief objectives of the Society were to advance economic knowledge through the publication of economic research and the discussion of economic problems.14 Four meetings with speakers were held annually. Students could join the Society at a reduced subscription rate.

Alexander Mackay remained as the principal lecturer of Economics for the B.A. degree and for the Diploma in Economics and Political Science (introduced in 1922). He also administered, until 1928, the tutorial classes for the Workers' Educational Association. He was assisted by part–time lecturers and tutors employed for teaching duties. These included Harold George Oliphant (1926–34) and Ernest Gordon Biaggini (1928–34).15

The University Council decided in December 1928 to create a Chair in Economics. This was in response to pressure from within and without for there to be more Chairs generally.16 The University's inability to finance new Chairs meant it did so by leaving the recently vacated Chair of Botany unfilled. The

 14 Professor Melville was the Society's Treasurer in 1930, while the Vice– Presidents included Professors Sir William Mitchell and Keith (later Sir Keith) Hancock, businessmen such as A.E. Clarkson, E.W. (later Sir Edward) Holden and W.J. Young, and the State's Director of Mines, Dr Keith Ward. Melville was a foundation member in 1925, served as national President from 1939 to 1946, and was elected a Distinguished Fellow of the Society on his 90th birthday.

<sup>15</sup> Edgeloe (1992). Absent in 1933, Oliphant was re–appointed a Tutor in Economics in 1934. He gained a Diploma in Economics and Political Science in 1925. His son, Sir Mark Oliphant, was the noted scientist, academic and Governor of South Australia (1971–76).

<sup>16</sup> The Institute of Public Administration was among the bodies that had requested the State government to finance a Chair in economics (Duncan and Leonard 1973, p. 71).

University then ran into problems when no suitable candidates applied. There are at least two stories about how the situation was resolved. One view is that the rising public servant tyro William Wainwright recommended to the Appointment Committee that it might consider a young recent graduate, Leslie (later Sir Leslie) Galfreid Melville, who had impressed his colleagues in South Australia's Audit Department.17 Another view is provided by the Chancellor, Sir George Murray, in his address to the University on 11 December 1929. In referring to the appointment of Melville, Murray noted that the original applicants had not had the desired overall grasp of the subject: 'The dilemma was solved for us by Mr L.G. Melville, the Public Actuary, offering himself as a candidate at the last moment … he was exactly the type of man who was wanted. His appointment was warmly acclaimed *extra et intra muros* …'.

One candidate, Professor A.G.B. Fisher, belatedly wanted to apply for the Chair of Economics early in 1929. The University's Registrar replied that the Council was 'very sorry that funds do not permit of our appointing a Professor with your high qualifications in addition to Mr. Melville, whose qualifications are of a more technical character' (Hogan 2002).

Melville was immediately engaged to take up the Chair at the end of the first term of 1929. He had already been a part–time Tutor in Economics (1924 and 1926) and a part–time Lecturer in Statistics for Commerce students (1925, 1927–28). The University's first fully– fledged Professor of Economics was not yet 27–years–old, making

 17 Stretton (1991, p. 569). From 1916 Wainwright was a travelling inspector in the Audit Department but back in Adelaide by 1924 he was joined in that department by Melville who, at the age of 22, became the State's Public Actuary. About the time of the University advertising the Chair in Economics, Wainwright and Melville presented a paper, 'The economic effects of federation', to the Economic Society of Australia and New Zealand (published by the South Australian government in 1929). The Wainwright– Melville connection was sustained, albeit briefly, with both being appointed to boards and committees including industrialisation and finance. Wainwright chaired the Advisory Committee on State Finance from 1930 and Melville served on the committee. Both were to become very powerful men in their respective spheres. Melville's life, incidentally, spanned almost exactly the period under review: he was born on 26 March 1902 and died on 30 April 2002 at 101 years of age (the same lifespan as Sir William Mitchell).

him one of the youngest Economics professor in the world up to that time. A graduate of the University of Sydney where he had trained as an actuary, Melville was a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries in both London and Australia.

The enthusiastic Professor advocated for the status of Economics to be upgraded through more advanced studies and for the creation of a Bachelor of Economics (B.Ec.) and a B.Ec. Honours degree. He was rebuffed on the latter but new regulations in December 1930 achieved the Ordinary Bachelor degree. The addition of a third–year unit in economics, a course in advanced statistics and actuarial mathematics, and new subjects such as accountancy and commercial law were some of the changes. The subjects for the Ordinary Bachelor degree were: First Year – French I, German I or Latin I; Economics I; Pure Mathematics I; Accountancy I; and Statistics I; Second Year – Economics II; Economic History; Psychology, Physics I or Geography18; and Commercial Law I; Third Year – Economics III; Statistics II; Actuarial Mathematics; and Commercial Practice. Students going on to the Honours degree through the B.A. had to 'devote a further year to the study of Economics, and … perform such additional work as the Professor may prescribe'.19

Chancellor Sir George Murray's annual address in December 1930 announced that Melville's appointment as Professor and the new B.Ec. meant that 'we have realised a long–cherished ambition to confer degrees in Economics'.20 That address also contained the news that a bequest from George Gollin in London would, at some future point enable 'The George Gollin Professorship of Economics' to be established. George Gollin OBE promised that the University

<sup>18</sup> Forms of economic or commercial geography had been taught since at least 1914 as part of the Diploma in Commerce, so the inclusion of the subject of Geography for the B.Ec. was not surprising. The death of Robert Clucas in 1930 opened the way for the employment then of Charles Albert Edward Fenner D.Sc., F.G.S. as the Lecturer in Geography in the 'Economics Department' as it was termed in the *University Calendar for 1930*. Fenner had been South Australia's first Superintendent of Technical Education in 1915 and was to become the State's Director of Education in 1939.

<sup>19</sup> *University Calendar for 1931*, p. 187.

<sup>20</sup> *University Calendar for 1931*, p. 366.

would receive a sum of £20 000 to endow a Chair in Economics when both he and his wife died.21 As it happened he did not die until 1946 and his wife lived until the late 1950s, so the money did not come to the University until 1959. By then it was insufficient to fully endow a Chair, but the University nonetheless attached George Gollin's name to the one Chair in Economics at that time (occupied by Peter Karmel).22

The lectures in Economics I for the B.Ec. were presented annually but the courses in Economics II and III were given in alternate years until a sufficient number of students had enrolled and justified the courses being run annually. Towards the end of the first decade of the B.Ec., there was an expectation that Economics III would be run in 1938 as well as 1939. Two students graduated in 1936 following on the heels of Gilbert Frederick Seaman, the first B.Ec. graduate in 1935; and the next year saw the first female B.Ec. graduate, Greta Ruby Crane.

Another outcome of Melville's appointment was the establishment of the Diploma in Public Administration, which had been advocated by those wanting to raise the quality of the Public Service.23 Melville also served on the Board of Commercial Studies.

Melville combined academic and public duties when he joined the special advisory council on State finance chaired by William Wainwright (and which also included W.J. Young and Les Hunkin). This followed the University acceding to the State government's requests in 1930 'to permit members of the professorial staff to aid them in solving some of the difficult problems by which the State is

<sup>21</sup> University of Adelaide files 938/1961 and 72/1930. With his brother, Walter, George Gollin founded the trading firm of Gollin and Co. Pty Ltd in Adelaide in 1879. The company's operations expanded to Melbourne (1888), Sydney (1896), New Zealand (1900), London (1901–02) and, ultimately, throughout the world. George Gollin had moved to London prior to World War I.

<sup>22</sup> Subsequent holders have been Harold Lydall (1962–67), Frank Jarrett (1968– 88) and Jonathan Pincus (since 1991). The funds from this endowment remained with the University administrators, however, so the Department of Economics never received any financial benefit from the endowment.

<sup>23</sup> *University Calendar for 1930*, p. 358.

presently confronted'.24 Melville's contributions were so highly regarded that the State government asked him to continue on a committee preparing its submission to the Commonwealth's Public Accounts Committee that was inquiring into the disabilities incurred by the State since federation. The call to public duty was louder in 1931 when the Great Depression claimed Melville from the University through his appointment to the Commonwealth (later Reserve) Bank of Australia as its first Economic Adviser.

The recruitment and retention of staff at that time was not easy and the provision of resources and facilities was constrained by the Depression. A 10 per cent reduction in the State government grant to the University stimulated University staff to take a voluntary cut of 10% in their salaries. Despite that climate, attracting a Professor to replace Melville was not impossible. Alexander Mackay's disappointment at missing out on the professorship to Melville had already led to his falling out with the University: he took leave for 1929–30 and did not return in 1931 because the University would not create a sub–professorial post for him. In place of Melville and Mackay a recent University of Melbourne M.A. graduate, John Garland, served as Lecturer for 1932 through to August 1934 when he went to Cambridge to further his studies. Garland relied on the assistance of part–time tutors and assistants to sustain Melville's curriculum.

Garland's decision to leave, in part, may have been fuelled by an imminent change. In 1933 Edward Shann, the Professor of History and Economics at the University of Western Australia, had accepted the Chair at the University of Adelaide, although he then spent 1934 lecturing in Perth.25 Thus Garland was followed by John Andrew La Nauze. A Rhodes Scholar at Oxford's Balliol College from late 1931 to 1934, La Nauze was appointed full–time Assistant Lecturer in Economics.26 He had obtained first–class honours under

<sup>24</sup> *University Calendar for 1931*, p. 366.

<sup>25</sup> Edward Owen Giblin Shann's significant publications established his name as an economist of the highest repute. He became the first economic consultant to an Australian bank – the Bank of New South Wales in 1930. His political involvement also helped to establish the importance of economists as advisers and consultants to developing economies.

<sup>26</sup> University of Adelaide file 160/1934.

Shann and also at Oxford where he read Politics, Philosophy and Economics. La Nauze was awarded a B.A. at the University of Adelaide in 1935 to complement the B.A. degrees he had obtained at Oxford and the University of Western Australia. La Nauze accepted the Adelaide post following Shann's encouragement: their families were neighbours in South Perth, and it was Shann who had convinced La Nauze to major in economics and literature as an undergraduate.

Shann arrived in time for first term teaching in 1935. Highly regarded as an economist ever since his student days, Shann had already held a temporary appointment as Acting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Adelaide when Professor Mitchell had taken leave in 1906 (presumably teaching or supervising economics in the 'off' year). He specialised in economic history. Indicative of his reputation, he had been involved, along with Professors Melville, Copland and Giblin, in preparing the Premiers' Plan for alleviating the distress caused by the Great Depression. Unfortunately, Shann's professorship was abruptly terminated through his mysterious death after only one term at Adelaide. Shann was found dead outside the window of his first–floor office of the Mitchell Building a half–hour after his final lecture early in the evening of 23 May 1935. The cause of his death was not determined, but he fractured his skull in the fall.

Shann's death was followed by another four–year hiatus before a new Professor of Economics was appointed. In the interim La Nauze maintained the three units of economics, the one of economic history and the courses in statistical methods for first–year students. He was helped greatly by very able part–time tutors and lecturers. These included Garnet Vere Portus, the Professor of Political Science and History, who taught the course in economic history from 1935 until his retirement in 1950. (Portus had taught the subject at the University of Sydney prior to coming to Adelaide in 1934.) One of the part–timers was Gilbert Seaman who had started in the Dip.Com. while at Adelaide Teachers' College. Melville advised him on the likelihood of the B.Ec. course eventuating and encouraged him to pursue the degree. Seaman thus became the University's first B.Ec. graduate –undertaking his studies while teaching full–time at Port Pirie High School! After passing his exams in 1935 Seaman was employed by the University as a part–time Tutor in Economics for three years, a Tutor in Statistics II, a Tutor and then a part–time Lecturer in Actuarial Mathematics (1936 and 1938; 1940–50) and Statistics I (1941, 1943– 45).27 His employment as an evening lecturer terminated in 1950 when his course was discontinued by the new Professor. However, Melville's faith in his capabilities was vindicated in that Seaman's career in the State Public Service culminated in his becoming Under Treasurer.

Another economics teacher, Leslie Finlay Crisp, was to have a significant career outside economics. A B.A. student, Crisp was appointed a Tutor in Economics in 1938.28 He resigned the Tinline Scholarship in history in that year when he also became the first of the University's students majoring in economics to become a Rhodes Scholar. He may have been influenced by La Nauze to pursue this direction. Both La Nauze and Crisp had articles on economic matters published in *Phoenix* (the renamed *Adelaide University Magazine*) in 1937 and 1938. In 1940 he was awarded the University's John L. Young Scholarship for Research enabling him to submit a thesis for his M.A. Crisp went on to a distinguished academic career in public administration and politics at the Australian National University where he held a professorship for many years.

The vacant Chair was filled in 1939 with the appointment of a one–time student of Professor (later Sir) Douglas Copland who had collaborated with Shann on publications. Replicating the appointment of Melville a decade earlier, the University's initial attempt to fill the Chair in 1937 failed. An apocryphal story is that Arthur Smithies, formerly of Tasmania and then at Harvard University, was a possible candidate for the Chair but that Copland advised against it on the reasoning that he would be of more value to Australian economics by being in the United States of America than at Adelaide. Another of the applicants was E. Roland Walker. Then a renewed expression of interest was received from Keith Sydney Isles, who had withdrawn his original application when he had secured a professorship at Swansea University College in Wales

<sup>27</sup> University of Adelaide file 61/1936 and staff card.

<sup>28</sup> University of Adelaide files 29/1938, 233/1938 and 206/1940.

The Building of Economics at Adelaide

in 1937. It led to him receiving and accepting an offer in 1938 (although he did not take up the position in Adelaide until August 1939).

#### **The 1940s**

Isles had earned first–class Honours in Commerce from the University of Tasmania (under Copland) in 1924. He came to Adelaide to teach at St Peter's College in 1925. At the same time he won the Tinline Scholarship for history while studying part–time at the University of Adelaide. At Caius College, Cambridge he received first–class honours in the economics tripos in 1929, postgraduate awards and an M.Sc. (with a thesis on 'Wages Policy and the Price Level') in 1933. From 1931 to 1937 he lectured at the University of Edinburgh before accepting the Chair in Economics at Swansea in 1937.

As happened a decade earlier, the appointment of Professor Isles led to the departure of the incumbent economics lecturer. In 1939 La Nauze, who among his many tasks had even conducted a special course in Economics I for Bachelor of Agricultural Science students, resigned and went to the University of Sydney in 1940.29 His replacement as Assistant Lecturer was the charismatic Bruce (later Sir Bruce) Williams.

The University's regulations offered a Master of Economics degree from December 1938. Then the addition of an Honours level in Economics was achieved when new regulations were accepted in December 1939. The introduction of the Honours degree (initially without a thesis as a requirement) followed the adoption of the commercial aspects that Melville had wanted, and which had prevented Honours in Economics being offered previously. But the first B.Ec.(Hons) graduate was not until 1945 in Roma Williams, wife of the Lecturer Bruce Williams, while the first M.Ec. graduate was not until 1950, in the Lecturer in Economics Ron Hirst (Appendix 3, Tables 10 and 12).

Another former schoolteacher to make the transition to being a leader in the State Public Service was Alex Ramsay, a graduate of the University who was appointed a part–time Assistant Lecturer in

<sup>29</sup> University of Adelaide files 85/1939 and 177/1939.

Economics in 1943. In successive years he was then appointed a Tutor in Statistics and then a Lecturer in Statistics I. In 1945 he moved from teaching to the South Australian Housing Trust where he was the General Manager from 1949.

During World War II Professor Isles consulted to the Federal Treasury on war finance and compulsory war savings. He was absent for extended periods when he was Economic Adviser to the Commonwealth government's wartime Rationing Commission in Melbourne (September 1942 to February 1943) and a Lieutenant– Colonel in the Directorate of Research in the Citizen's Military Force (1944).30 Meanwhile, at the University he also chaired the Board of Commercial Studies. The final year of World War II brought yet more significant changes to the teaching of Economics. Professor Isles was with the Control Commission in Germany when he resigned to take up the Chair of Economics at the University of Belfast in Northern Ireland.

As a consequence of Isles leaving, the career of Bruce Williams took a new direction.31 Even though Williams had secured a Rockefeller Fellowship in Chicago, Chancellor Sir William Mitchell tried to encourage him to return to Adelaide and to apply for the Chair. However, Williams felt he was too young for a chair and in any case he wanted to spend time in the UK. So he followed Isles' advise and successfully applied for a Senior Lecturer's position at Queen's University in Belfast. His securing of the position was consistent with Mitchell's expectation that many of the good academics would not remain long at Adelaide. He and his wife Roma left the University formally in 1946.

Though growing, the number of students at the University had remained small in the period before World War I: in 1914 the total student enrolment of 1044 included 409 undergraduates (of whom 195 were Arts students), 18 postgraduates, and 293 non– graduating students, plus 324 students at the Elder Conservatorium of Music. A decade later the enrolments had effectively doubled to 2018, with 311 of the 631 non–graduating students taking the

<sup>30</sup> University of Adelaide file 206/1942; Sir Bruce Williams, personal communication, 15 October 2002.

<sup>31</sup> Sir Bruce Williams, personal communication, 15 October 2002.

Dip.Com. The Depression years impacted on the University's enrolments of course: in 1934 there were 2337 students, including 36 undergraduates in Economics and 396 taking the Dip.Com. (out of 903 non–graduating students). By 1944 the number of Economics undergraduates had risen to 57 (Duncan and Leonard 1973, pp.187– 90).

Up to 1945 there were never more than two full–time economics lecturers (and no full–time commerce lecturers) at the University at any time, and there was a Professor of Economics for less than a half of those first 45 years (see, Chart 1; Appendix 3, Tables 1–3). Those and numerous part–time tutors and assistant lecturers provided Economics to Arts and Law students from 1901 in parallel with Economics for the Diploma in Commerce students from 1902, the Diploma in Economics and Political Science between 1922 and 1929, and from 1930 the B.Ec. degree, with both Economics and Commerce majors, and the Diploma of Public Administration (see Table 15).

Following Professor Isles' departure in 1945, the University appointed Brian Tew as Professor of Economics. Tew, who had been in the Civil Service in the United Kingdom during the war, commenced duties in 1946. A notable achievement during his tenure was that Economics (including Commerce) separated from History in 1946 and formed a Department of Economics within the Faculty of Arts. Tew stayed only four years, before moving back to England to a professorship at the University of Nottingham.

In seeking a replacement for Tew, one of the outstanding candidates considered for the position was Heinz Arndt. However, Arndt was apparently rejected on the grounds that he had been a communist at the London School of Economics.32 Instead, Tew was replaced by a dynamic 28–year–old, Peter Karmel.

<sup>32</sup> R.H. Wallace, personal communication, 16 August 2002; P. Karmel, personal communication, 2 October 2002. Arndt instead was appointed to the first Chair in Economics at what became the Australian National University in Canberra, where he had a very distinguished career for more than 50 years until his death in a car accident on the campus in May 2002, as he was driving to the funeral of Sir Leslie Melville where he was to give one of the eulogies.

# **Chapter 2**

### **Growth and adaptation, 1950–2001**

For convenience, as with the first half–century of Economics at Adelaide, the second half also is split into three periods: until Peter Karmel became Vice–Chancellor of Flinders University in mid–1966; from then until Frank Jarrett's retirement in 1988, during which time Jarrett held the George Gollin Chair and was frequently Dean of the Faculty of Economics; and the period since then when Jonathan Pincus held the Gollin Chair and was Head of Economics for six of those years (1991–96, a term exceeded only by Karmel 1950–61 and Eric Russell 1967–76 – see Table 24).

#### **The Karmel et al. years**

Professor Peter Karmel's arrival in May 1950 began a major takeoff for Economics at Adelaide, aided by additional funds being made available by the Federal government for universities in the post–war era: 'From 1950 onwards the Department was amongst the foremost in the University in expansion of teaching and research activities and growth of tenured staff of distinction' (Edgeloe 1992, p.2). It was arguably the liveliest and best Economics Department in Australia by the early 1960s, with a growing number of staff establishing reputations nationally and ultimately internationally.

Within two years of his arrival, Professor Karmel had orchestrated the formation of a new Faculty of Economics with two separate departments, Economics (which also retained its membership in the Arts Faculty) and Commerce (to be headed by Russell Mathews on his appointment as a Reader in 1953). Karmel ceased admissions to the Diploma in Commerce and the Diploma in Public Administration so as to concentrate on the B.Ec., B.Ec.(Hons) and M.Ec. On staffing, Lecturer Ron Hirst became the University's first M.Ec. graduate in 1950, triggering his promotion to Reader that year, and five more lecturers were hired during Karmel's first three years. Milton Smith, John Grant, and Roger Opie were young Adelaide graduates, while Eric Russell and Frank Jarrett had returned from postgraduate education abroad.

Eric Russell was a student contemporary of Karmel's at the University of Melbourne where he had studied Arts and Commerce in the early 1940s. He had also completed a B.A. at King's College, Cambridge in 1947, and received an M.A. from Cambridge in 1959. He commenced teaching as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Adelaide in 1952 and was promoted to Reader in 1958 and to Professor in 1964. He also served as Chairman of the Department from 1967 to 1976. He died while playing squash soon after his return from a sabbatical in February 1977, at the early age of 55. 'He always insisted on taking a full teaching load – indeed, over the years his was always one of the heaviest – despite the very great weight of administrative and other university and, in later days, government activities that he carried at the same time … In the 1950s and early 1960s Eric did great work for wage–earning groups, especially in helping Bob Hawke prepare his briefs for the ACTU's basic wage submissions. Eric was one of the first professional economists to go into the witness box in order to present evidence for the wage–earners' cause.' (Harcourt 1977a, pp469 and 471). Russell published very little,33 but his intellect together with his liberal social conscience ensured he had a great influence on other staff members and students at the University. Indeed several Professors have claimed that he should be ranked along with Trevor Swan as one of Australia's greatest–ever economists.

Frank Jarrett was the next non–Adelaide appointee. He had just completed doctoral studies in agricultural economics, and was the first appointee to the University with a Ph.D. from an American Land–Grant College, namely Iowa State. This caused some consternation. Some members of the University Council were so scathing of a Ph.D. from Iowa that they sought ways to have the

<sup>33</sup> According to Harcourt (1977a,b), he published just two papers in economics journals (Russell 1965; Meade and Russell 1967). A third, his Presidential Address to the ANZAAS Congress in 1972, was published posthumously for him (Russell 1978).

doctorate not recognised. Their proposed solution was to declare that only Ph.D. degrees with a Latin language requirement should be recognised. The issue faded within a few months, and Jarrett went on to lecture from 1953 to 1988 and thereby succeed Ron Hirst as the longest–serving member of the Department to that time.34 He also spent several periods as Dean of the Faculty.

The next two appointments also were very influential, in Bob Wallace (Oxford background) in 1956 and Geoff Harcourt (Melbourne and Cambridge background) in 1958. In the decade he spent at Adelaide before transferring to Flinders University, Wallace played a major role in assisting Karmel attract several more outstanding scholars to the staff. The number of academic staff rose from a mere two or three in the 1940s, and five or six through most of the 1950s, to 18 by 1964 (Chart 2 and Tables 2 and 3). Many of the new staff were recruited from the University of Melbourne, where an unhappy atmosphere then prevailed in Economics. They were accommodated, along with the Arts Faculty proper, in the new 10– storey Napier Building (built between 1958 and 1965 and named after Sir Mellis Napier, South Australia's Chief Justice and the Chancellor of the University from 1948 to 1961).

Geoff Harcourt was absent from Adelaide in the last three of what we have called the Karmel years, but that did not stop him from putting Adelaide on the map internationally. He was on leave– without–pay at Cambridge, where his learning and publishing flourished (see Harcourt 2001, Ch. 1), and he built on that after he returned in 1967 (see next section).

This was also the period in which women joined the Economics lecturing staff (the only precedents being Dorethea Pavy as an Assistant Lecturer in 1922 and Roma Williams who was a Lecturer during 1946, pending her departure with husband Bruce to Northern Ireland). Maureen Brunt began her academic career at the University of Adelaide, where she was a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer from 1960 to 1964. She took leave without pay to spend time at Harvard (1964–66), and then became Australia's first female

 34 With recent changes to the law regarding the statutory retirement age of 65 years, Jarrett has lost the service record to Brian Bentick who has been on the lecturing staff since 1965.

Professor of Economics, at the new Monash University. The number of female lecturers remained at around 10 per cent of staff members until the 1990s, when it rose again to around 20 per cent (Chart 3).

Meanwhile, Commerce continued to rely almost exclusively on part–time teaching staff. The first full–time appointment was Russell Mathews in 1953 to a Readership following the formation in 1952 of the two departments, of Commerce and of Economics, which together made up the new Faculty of Economics. Mathews was promoted to a Chair in 1958 and was able to hire extra lecturers, but the total number of full–time lecturing staff in the Department of Commerce averaged only five in the 1960s and less than ten in the 1970s and 1980s (Chart 4).35 The introduction of a Master of Business Management degree in 1963 (the first of its kind in Australia), and its conversion to a Master of Business Administration in 1987, required some growth in staff numbers for that program (which in 1984 was transferred from the Department of Commerce to its own Graduate School of Management, renamed the Adelaide Graduate School of Business in 2002).36

On its formation, the Faculty of Economics decided to discontinue enrolments in the Diploma in Commerce and Diploma in Public Administration and to concentrate its efforts on the B.Ec. degree (Chart 5). Standards were set and kept high (resulting in high failure rates, which worried the University's administrators), and emphasis was also given to the B.Ec. (Hons) degree and a new M. Ec. degree. Enrolments in those research–oriented degrees remained modest in the 1950s and 1960s (Table 17), but the student quality was very high. Among the many to become stars were Richard Blandy (later Professor at Flinders University), who earned the top grade in every subject of his B.Ec. degree; Chris Caton, who became Chief Economist with Bankers Trust; Michael Codd, who became Head of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in Canberra; Malcolm Hill, who rose to Secretary of the Reserve Bank of Australia; John Menadue, who has been CEO of Qantas,

<sup>35</sup> A Senior Lecturer in Economics from 1959 to 1964, Allan Barton, crossed over to Commerce as a Reader for 1965 and 1966.

<sup>36</sup> See Table 23 for a list of the Deans and key support staff in the Faculty and its Departments/Schools since the early 1950s.

Head of several key departments in Canberra and Australian Ambassador to Japan; Michael Porter who, after completing his Ph.D. at Stanford and developing the Kouri/Porter theory of exchange rate determination at the International Monetary Fund, went on to a professorship at Monash and then founded the Tasman Institute in Melbourne; and Deane Terrell who, following a period as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, rose to the positions of Professor, Dean, and then Vice–Chancellor at ANU.

It has often been pointed out that the quality of the staff attracted to Economics at Adelaide was extremely high throughout the Karmel years. Of the 32 appointments at Lecturer B level and above from 1950 to 1966, nearly half (15) became full Professors. However, high standards were not confined to that period. For example, of the 77 appointments at Lecturer B level and above from 1901 to 1995, more than half (at least 40) have become chaired Professors, seven have become long–serving Vice–Chancellors, seven are listed in the 3rd edition of *Who's Who in Economics* (Blaug 1999), and at least 22 have been elected Fellows of the learned academies (Tables 5 and 6).37 And during the past 56 years ten students who have majored in Economics at Adelaide have gone to Oxford as Rhodes Scholars, five of them since 1991 (Table 14).

The endowment promised in 1930 by George Gollin, for a Chair in Economics when both he and his wife died, came to the University in 1959. While its £20 000 was insufficient to fully endow a Chair by then, the University nonetheless attached George Gollin's name to the Chair occupied by Peter Karmel.

Another donation, to fund the Napier Birks Room for Economics and Commerce Statistics, came in 1954.38 The directors of Motors Ltd and its subsidiary Kingsway Ltd offered to donate £2000

<sup>37</sup> Not shown in the tables is W. Max Corden, another to become an internationally renown professor. Corden was seconded from the University of Melbourne to Adelaide for several weeks in early 1958 because his father, while on a business trip to South Australia, had been admitted to the Royal Adelaide Hospital. Corden stayed until his father passed away. During that time he prepared for the ANZAAS Congress his seminal paper on tariffying import quotas and moving to a uniform tariff rate, and began work on what became his first Joseph Fisher Lecture (Corden 1958, 1966).

<sup>38</sup> University of Adelaide file 35/1954.

The Building of Economics at Adelaide

for establishing a library for Economics and Commerce staff and students in memory of Napier Kyffin Birks. Mr R.S. Pitcher, the Chairman of Motors Ltd, said Birks's colleagues on the boards decided on this gesture as a fitting memorial because 'Mr Birks, over a long period of years, took a most active interest in the commercial careers of the employees of his Companies and South Australian commerce students in general'.39 In his response Professor Karmel reflected that a library *per se* would pose practical difficulties to the Department while not doing much more than duplicating the collection and services of the Barr Smith Library. He proposed furnishing a room for housing statistical materials and calculating machines as providing greater long–term benefit. The donors agreed, and a room in the Department was refurbished forthwith.

#### **The Jarrett et al. years**

The birth of Flinders University of South Australia on 1 July 1966 had a dramatic effect on Adelaide's Department of Economics. Not only did Professor Karmel become the Principal–Designate from 1962 (and Vice–Chancellor from July 1966), but numerous younger staff members also resigned to move to the new university's Bedford Park campus. The economists among them were Keith Hancock, Metoday (Matt) Polasek, Eric Richards and Bob Wallace. Perhaps because of this historical connection, relations between the two universities' economists remained friendly. Honours was taught jointly, as was the Masters by coursework; a jointly owned consulting group was established in 1982 and lives on as the South Australian Centre for Economic Studies (see below); a weekly combined seminar program was co–funded for much of the 1980s and 1990s; and the academic journal *Australian Economic Papers* (which celebrated in September 2002 its 40th birthday as one

 39 Birks, who had been the Chairman of Directors of Charles Birks and Co. Ltd, had founded Motors Ltd in 1911 and Kingsway Ltd in 1947. He had been the Chairman of Directors of both companies since their foundation.

of Australia's two leading economics journals)40 has been edited jointly by staff in the two universities. There was also some specialisation between the two groups. For example, a 1967 proposal at Adelaide to form an Economic History Department was not taken up at Adelaide but was at Flinders, which was what attracted Eric Richards to move there.

Harold Lydall succeeded Peter Karmel as the George Gollin Professor in 1962, but shortly after the exodus to Flinders he too departed, ultimately to a Chair at East Anglia. Nonetheless, the Adelaide Department was left in good hands with three senior staff in Professors Eric Russell, Geoff Harcourt and (from 1968) Frank Jarrett in the George Gollin Chair.

Harcourt had been away from 1963 to 1966: a year of study leave, followed by an appointment to lecture in economics and politics at Cambridge and a Fellowship in Economics at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. During that time he built a formidable reputation as an economist, and in response the University of Adelaide had promoted him to a Readership in 1965 and to a Personal Chair in 1967 and insisted that he return for the beginning of that academic year. He remained a Professor at Adelaide until his resignation in 1985, although he spent the three preceding years on leave at Cambridge where he was a Lecturer in Economics and Politics and a Fellow of Jesus College. He was given Emeritus Professor status at Adelaide in 1988 and continued to promote the Department from Cambridge, where he was promoted to Reader in 1990. Outside of economics, his interest in the University's sporting life was well– known around the campus,41 as was his passionate leadership of the

 40 *Australian Economic Papers* was started in 1962 by its first editor, Hugh Hudson (later to become Deputy Premier of South Australia), with Geoff Harcourt as the assistant editor. Harcourt became joint editor in 1967 and served in that role for nearly 20 years, principally with Keith Hancock, Merv Lewis and Bob Wallace.

<sup>41</sup> Professor Geoff Harcourt once claimed to be the only serving economics professor in the world to play Australian Rules football. In a match at Gaza Oval on a very wet day when the mud was inches thick and the players hard to identify and many turning up late, he coached the University team to a one–point victory. The sole University reserve player was not happy, however, as he spent the whole match on the bench. He complained

anti–Vietnam War movement which included chairing the Campaign for Peace in Vietnam from 1970 to 1972.

This period saw dramatic growth in the B.Ec. program, from fewer than 40 graduates per year in the mid–1960s to a peak of 223 in 1991 (Chart 6 and Table 17). While the number of Lecturers B–E grew until the mid–1970s, it has been static or declining since then (Chart 2). As a result, the number of graduates per lecturer per year rose from 2.5 in the 1950s and 1960s to 3.5 in the 1970s and 5.0 in the 1980s.42 This was a direct result of the early–1970s initiative of the Federal Labor government led by Gough Whitlam to expand the facilities of tertiary education institutions. During this time the Department also taught Economics subjects dedicated to non– economics students such as in the Faculty of Agricultural Science and, for a time, in the Centre for Environmental Studies. It also offered in the Faculty of Arts a popular terminal first–year subject in Social Economics (until 1986, when financial concerns were cited as the reason for withdrawing the subject).

This period also saw a greater professionalization of the lecturing staff. Up until 1950 the only economist who had a Ph.D. when appointed to Adelaide was Professor Tew, and until 1959 there were only two others (Karmel and Jarrett). Even between 1959 and 1971, when a total of 35 new staff joined the Department as Lecturers B and above, only 5 of them had Ph.D.s when appointed (one in seven). Since the early 1970s, however, more than 80 per cent of new staff have had a PhD on appointment and from the early 1990s that has been a requirement.

afterwards to the professor/coach about not getting a run. Harcourt explained to the upset player that he needed to keep a player in reserve in case the team suffered an injury (this was in the days before the interchange rule). When the upset reserve pointed out that the game had been played with one less than the full contingent of 18, Harcourt's quick–witted response was that the team only won because they had more room to manoeuvre (Bloch 1996, pp.15–16).

<sup>42</sup> Lecturers include those in the Commerce Department, since Commerce graduates also received a B.Ec. until 1992; graduates include those receiving research degrees, who are given three times the weight of ordinary–degree graduates to reflect the more–intensive supervision required.

The period from the mid–1960s to the mid–1980s also saw the emergence of Adelaide's Ph.D. program in Economics as well as modest growth in the numbers of its Masters and Honours graduates.43 Then, as in other Australian universities, the number of postgraduate Economics students declined substantially due to greatly increased employment opportunities for graduates with just Ordinary or Honours degrees.44 Hence in the 10 years to 1995 the Department graduated only two–thirds as many Masters and Ph.D. students as in the previous 10 years (Chart 9 and Table 17).

In the 1960s and 1970s the research concentrations of the Department were in such areas as wages policy, capital theory, money and banking, and agricultural economics, mostly as applied to Australia. The application of economics by some staff to specifically South Australian concerns led to the creation in 1982 of a Centre for South Australian Economic Studies.45 A national first, it was established jointly with Flinders University specifically to provide applied regional economic analyses of interest to the South Australian government and business (who shared in providing its initial funding of \$15 000 per year). Adelaide's Norm Thomson and Trevor Mules were the first two Directors, with Graham Scott of Flinders as long–term Deputy (Table 19). In the mid–1980s the Centre produced two edited books, and it provided regular economics briefings to its corporate clients from April 1983 in addition to undertaking consultancies for them on a fee–for–service basis. Recent changes to the Centre's operations are mentioned in the next section below.

<sup>43</sup> The spike of 26 Honours students in 1986 was the result of a mistake by the federal aid agency (the predecessor to AusAID) accidentally sending not one but all eleven Singapore scholarship holders that year to Adelaide instead of spreading them around to different Australian universities.

<sup>44</sup> The Department's 1988 External Review report noted that very few of Adelaide's economics graduates were unemployed at the end of a financial year following their graduation in the period from 1977 to 1986, despite the high national unemployment rate during that decade.

<sup>45</sup> The 1980s also saw the Department launch the Australian Centre for Experimental Economics, but as it attracted little funding and had a low profile it had quietly faded away by the time its main supporter, Alastair Fischer, moved to Cambridge in 1993.

The Building of Economics at Adelaide

The external review of the Department in 1988 highlighted that, after the visionary leadership of Peter Karmel and the subsequent Professors, the Department had lacked 'consistent academic leadership' in the 1980s. Aside from the usual differences of views among senior staff, departmental governance had suffered through the Heads of Department serving too short a term or through their and other senior staff's involvement in other matters within and outside of the University. Lecturers and Senior Lecturers at that time considered they were shouldering an unfair proportion of responsibilities and intellectual leadership for which they were not compensated monetarily, or by way of promotion or assistance with their own work interests (Mayer et al. 1988, p.19).

This situation was exacerbated by Cliff Walsh's secondment to the Prime Minister's staff shortly after his appointment to a Chair in 1980, by Harcourt's absence from 1982 and resignation in 1985, by resignations from Lindner and Davis in 1986 and from Walsh and Lewis in 1987, and by Jarrett's retirement in 1988.

The Department was left not only virtually leaderless, but with indications that it might become primarily a service provider to other undergraduate degree programs then under review, particularly Law and Commerce. The late 1980s was also the beginning of a period – not yet ended – of a series of major Federal government reforms to higher education. These circumstances contributed to a further haemorrhaging of staff, this time of promising Lecturer Bs and Cs: following Chapman leaving in 1986 were Grossman and McTaggert in 1987, Nguyen and Ryland in 1989, and Anderson (on leave–without–pay) and Tyers in 1990. Derek Healey, one of the three Lecturer Ds at the time, also resigned in 1990. It was not until 1991 that the University appointed the first of the replacement Professors. He was J.J. Pincus, at the time Professor and Head of Economic History at Flinders University.

#### **The Pincus et al. years**

The appointment of Jonathan Pincus as the George Gollin Professor and Head of the Economics Department in 1991 coincided with three other pertinent developments in addition to the major reforms introduced by Federal Education Minister John Dawkins: the rapid rise in demand for commerce relative to economics undergraduate training; the (not–unrelated) decision by the Commerce Department to offer its own B.Com. degree program in competition with (and involving far fewer Economics subjects than) the B.Ec.; and a foreshadowed change of rules in the Law School that would require LL.B. students to qualify for graduation in another undergraduate degree before graduating in Law.

A clear reflection of the growth in demand for commerce relative to economics majors shows up in the numbers graduating since 1990 (Charts 6 and 7). Concomitantly, the number of commerce lecturers grew over the 1990s while the number in economics stagnated (compare Charts 2 and 4).46

Nonetheless, under Jonathan Pincus, staff morale and the number of senior members were quickly rebuilt. Pincus was instrumental in appointing Richard Pomfret, who arrived in January 1992 to the Chair that had been vacated by Cliff Walsh four years earlier; in attracting Walsh back from the ANU to a newly created (self–funded) position as Executive Director and Professor of Economic Studies at the Centre for South Australian Economic Studies (soon to be renamed the SA Centre for Economic Studies); and in encouraging Kym Anderson to return at the end of 1992 from his leave–without–pay position at the GATT Secretariat (now the World Trade Organisation) in Geneva. Since Anderson had been promoted to a Personal Chair in absentia in 1991, that returned the Department to the three Chairs it had enjoyed during most of the period from the mid–1960s to the mid–1980s. As well, in 1992 four Senior Lecturers (Christopher Findlay, Ian McLean, Sue Richardson and Colin Rogers) were promoted to join David Round, Tom Sheridan and Norm Thomson as Readers/Associate Professors.

With these rapid developments the Department was spared the fate of some of the University's other departments such as History, and some of the other Australian Economics Departments,

<sup>46</sup> The slowdown in demand for Economics places has not been gender– specific: the female proportion of B.Ec. admissions has remained in the 30–40 per cent range throughout the 1990s (up from barely 10 per cent in the 1970s – see Chart 8).

which have become mere shadows of their former selves. But Pincus and his colleagues knew that the situation remained precarious, and that major innovations would be needed just to maintain, let alone increase, the current size of the Department (renamed School in 1996). The need for innovations was only partly related to the relative decline in demand for an undergraduate Economics major – a decline that also occurred interstate and in other Western countries (Millmow 2002; Siegfried 2000). The other major influence was the program of higher education policy reforms in Canberra begun by Minister Dawkins in the late 1980s and continued in bursts through to the present.

Higher education reforms that were particularly pertinent to the Economics Department from the late 1980s included the introduction of significant tuition fees for domestic students (albeit still involving a large subsidy element and accompanied by a government income–contingent loan provision for delaying their payment), the substantial downsizing of scholarship funding and the charging of full tuition fees for students from overseas, the conversion of many former colleges of advanced education to universities (involving also numerous mergers to reduce the total number of institutions), and the substantial reduction in the proportion of the University of Adelaide's budget coming in the form of core grants from the Federal Government. These changes required university departments to become much more cost– conscious, demand–focused, market–driven, and subject to annual reporting of key performance indicators. In South Australia especially, where there was little growth in domestic student demand, much greater emphasis needed to be on exporting the University's services through attracting fee–paying international students and competitive research grants to compensate for the declining income from core government funding.

Welcoming the government's increased emphasis on student satisfaction and learning, the Economics Department embarked on innovations in the teaching of introductory economics, thereby gaining favourable attention. The Department also responded to quasi–market pressures by changing not only the B.Ec. but also its other offerings. One change was to introduce a Graduate Diploma to attract non–economics majors willing to pay (or able to attract a scholarship) for a professional training in Economics. The most successful part of that effort to date has been the winning, for four years in a row, of a contract to provide AusAID–funded places for 12 Chinese trade diplomats per year through the latter 1990s.

A more recent change was the School introducing a professional Applied Master's degree, mostly by coursework, and developing a M.Ec. degree by coursework and dissertation (as distinct from the M.Ec. thesis). Both new Masters are attracting a steady flow of fee–paying Economics graduates. As well, the Ph.D. program now has compulsory micro– and macro–economic and econometric coursework in the first year. This is an experimental first step towards an American–style doctorate. A targeted marketing campaign and the conversion of three Lecturer A (Senior Tutor) positions into ten teaching assistantships has helped to expand enrolments in these postgraduate programs since the late 1990s.

A third response involved introducing, in 1996, a Bachelor of Finance degree. As Chart 6 shows, that has compensated considerably for the slowdown in interest in the B.Ec. That program has been offered jointly by Economics, Commerce and Mathematics.

A fourth reform has been to facilitate enrolment in another degree along with the B.Ec. The student response to making that double–degree option more widely available since the mid–1990s has been dramatic (Chart 10). For B.Ec. students, the most common joint degree has been Finance, followed by Law and then Engineering, with Commerce and Arts slightly less popular (Chart 11). Looking at it from the viewpoint of the other degree, Economics is the most popular choice for B.Fin. students, and with Finance it is equally as popular for B.Eng. students as Commerce (Charts 12 and 16). For B.Com. and B.A. students, Law is by far the dominant joint degree, with Economics the choice for only a small minority (Charts 13 and 15). And for LL.B. students, who since 1995 have not been allowed to graduate in Law without having another undergraduate degree, the dominant choice was Arts initially but Commerce is becoming more popular as are both Economics and Finance (from much lower bases – see Chart 14).

Another University response has been to introduce brackets to the names of degrees, following the attempt by newer universities to attract more school–leavers. Commerce now offer 'named' B.Com. degrees in all of its fields (accounting, corporate finance, international business, management and marketing), but in Economics this has only been done so far to accommodate the transfer of a degree program in international agribusiness from the Roseworthy Campus to the School of Economics. Related to that merger of Roseworthy Agricultural College with the University has been the emergence of a Bachelor of Wine Marketing at the Waite Campus, for which the standard first–year subjects taught by the School of Economics (microeconomics, macroeconomics and data analysis) are compulsory.

On the research side, the Department's response to its changing environment has included the development of specialised research centres (see below).

Notwithstanding all these responses to changes in the demand for and regulation of Economics teaching and research services, career options for academics within the Department have been limited. This is evident in the lack of growth in Professor and Associate Professor positions since the mid–1960s, requiring most of the Department's promising young recruits to leave Adelaide to advance their careers. Hence other universities rather than Adelaide are reaping the rewards of the early investments in the teaching and research capabilities of those lecturers.47

Economics departments of other Australian universities, particularly the older established (Go8) ones, have managed since the late 1980s through raising the number of staff in total and the proportions of Professors and Associate Professors. As a result, Adelaide's School of Economics is badly out of line in staff profile and student–staff ratios: Adelaide now has the smallest number of Economics lecturing staff and the lowest proportion of staff at senior levels (less than half the average of comparable Economics Departments – see Table 24).

 47 Four of the School's 40 Lecturer B–E appointments to 1995 who became Professors did so through promotion at Adelaide (Jarrett, Russell, Harcourt and Anderson) and another seven were appointed as Professors at Adelaide over that period. The remaining 29 went elsewhere to reach professorial rank.

The number of students per Economics lecturer (full–time equivalent Lecturers A–E) averaged 15 in the 1970s, 17 in the 1980s, 19 in the 1990s, 23 in 2000–02, and prospectively 31 by 2005 if there are no net additions to the staff (Rogers 2002). The number of graduates per Economics and Commerce lecturer, which had risen from 2.5 in the 1950s and 1960s to 5.0 in the 1980s, rose to 7.5 in the first half of the 1990s and to 12.4 in the six years to 2003. This has happened despite growth in numbers of students (including full fee–payers) large enough to finance more staff at Adelaide: the University felt the need to divert those increased earnings to poorer–performing parts of the University. The School has been able to retain some Emeritus Professors and attract some high–quality Adjunct Professors, Post–Doctoral Fellows and Affiliates as low–cost ways to improve the research and teaching environment (Tables 4, 20 and 21), but they are not close substitutes for additional permanent full–time staff.

Despite these handicaps, the School has done well in terms of some key performance indicators in the past dozen or so years, compared at least with earlier periods and with other departments at Adelaide. The above trend in student/staff ratios – a several–fold increase in the annual number of graduates per staff member compared with the 1960s and 1970s – suggests a likely improvement in teaching productivity, even bearing in mind the need to adjust raw quantitative indicators for any deterioration in quality (as a result, for example, of increases in the size of tutorial classes).

There has also been an improvement in the quantity of research training. Economics research training began at Adelaide with the first Honours graduate in 1945 (Roma Williams) and the first Masters graudate in 1950 (Ron Hirst).48 But it was not until 1971

<sup>48</sup> A precursor was a thesis by Henry Brown in 1937 for the John L. Young Scholarship. In 1918 John Harvey Finlayson bequeathed £200 for a John Lorenzo Young Scholarship. The scholarship in Political Economy or a related subject was valued at £30, the investment income when it was first offered. It was to be offered every three years or so thereafter while the investment amounted to £30. 'Political Economy' was extended to include 'present or past students of the University who have passed in a degree course the subject of Economics, or a subject judged by the Faculty of Arts to be cognate to Economics, not more than six years before the date of the

that the first Ph.D. students graduated (Alistair Watson, who began his doctorate in 1965, and Kyoko Sheridan who started a couple of years later). Since then the numbers graduating each year have been 10–15 for Honours and 2–4 for postgraduates until the mid–1990s (Chart 9 and Tables 7 to 12). Since then there has been some growth in the number of Ph.D. completions, averaging 2.9 per year since 1996 compared with only 0.9 in the previous 25 years, and Masters completions, averaging 1.9 per year since 1996 compared with around 1.3 per year during the previous 25 years and 1.0 per year in the 1950s and 1960s (Chart 9 and Table 17).

Another research training performance indicator (again subject to adjustment for quality of learning) is the average and median number of months taken to complete a research degree. That has been dropping steadily for both Masters and Ph.D. degrees: from the high 50s and more in the 1960s to the low 40s for Ph.Ds and the low 30s for research Masters students in the 1990s (Table 25).

The applied interests and gradual internationalisation of both staff and research students are reflected in the thesis topics chosen. More than three–quarters of the Ph.D. theses and all but 5% of the Masters theses to date have been on applied rather than theoretical topics. Of those applied theses, prior to 1987 all the Ph.D. theses and all but three of the Masters were applied to Australian topics. Since then, by contrast, half the Ph.D. theses and two–thirds of the Masters have been applied to other countries or to broader international issues (Tables 8 and 10). A similar if less pronounced trend is evident in Honours thesis topics (Table 12). Evidently globalisation is affecting the School's research training program, just as it is affecting the research activities of the staff themselves (see below and the working papers listed in Tables 26–29).

The Centre for South Australian Economic Studies (established in 1982 and re–named in February 1993 the South

award'. Scholarship holders were required to submit a thesis on political economy or economics within 12 months of receiving the award. The first two recipients of the scholarship were Sarah Elizabeth Jackson M.A. (1918) and Thomas Schulz Opie (1921), both of whom pursued psychology as their interest. Henry Brown was the first to submit a mainstream economics thesis.

Australian Centre for Economic Studies, SACES) has concentrated on providing regular economics briefings to its corporate clients in Adelaide and undertaking consultancies for them and others (including interstate and recently in New Zealand, China and Indonesia) on a fee–for–service basis. Its level of activities and full– time staffing grew rapidly after Professor Cliff Walsh was appointed its Executive Director in July 1992, but diminished for a while after he stepped down for health reasons in the latter 1990s (Hancock et al. 2000). The Centre relies mainly on its own full–time staff (fully paid for from consulting income), and in recent years it has only occasionally involved economics lecturers of the two universities as casual part–time consultants. SACES income is substantial (in excess of \$0.5 million in both 2001 and 2002) and attracts supplementary funding from the Federal government under the Research Infrastructure Block Grants and Institutional Grants Scheme (RIBG and IGS). SACES incurred a considerable debt during its period of lower revenue in the late 1990s but, following an external review (Hancock et al. 2000), it has become profitable again and in 2002 paid a dividend of \$50 000 to each of Adelaide and Flinders universities. To date it has contributed little in terms of higher– degree research training or attracting nationally competitive research grants, but it does provide an important public face for the two universities particularly through its regular briefings to clients on the state of the economy.

A second centre of specialisation was established in 1989, the Centre for International Economic Studies (CIES). It was modelled on Stockholm's Institute for International Economic Studies where its founder, Kym Anderson, spent a sabbatical year in 1988. Without drawing much financial support from the School or University it has managed to fund a part–time Executive Assistant and (from 1996) a part–time Deputy Director with funds from a series of ARC Large Grants, even–larger grants from the government's Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (1997–2002) and from AusAID.

A third centre was established in 1990. Initially it was called the China Economy Research Unit but in 1996 was retitled the Chinese Economies Research Centre (or CERC). Co–directed by its founders, Christopher Findlay and the Arts Faculty's Andrew

Watson, CERC was extraordinarily successful in obtaining grants, in providing higher–degree supervision, and in publishing working papers and books. With the departure of the two Co–Directors in 1999 (Findlay to a Chair at the ANU, Watson to head the Ford Foundation office in Beijing) and of their last post–doctoral fellows, the School was left with insufficient staff focusing on China to keep CERC going so it was absorbed by and became a program area within CIES.

A fourth centre was the Centre for Economics Education, established in the early 1990s by Judy Cowie with strong support from Christopher Findlay. It too was extraordinarily successful in attracting grants to do research on the teaching of undergraduate economics. Its high–profile success was heavily dependent on Cowie's energy and enthusiasm, however, so when she left Adelaide in 1996 it faded away.

The various Centres' publication and dissemination programs have raised the domestic and international profile of the School by adding several–fold to the annual number of working papers disseminated by the Department: CERC produced an annual average of ten during its decade of operation (Table 29) and CIES has produced an annual average of almost 40 since the Centre came into being 14 years ago (Table 28).49 As well, SACES has generated, in addition to commercial–in–confidence papers and briefing reports for its member clients, two series of publicly available papers and several monographs (Table 27). During the past few years all CIES working papers have been freely downloadable from the Centre's website. Since introducing that capability, the site's hit count has averaged more than 600 per month.50

<sup>49</sup> Details of the publications by CIES and CERC associates are available in CIES (1990, 2002) and at the CIES website at http://www.adelaide.edu. au/cies. In the past year or two the rest of the School's publications have been added to that database and are now listed for each staff member at

http://www.adelaide.edu.au/econ/publications. 50 Additions to the CIES working paper series are highlighted each four months via the *CIES Newsletter* that is disseminated (in recent years via email) to more than 1000 recipients who include people in government, business, think–tanks and international agencies as well as economic and policy

While the School's authors and editors normally seek commercial publishers for books, some material produced for conferences, consultancies or executive training courses is perceived to have a market too small to be able to cover the expected fixed costs of commercial book production and marketing. SACES and CIES have found a way to turn such manuscripts into printed volumes at low cost, however. So rather than have that material not see the light of day, they have put them between covers and advertised them through their websites and the *CIES Newsletter*. Such has been the success of that approach that several publishers have subsequently sought co–publishing rights with CIES (see the list in the final part of Table 28).51

Publication quality is, of course, a much more important performance criterion than just the quantity of papers and books produced. The vast majority of at least CIES Discussion and Seminar Papers have been subequently published, albeit with only a few ending up in the top economics journals.52

The number of publications per staff member by the School of Economics as a whole may appear to be low compared with the rest of the University (particularly the sciences). In 2001, for example, the number of DEST publications points per staff member was 0.94 in Economics (or 0.62 including Lecturer A and SACES staff) 53, less

analysts in research institutes and universities around the world. Its working papers are also included in the Social Sciences Research Network listings.

<sup>51</sup> The most notable example is the *Dictionary of Trade Policy Terms* by CIES Affiliate Walter Goode. For some years it has been the top–selling book in the WTO Secretariat's Bookstore in Geneva, is now in its third edition, has been translated and commercially published in three Asian languages, and is also being sold in the thousands throughout South Asia, in a lower–cost English language version, under an agreement between CIES and a Pakistani law and publishing firm. The 4th edition, forthcoming in 2003, is being co– published by Cambridge University Press for the World Trade Organization.

<sup>52</sup> Details are provided on the CIES website and in CIES (2001). Unfortunately records have not been kept of whether/where School and CERC working papers have been subsequently published.

<sup>53</sup> DEST points refer to the federal Department of Education, Science and Technology's count of eligible publications. The count is compiled by universities each year as part of their annual performance evaluation, and is subject to random auditing by DEST.

than half the University average of 1.9; and the proportion of staff generating DEST publication points was 24 per cent compared with the University average of 54 per cent (see the spreadsheets prepared for University of Adelaide 2002). However, it is true for economics and the social sciences generally in all universities that they publish a smaller number of papers than the other sciences, so a more relevant comparison is with other economics schools.

There are now several studies that compare Adelaide's publication performance with that of other Economics Departments in Australia. The Harris (1988 and 1990) weighted count of several types of publications rates Adelaide as tenth in 1974–83 and fourth in 1984–88 in terms of total publications, and second and fifth in terms of works cited per capita and citations per capita as of 1986– 87. A more–recent count by Pomfret and Wang (2002) of the number of publications just in the top 88 journals54 ranks Adelaide eighth in terms of total articles during 1990–2001 and fifth in terms of articles per capita during 1995–2002.

Such counts only measure the quantity of publications, but other studies try to take quality into account also, at least for journal articles. Sinha and Macri (2001), for example, show that by the Towe and Wright (1995) journal count per capita criterion, Adelaide from 1988 to 2000 has done moderately well in 4th ranked journals (6th in Australia) but less well in the higher–ranked journals (between 10th and 12th).55 Adelaide has also done less well by the Mason, Steagall and Fabritius (1997) journal perception–based criterion (ranked 12th on a per capita basis) and the Laband and Piette (1994) citation– based criterion (14th on a per capita basis). When the period is split into two, Adelaide moves up two to four rankings for the period from 1994 compared with the 1988–93 period. It needs to be kept in mind, however, that theory journals tend to be more–highly ranked by the academic profession than applied and policy focused journals. If a ranking were to be made by professional economists

<sup>54</sup> The 88th–ranked journal is Australia's *Economic Record.*

<sup>55 1</sup>st, 2nd, and 3rd ranked journals are what the authors (following Diamond 1989) consider to be the top 12, the next 23, and the next 44 best economics journals in the CD–ROM of the AEA's *Journal of Economic Literature*, while 4th–ranked journals are those ranked from 80 to 400 in that database.

outside academia based on readership, Adelaide would look much better because its economists have always been more applied than the older universities in the eastern States.

As for publishing books with academic presses, some Adelaide staff have performed well above the national average. However, comparable data for the average of all staff in each Australian economics department are not available. (Unfortunately also not available is a comprehensive list of actual publications by each staff member each year they were at Adelaide, except for the most recent years.) Noteworthy books from the 1970s include Harcourt's review of controversies in capital theory and the Pincus study of the political economy of American tariff policy formation (Harcourt 1972; Pincus 1977). More–recent books of note have been in the development and trade areas, particularly by Richard Pomfret and Kym Anderson. As well, the introductory Parkin textbook adapted by Christopher Findlay and Doug McTaggart became the biggest–selling economics book in Australasia in the 1990s, capturing as much as half the target market (McTaggart, Findlay and Parkin 1999).

It is also true that Adelaide's applied economists would rank above average nationally in terms of contributing to policy focused conferences and seminars both in Australia and internationally. Many of the papers for such conferences have been included in commercially published conference proceedings volumes. Public service contributions have also included periods of staff secondment to or part–time work for national and international agencies. This continues the Department's tradition of earlier decades of applied analysis on Australian policy issues, and extends it to the global arena. Contributors in the past decade include (in alphabetical order) Anderson with the GATT Secretariat, WTO, OECD and World Bank; Findlay with the PECC and APEC communities throughout the Asia–Pacific region; Pincus and Richardson with Australia's Productivity Commission; Pomfret with the United Nations, World Bank and Asian Development Bank; and Round with Australia's Trade Practices Commission and related/successor agencies.

Last but by no means least, mention should be made of the School's co–editing with Flinders University of the journal The Building of Economics at Adelaide

*Australian Economic Papers* since 1962. The editorial efforts of Pincus and the current Editor, Richard Damania, have raised the journal's international profile substantially in recent years, not least by allowing it to be commercially published through Blackwell in Oxford from 1998.56 Currently being sought is an International Editorial Board, to enhance the journal further and to make it eligible for inclusion in the Social Sciences Citation Index database.

<sup>56</sup> The December 2002 issue, for example, included a Comment by Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman.

## **Chapter 3**

### **Prospects for the next century**

The Economics discipline at the University of Adelaide has a distinguished 100–year history of which the University and the State of South Australia can be proud. Very few other departments, of any discipline in Australian universities, could claim to have a majority of its lecturer appointments rising to full Professor status over a period as long as 1901 to 1995. Nor would many other university departments be able to say they have had five of their graduates win Rhodes Scholarships in the past 12 years (Table 14). While teaching and research productivity is more difficult to gauge, because changes in quality matter, the growth in the number of graduates per Economics and Commerce lecturer per year has been impressive: from 2.5 in the 1950s and 1960s to 5.0 in the 1980s, 7.5 in the first half of the 1990s, and 12.4 in the six years to 2003.

The period since the Dawkins' reforms to higher education began in the late 1980s has been one of rapid change for Economics at Adelaide, as it has for other departments. One indicator of that is the number of changes (three) in the name and composition of the faculty in which Economics is housed since 1988 (Table 23). Another indicator is the growth in the number of awards available. For over five decades, Economics was provided via just the B.A. and M.A. From 1930 the B.Ec. then served Economics and Commerce for another six decades, supplemented by three professional diplomas until 1952 and by the M.Ec. from 1938, the B.Ec.(Hons) from 1939 and the Ph.D. from 1965. In the past 15 years, by contrast, the University has introduced no less than 20 additional awards in Economics and Commerce (Table 15).

The recent rapid pace of change shows no sign of slowing. Economics at Adelaide will need to continue to respond to challenges and grasp opportunities as and when they appear (just as it did during the period of national higher education growth in the 1960s). Crises there have been, as in the late 1980s when all three Chairs were vacated and the Department was left virtually leaderless at a time of extreme financial stringency for the University and major reforms in national higher education policy. But renewal was possible in the early 1990s under Jonathan Pincus' leadership, and hopefully it will be again in the early 21st century.57

With the recent conversion at Flinders University of their B.Ec. to an international business degree, and with the University of South Australia also focusing on a Bachelor of Business degree, Adelaide is now the only provider of mainstream economics training in South Australia. That reduced supply capacity helps to offset the reduced domestic demand for economics courses, but additional strategies nonetheless will be needed just to maintain the School's teaching, research and research training performance, let alone restore Adelaide to its former position as one of the top Schools of Economics in the southern hemisphere – as it arguably was 40 years ago.

In submissions to the School of Economics External Review Committee in August 2002, and in an earlier review of the School's activities over the 1990s, numerous strategies to rejuvenate the School were suggested.58 They focus particularly on better marketing to attract more fee–paying students, greater incentives for staff to seek research grants and to publish in reputable places, and further revisions of course structures including in response to the rising value of students' time.

A key area that has been neglected in the past, however, is attracting funds from alumni. The University recently re–designed

<sup>57</sup> A major opportunity for that has arisen following the resignation of nine academic staff in the twelve months to early 2004. They included (see end of Table 2) four Lecturer B's, two C's, one D, one ARC-funded CIES Research Fellow, and Professor Jonathan Pincus (who took up the position of Research Director at the Productivity Commission in Melbourne). As well, Professor Kym Anderson has taken extended leave to spend a period as Lead Economist (Trade Policy) in the Development Research Group of the World Bank in Washington DC).

<sup>58</sup> Pomfret (1999); Pincus (2002); Anderson (2002); Rogers (2002).

its Alumni Office to make it easier for graduates to form an Alumni Chapter for their discipline area. Moves are under way to establish an Economics Chapter following the School's Centenary Dinner at the National Wine Centre on 30 September 2002. With that Chapter in place, the scope for seeking endowments and other donations to supplement the School's earning will be enhanced considerably. The declining share of the University's funds coming as block grants from the Federal government (currently less than 40 per cent) ensures alumni and other private–sector contributions will be essential if the School of Economics is to thrive during its second century.

### **References**


# **Appendix 1: Biographies of Economics staff who became Professors**

**Kym Anderson** (1950–) B.Ag.Ec.(Hons) (UNE), M.Ec. (Adel), M.A. (Chicago), M.A. and Ph.D. (Stanford), FASSA, FAICD, CEPR has held a Personal Chair at the University of Adelaide since 1991, having been a Lecturer (1984–85) and a Senior Lecturer (1986–90) there. The Executive Director of Adelaide's Centre for International Economic Studies since he founded it in 1989, he previously was a Research Fellow in Economics at the Australian National University's Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (1977–83). While on leave he has worked in Korea (1979, 1980–81), at the University of Stockholm (1988) and with the GATT Secretariat (now the World Trade Organization) in Geneva (1990–92) as deputy to the Director of Research. He is the first economist to have served as a Dispute Settlement Panelist at the WTO (1996–2000). His interests include international, development and agricultural economics.

**Michael John Artis** (1938–) B.A. (Oxon), CEPR came to Adelaide in 1964 from the Institute of Economics and Statistics in Oxford. A Lecturer in Economics at Adelaide for two years, he moved to The Flinders University of South Australia in 1966 before returning to England in 1967 to join London's National Institute for Economic and Social Research. After five years there he moved to a Chair at Swansea University College (1972–76) and then to Manchester. In 1995 he took a period of leave at the European University Institute in Florence but has stayed there and resigned from Manchester in 1999. From 1976 to 1994 he served as the editor of the *Manchester School*  journal. His research interest is in monetary economics but he also very influential in policy circles during periods of secondment to the British Government.

**Allan Douglas Barton** (1933–) B.Com. (Melb), Ph.D. (Camb), FCPA, FAICD is an Emeritus Professor of the Australian National University of which he was previously the Pro Vice–Chancellor (1992–95) and Treasurer (1984–91). From 1979 to 1983 he was the Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Commerce at the ANU, having been appointed Professor of Accounting in 1975 (a post he held until 1998). Previously, he was Professor of Accounting and Business Studies at Macquarie University (1967–74) and Reader in Commerce at the University of Adelaide (1965–66) where he had been a Senior Lecturer in Economics (1959–64). He was President of the ACT Division of the Society of CPAs (1983–84) and a Director of UniSuper Ltd (1991–99).

**Maureen Brunt** (1928–) A.O., B.Com. (Melb), Ph.D. (Harv), Hon. L.LD. (Monash) is a Professorial Associate at the Melbourne Business School in the University of Melbourne. She is also a Lay Member of the High Court of New Zealand. After periods as a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at the University of Adelaide (1960–64) and a Lecturer at Harvard University (1964–66), she was appointed a Professor at Monash University in 1966 – perhaps Australia's first female Professor of Economics. She remained there until 1989. Her non–academic appointments include membership to the Australian Competition Tribunal (1975–98) and membership on the panel of arbitrators for the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (since 1995).

**Raymond Peter Byron** (1941–) B.Ec. (WA), M.Sc. and Ph.D. (LSE) is currently the Dean of the School of Business at Bond University in Queensland, a post which he has held since 1997. He was previously a Lecturer at the University of South Australia and at the University of Adelaide (1966) as well as a Research Officer at the National Institute for Economic and Social Research in London. He is also a Research Fellow and an Emeritus Reader at the Australian National University. His principal field of interest is econometric and

References

statistical methods. He was awarded the Bowley Prize at the London School of Economics in 1969.

**Bruce James Chapman** (1951–) AO B.Ec.(Hons) (ANU), Ph.D. (Yale), FASSA is a Professor of Economics and the Director of the Centre for Economic Policy Research at the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. His current research interests include higher education financing, effects of immigration on the employment prospects of unemployed residents, unemployment, social security, the wage profile, youth unemployment and the business cycle. He is the architect of Australia's Higher Education Contribution Scheme which provides undergraduates with the opportunity to obtain from the Commonwealth Government an income–contingent loan to pay their tuition fees. Currently he is researching the use of the tax system for redistributive purposes such as drought relief, paid maternity leave and criminal fines.

**Kevin Thomas Davis** (1949–) B.Ec.(Hons) (Flinders), M.Ec. (ANU) is the Commonwealth Bank Group Chair of Finance at the University of Melbourne. Prior to moving to Melbourne in 1987, he was a Senior Lecturer (1980–86) and a Lecturer in Economics (1974–79) at the University of Adelaide. His primary research is into financial institutions and markets, financial engineering and corporate finance. He has co–authored/edited 16 books on finance, banking, monetary economics and macroeconomics and numerous journal articles and chapters in books. He is Chairperson of the Melbourne University Credit Cooperative and a course director of the Understanding Treasury Management Programme (conducted with Ernst and Young and the ANZ Bank). He has undertaken an extensive range of consulting assignments for financial institutions, business and government.

**John Louis Dillon** (1931–2001) B.Sc.(Agr.) (Syd), Ph.D. (Iowa State), Dr.Sc.Agr. (Kiel), D.Agr.Ec. (Syd), Hon.D.Ec. (UNE), FASSA, FAAEA, FAIAS was the Professor of Farm Management at the University of New England from 1965 to 1994 and then an Emeritus Professor there. He also served as UNE's Pro Vice–Chancellor from 1979 to 1981. From 1961 to 1963 he was a Senior Lecturer in Agricultural Economics at the University of Adelaide and in 1964 he was promoted to Reader in Economics. His research contributions spanned production theory, decision analysis, econometrics, operations research, systems analysis and organisation theory. As an intrepid traveller, he chaired numerous boards of trustees of international agricultural research centres in addition to the Australian Centre for International Agricultural research.

**Christopher Findlay** (1953–) B.Ec.(Hons) (Adel), M.Ec. and Ph.D. (ANU) FASSA has been the Professor of APEC Economies at the Australian National University's Asia Pacific School of Economics and Management since 2000, having been on the Adelaide staff since 1984 and becoming an Associate Professor in 1992. He has published extensively on Australia's economic relations with Asia, on China (which led to him co–founding Adelaide's Chinese Economies Research Centre), and on the textile, steel, food and transport industries in East Asia, as well as co–authoring with Doug McTaggart one of Australia's best–selling economic principles textbooks in the 1990s. He has been a consultant to numerous national and international agencies including UNCTAD, OECD, the World Bank and the Productivity Commission.

**Noel Gaston (1954–)** B.Ec.(Hons) (Adel), M.Ec. (Monash), M.A. and Ph.D. (Cornell) is a Professor of Economics at Bond University's School of Business where he is also the Deputy Dean (Research) and the Deputy Director of the Institute for Corporate Governance at Bond. He was an Associate Professor of Economics at Tulane University (1990–97) and a Lecturer at the University of New South Wales (1988–89). But between 1995 and 1998 he was a Visiting Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Adelaide before joining Bond University. His primary research interests involve the labour market consequences of trade and investment liberalisation, immigration and globalisation. He has spent several periods of leave in Tokyo, and since 1999 as a Visiting Researcher at the Research Institute for Capital Formation at the Development Bank of Japan where he is currently the Shimomura Fellow.

**John McBain Grant** (1923–) M.Ec. (Adel), Dip.Ec. (Camb), FASSA, FCPA has been an Emeritus Professor of the University of Tasmania since his retirement there in 1982 where he was the Professor of Applied Economics from 1960. Prior to then he was a Lecturer and then a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Adelaide, from 1951 to 1959, and before that a Flight Lieutenant in the RAAF (1942–45). His research interests included business finance and trade practices, and he published several textbooks in these and related areas. He has served as a member of the Trade Practices Tribunal (1977–81), as Commissioner of the ACT's Trade Practices Commission (1982–87), and as Chairman of the Royal Commission into Prices and Restrictive Trade Practices in Tasmania in 1964.

**Keith Jackson Hancock** (1935–) AO, B.A. (Melb), Ph.D. (Lond), Hon.D.Litt. (Flinders), FASSA is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Adelaide and a Research Associate at the National Institute of Labour Studies at The Flinders University of South Australia. His first academic appointment was as a Lecturer in Economics at Adelaide in 1959 before he transferred to the new Flinders University in 1964 as its first Professor of Economics. He was then Pro Vice–Chancellor (1974–79), Vice–Chancellor (1980–87) and an Emeritus Professor (1988–) at Flinders. He worked on the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission (1987–89) and was then appointed Deputy President of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission where he served until 1997. Since 2000 he has been the Chairman of Electricity Industry Ombudsman (SA) Ltd.

**Geoffrey Colin Harcourt** (1931–) AO, B.Com.(Hons) and M.Com. (Melb), Ph.D. and D.Litt. (Camb), Hon.D.Litt. (De Montfort, UK), FASSA has been an Emeritus Reader in the History of Economic Theory at Cambridge University since 1998 as well as an Emeritus Professor of the University of Adelaide since 1988. He began his career at Adelaide as a Lecturer in Economics in 1958 and was promoted to Professor in 1967. Just prior to that he spent a year's leave and then two years in Trinity Hall, Cambridge where he taught economics and politics before returning to Adelaide, where he remained as a Professor until 1985 (although he was on leave at Cambridge the three previous years). He was President of the Economic Society of Australia (1974–77) and was made one if its Distinguished Fellows in 1994.

**Herbert Heaton** (1890–1973) B.A. (Leeds), M.A. (LSE), M.Com. (Birmingham) D.Litt. (Leeds) migrated to the University of Tasmania as a Lecturer in History and Economics in 1914 and then to Adelaide in 1917 where he worked as the director of tutorial classes and lectured in history and economics. He contributed significantly to the University of Adelaide's Diploma in Commerce course and worked tirelessly to expand the discipline of economics there. However, his controversial stance on contemporary issues constrained his advancement in Adelaide, so he accepted the Chair of Economics and Political Science at Queen's University in Canada in 1925. In 1927 he transferred to the University of Minnesota where he pursued a distinguished career until his retirement in 1958. He was the President of the Economic History Association (1948–50).

**Keith Sydney Isles** (1902–1977) B.Com. (Tas.), B.A., M.A. and M.Sc. (Camb) was appointed Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh in 1931, after which he took up the Chair of Economics at Swansea University in Wales. From 1939 to 1945 he was the Professor of Economics at the University of Adelaide. From September 1942 he took 6–months' leave to become an economic adviser to the Commonwealth's Wartime Rationing Commission in Melbourne and was a Lieutenant–Colonel in the Directorate of Research in the Citizens Military Force in 1944. While at the Control Commission in Germany when on leave for two terms in 1945, he accepted the Chair of Economics at the University of Belfast in Northern Ireland. He returned to Australia in 1957 to become the Vice–Chancellor of the University of Tasmania, a post he held until his retirement in 1967.

**Frank George Jarrett** (1923–) B.Sc.(Agr.) (Syd), Ph.D. (Iowa State) FASSA was appointed a Lecturer in Economics at the University of Adelaide in 1953, the first person with a Ph.D. from an American Land–Grant College to be employed by the University. He gradually was promoted up the ranks and became the George Gollin Professor of Economics in 1968. From then until his retirement in 1988 as an Emeritus Professor of Economics, he served as Dean of the Faculty on four occasions. His numerous consultancies included a period with the Harvard University Development Advisory Service in Pakistan (1967–69), as well as a number of visits to Papua New Guinea. His research interests covered quantitative agricultural economics and development economics, particularly the economics of production and of agricultural research.

**Professor Peter Henry Karmel** (1922–) AC, CBE, B.A. (Melb), Ph.D. (Camb), Hon.L.LD. (UPNG, Qld, Melb, ANU), Hon.D.Litt. (Flinders, Murdoch, Macquarie), D.Univ (Newcastle), Ph.D. *ad eundem gradun* (Adel), FASSA was appointed Professor of Economics at the University of Adelaide in 1950 at the age of 28. He built up a vigorous and highly regarded department before becoming Principal–Designate of the University of Adelaide's Bedford Park campus in 1962. This became The Flinders University of South Australia in 1966 with Karmel as its first Vice–Chancellor. He was later Chairman of the Australian Universities Commission and the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission, and Vice– Chancellor of the Australian National University. He has extensive experience as chairman or member of many governmental, university–related and public–interest entities.

**John Andrew La Nauze** (1911–89) B.A. (WA and Oxon) commenced at the University of Adelaide in 1935 as the Assistant Lecturer in Economics to Professor Edward Shann, fresh from a period at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He succeeded Shann as the primary Lecturer upon his mentor's death early that year. He resigned at the end of 1939 to become a lecturer in a history of economics course at the University of Sydney, where he stayed until 1950 although he had a period of leave as a Research Fellow at the new Australian National University in 1947–48. He held the Chair of Economic History at the University of Melbourne from 1950, a new Chair in History there from 1955. Then he became the Professor of History in the Research School of Social Sciences at the ANU in 1966. He was renowned as the leading historian on Australia's Federation and the Australian Constitution.

**Mervyn Keith Lewis** (1941–) B.Ec.(Hons) and Ph.D. (Adel), FASSA was a Lecturer, a Senior Lecturer and then a Reader in Economics at the University Adelaide between 1967 and 1987. During that time he was a Visiting Scholar at the Bank of England (1979–80). He moved to the University of Nottingham in 1988 and was also a Visiting Professor of Economics at Vienna University from 1988 to 1992. In 1996 he returned to Australia to take up the National Australia Bank Chair of Banking and Finance in the School of International Business of the University of South Australia. His research interests are in money and banking, including Islamic banking, and he is the co– author of numerous books in that area.

**Robert Ken Lindner** (1942–) B.Agr.Sc., B.Ec. and M.Agr.Sc. (Adel), Ph.D. (Minnesota) is a Research Professor in Agricultural Economics at the University of Western Australia, having been Executive Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture there for several years up to 2001 and before that Professor and Head of UWA's Department of Agricultural Economics. From 1971 to 1986 he was a Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Reader in Agricultural Economics at the University of Adelaide where he also served a period as departmental Chairman. His research interests include the economics of agricultural research and extension in addition to resource economics. He is a past President of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.

**Harold French Lydall** (1916–) B.A. (S.Africa), M.A. (Oxon) was the George Gollin Professor of Economics at the University of Adelaide (1962–67) after a year as the Professor of Commerce at the University of Western Australia. Before that he spent most of the 1950s at the Institute of Economics and Statistics and lectured at St. Peter's Hall, Oxford, before spending 1959–60 with the MIT Centre for International Studies in New Delhi. He was subsequently a Professor of Economics at the University of East Anglia (1970–78), where he was then appointed Emeritus Professor, after working with the United Nations in Geneva for four years (1967–70). His books include *A Critique of Orthodox Economics* (1998) as well as works on income and wealth distribution theory and the economics of Yugoslavia and India.

**Douglas Francis McTaggart** (1953–) B.Ec.(Hons) (ANU), Ph.D. (Chicago) had his first teaching appointment as a Lecturer in Economics at the University of Adelaide in 1987 but after a year was attracted to the new Bond University in Queensland where he quickly rose to become a Professor of Economics. With Christopher Findlay he adapted the Parkin introductory textbook for Australia and it became one of the country's best–selling economic principles textbooks in the 1990s, not least because of its early adoption of CD– ROM technology. From 1996 to 1998 he was the Under Treasurer and Under Secretary of the Queensland Treasury. Since 1999 then he has been the Chief Executive Officer of the Queensland Investment Corporation in Brisbane and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at the Queensland University of Technology.

**Sir Leslie Galfreid Melville** (1902–2002) KBE, CBE, B.Ec.(Hons) (Syd), Hon.L.LD., Hon.D.Sc., FIA (Lond), FIA (Aust), FASSA switched from engineering to train as an actuary and was appointed Public Actuary of South Australia even before completing those studies. Then in 1929, prior to his 27th birthday, he became the first Professor of Economics at the University of Adelaide. He left his Chair in 1931 to become the first Economic Adviser to the Governor and Board of the Commonwealth (subsequently Reserve) Bank of Australia. His later distinguished career included participating in the Imperial Economic Conference in Ottawa (1932), leading the Australian delegation at the Bretton Woods Conference (1944), Vice– Chancellor of the Australian National University (1953–60), Chairman of the Australian Tariff Board (1960–63) and Board member of the Reserve Bank of Australia (1965–74). He stayed on at ANU's RSPAS as an honorary fellow well into the 1980s.

**Sir William Mitchell** (1861–1962) M.A. and D.Sc. (Edin) lectured in moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh (1887–90) after which he lectured at University College, London and at Cambridge University. In 1894 he joined the University of Adelaide and became the Hughes Professor of English Language and Literature and also Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy. His immediate contributions to the advancement of the University led to his election to the University Council where he sat for 52 years. Mitchell was Vice–Chancellor of the University from 1916 to 1942 whereby he became Chancellor. While his contribution was much more in other fields (they also included education, anatomy and zoology), he laid the foundation stone for the development of the discipline of economics in the University.

**Trevor Mules** (1945–) B.Ec.(Hons) and Ph.D. (Adel) began his academic career as a Lecturer in Economics at the University of Adelaide in 1974 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1979. He helped Norm Thomson establish the joint Adelaide–Flinders Centre for South Australian Economic Studies in 1982 and served as its Director from 1985 to 1991. In 1993 he moved to the Gold Coast Campus of Griffith University where as an Associate Professor he directed a program on tourism management. Then in 2001 he took up the position of Professor of Tourism and Director of the Centre for Tourism Research at the University of Canberra. In that position he is also the ACT Node Coordinator for the Cooperative Research Centre on Tourism. He specialises in economic modelling of tourism events.

**Duc–Tho (Tom) Nguyen** (1949–) B.A. (Saigon, Wellington), Ph.D. (ANU) began his academic career as a Lecturer in Economics at the University of Adelaide (1987–89) before gaining a Professorship at Griffith University's School of Economics in Brisbane. He has served there as Head of School (1995–98) and as Dean of the Faculty (1991). During that time he has been Vice–President of the Economic Society of Australia and joint editor of the *Economic Analysis and Policy* journal. His research interests include macroeconomic issues in open economies, international finance, comparative economic growth, Asia–Pacific economies, simulation of dynamic economic systems, and quantitative methods.

**John Reginald Piggott** (1947–) B.A. (Syd), M.Sc.(Ec.) and Ph.D. (LSE), FASSA became Professor of Economics at the University of New South Wales in 1988. He had been a Lecturer in Economics at the University of Adelaide (1979–80), a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University (1980–85) and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney (1985–87). He was the Head of School at the University of New South Wales (1988–89) and the Presiding Member of its Faculty of Economics and Commerce (1992–98). In 1997 he was appointed Adjunct Professor of the Centre for Economic Policy Research at the ANU. His non–academic appointments include membership of the steering committee for the Retirement Income Modelling Task Force (1994–97). His research interests are the economics of pensions and retirement, computable general equilibrium and public finance.

**Jonathan James Pincus** (1939–) B.Ec. (Qld), M.A. and Ph.D. (Stanford), FASSA has been the George Collin Professor of Economics at the University of Adelaide since 1991, the Head of School (1991–96) and the Convenor of the Academic Board (1998– 2001). From 1985 he was Professor and Head of the Economic History Discipline at Flinders University and a Fellow in Economic History at the Australian National University's Research School of Social Sciences (1974–85). He has been involved with several journals, including terms as joint editor of *Australian Economic History Review* and *Australian Economic Papers*. In 1973 he received the Columbia Nevins Prize in American Economic History for his seminal Ph.D. thesis (subsequently published by Columbia University Press in 1977). In late 2002 he moved to Australia's Productivity Commission as Principal Advisor Research.

**Richard Pomfret** (1948–) B.A. (Reading), M.A. (East Anglia), Ph.D. (Simon Fraser) FASSA has been Professor of Economics at the University of Adelaide since 1992. He was the Dean of the School of Economics from 1997 to 1999. Prior appointments were at the Kiel Institute (1974–76), Concordia University in Montreal (1976–79) and Johns Hopkins University's campuses in Bologna, Washington and Nanjing (1979–91) where he rose to be Professor in 1988. He has been a consultant with such agencies as the World Bank, UNDP, EU, Arab Monetary Fund, ADB, ASEAN and UN–ESCAP. In 1990 he was Visiting Professor at the American University in Paris and in the following year he was Visiting Professor at Simon Fraser University. He has published profusely in his principal interests of economic development, trade and economic history.

**Alan Anthony Leslie Powell** (1937–) AM, B.Sc.(Agr.) and Ph.D. (Syd), FASSA spent a year as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Economy at the University of Chicago (1964) before becoming a Lecturer in Economics at the University of Adelaide (1962–64). He then moved to the new Monash University as a Senior Lecturer in Econometrics where he rose to Reader (1966) and Professor (1968). He transferred to the Richie Research Chair at the University of Melbourne in 1979 but returned to Monash in 1991. From 1975 to 1992 he was the Director of the Commonwealth Government– funded IMPACT project (now absorbed in the Centre of Policy Studies at Monash). He was a key mentor in developing the ORANI and MONASH models of the Australian economy and the GTAP model of the global economy as well as a supporter of modelling other national economies including Indonesia's.

**Eric Stapleton Richards** (1940–) B.A. and Ph.D. (Nottingham), FASSA, FAAH began his academic career as a Tutor and then Lecturer in Economics at the University of Adelaide (1963–67) before moving to History at the University of Stirling in Scotland (1967–71). He returned to South Australia to become a Lecturer in Economic History (1971), Senior Lecturer in Economic History (1972–73) and Reader in Economic History (1974) before becoming the Professor of History (1975–) at The Flinders University of South Australia. However, he has had periods of leave as a Visiting Professor at numerous places such as the University of London, the European University Institute, and the ANU. He has published numerous books, including on Scottish Highland history and on the early and 20th century history of Australian immigration, as well as the Flinders History of South Australia.

**Sue Richardson** (1946–) B.Com.(Hons) (Melb), Ph.D. (La Trobe), FASSA joined the University of Adelaide's Department of Economics in 1974 as a Lecturer and rose to Associate Professor by 1992. In 2001 she took leave to become the Professor of Labour Economics and the Director of the National Institute of Labour Studies at The Flinders University of South Australia. She has been the Convener of the Academic Board and a member of the University's Council and of its Finance Committee. Between 1995 and 1997 she was an Associate Commissioner (on a half–time basis) with the Industry Commission (now the Productivity Commission). She is a member of the Executive of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and chairs its Research Committee. At various times she has been a visiting scholar at the Australian National University, Cambridge and Columbia University.

**David Keith Round** (1945–) B.Ec.(Hons) (Adel) was employed in the Department of Economics at the University of Adelaide for 31 years: Lecturer (1971–75), Senior Lecturer (1976–80) and Associate Professor (1981–2001). He has since become Professor of Economics at the University of South Australia. His field is applied microeconomics, especially industry profitability, strategic behaviour, competition policy, price–fixing, mergers and economics education. His research has been particularly concerned with the *Trade Practices Act*. Besides holding other academic positions, he has been a consultant to the National Companies and Securities Commission, an Associate Commissioner of the Trade Practices Commission and its successor, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and was appointed a member of the Australian Competition Tribunal.

**Eric Alfred Russell** (1921–1977) B.A.(Hons) and B.Com. (Melb), B.A. and M.A. (Camb), FASSA began his academic career as a Lecturer at the New England University College (1947–50) and the University of Sydney (1951) before he joined the University of Adelaide in 1952 as a Senior Lecturer in Economics. He rose to Professor in 1964 and chaired the Department of Economics from 1967 to 1975 before taking a year's leave at the London School of Economics. He appeared for the ACTU before the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission (1959), went on a UNESCO mission to Northern Rhodesia (1963), presided over the Economics section of the ANZAAS Conference (1972) and served on the Australian Advisory Committee on Research and Development in Education (1970–75). He is most highly respected as a teacher and policy advisor rather than being a prolific author.

**Edward Owen Giblin Shann** (1884–1935) B.A. (Melb) started his career as a temporary lecturer at the University of Melbourne in 1905 and 1907–08, and as Acting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Adelaide in 1906. In 1908 he left for the London School of Economics to study for a D.Sc., which was not completed due to illness. In 1911 and 1912 he lectured at the University of Queensland and then was appointed the Foundation Professor of History and Economics at the University of Western Australia (where he also served as Vice–Chancellor 1921–23). In 1933 he accepted the Chair of Economics at Adelaide that had been vacated by Professor Melville. With John La Nauze as his assistant, he arrived for the start of 1935. Tragically, he was found dead on the last day of the first term. His death remains shrouded in mystery.

**John Hedley Brian Tew** (1917–) OBE, B.Sc.(Ec.) (Lond), Ph.D. (Camb) was the Professor of Economics at the University of Adelaide from October 1946 to December 1949 when he resigned on a visit to the United Kingdom to become the Professor of Economics at the University of Nottingham (1950–67). From 1967 to 1982 he was the Midland Bank Professor of Money and Banking at Nottingham. He was External Professor at Loughborough University of Technology from 1982 to 1999. He served on several industrial boards, was a member of the British Department of Trade and Industry's Committee of Enquiry on Small Firms (1969–71) and from 1982 he was Specialist Advisor to the House of Commons Treasury and Civil Service Committee. He has published widely on banking, finance, monetary theory and international monetary arrangements.

**Rod Tyers** (1948–) B.Eng. and M.Eng.Sci. (Melb), M.S. and Ph.D. (Harvard) was a Research Fellow at the East–West Centre in Hawaii (1979–81) and then a Research Fellow in Economics at the Australian National University's Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (1982–87). From 1987 to 1990 he was a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Adelaide. He returned to the ANU in 1990 as a Senior Lecturer in its teaching Department in the Faculty of Economics and Commerce. He was promoted to Reader in 1993, after a year as a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall in Cambridge, and then to Professor at the ANU in 2001. His love of teaching has caused him to cover a wide field of subjects from first year to graduate level. His research interests include applications of quantitative economic models to trade–related policy issues.

**Clifford Walsh** (1946–) B.Sc.(Ec.)(Hons) and M.Sc.(Ec.) (London) came to Australia initially as a Lecturer at the Australian National University (1971–77). He then took a Senior Lectureship in Economics at Monash (1977–80) before accepting the position of Professor of Economics at the University of Adelaide where he was also Head of the Department. In 1981 he took 2 years' leave to be the Senior Economic Adviser to Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. In 1988 he became the Director of the Federalism Research Centre at the ANU before returning to Adelaide in 1992 as Professor of Economic Studies and the Executive Director of the South Australian Centre for Economic Studies. His post was converted to Emeritus Professor in 2001. He has been a consultant to the Housing Industry Association since 1983 and to numerous governments around the world on federal fiscal issues.

**Donald Henry Whitehead** (1931–1980) B.A. (Oxon) was a Lecturer specializing initially in economic development at the University of Adelaide from 1958 to 1963 before being promoted to Senior Lecturer in economics more generally in 1964. In 1965 he moved to a Readership at the University of New England before becoming one of the two foundation Professors of Economics at La Trobe University in Melbourne in 1967, where he stayed until his death. As an analyst of stagflation, he was one of the few economists willing to give evidence on behalf of employers in arbitration cases, including against the ACTU President at the time, Bob Hawke (who was being advised by Adelaide's Eric Russell!). The Donald Whitehead Building on the Bundoora campus of La Trobe University, which houses the School of Business, was named in his honour shortly after his death.

**Sir Bruce Rodda Williams** (1919–) KBE, B.A.(Hons) (Melb), M.A. (Adel), M.A.(Ec.) (Manchester), Hon.D.Litt. (Sydney, Keele), Hon.L.LD. (Melb, Manchester), Hon.D.Ec. (Qld), Hon.D.Sc. (Aston), FASSA was a Lecturer in Economics at the University of Adelaide (1940–46). He was Acting Head of Economics at Adelaide when Professor Isles was on leave during World War II. He moved to a Senior Lectureship at Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland (1946–50) before being appointed Professor of Economics at Keele University (1950–59) and then at Manchester (1959–67). He came back to Australia as Vice–Chancellor of the University of Sydney (1967–81) and after that remained active as a member of the Senate, including as Chairman of the Finance Committee (1994–98). Among his extra–curricula activities has been his role as Chairman of the Sydney International Piano Competition.

# **Appendix 2: Charts**

#### Page


**Chart 1: Economics Lecturers A-E by level, 1901-2002**

**Chart 2: Economics Lecturers B-E by level, 1946-2002**

**Chart 3: Economics lecturers (B-E) by gender, 1946-2002**

**Chart 5: Advanced Certificate, Diploma and Bachelor graduates 1904-1957**

**Total number of graduates**

**Chart 6: B.Ec. and B.Fin. graduates, 1945-2002**

B.Ec.

B.Com.

B.Fin.

**Chart 7: B.Ec., B.Com. and B.Fin. graduates, 1990-2002**

The Building of Economics at Adelaide 

**Chart 8: B.Ec. admissions by gender, 1969-2002**

8 

**Ph.D. graduates, 1971-2002**

#### **Honours Graduates, 1945-2002**

**Chart 11: Double degree enrolments with B.Ec., 1992-2001**

Biographies 

> **Chart 12: Double degree enrolments with B.Fin., 1997-2001**

Biographies 

The Building of Economics at Adelaide 

# **Chart 15: Double degree enrolments with B.A., 1992-2001**

Economics

Law

Commerce

Engineering Others

Biographies 

# **Chart 16: Double degree enrolments with B.Eng., 1992-2001**

# **Appendix 3: Tables**




**Table 1: Alphabetical list of full–time Economics Lecturersa, with years of service, 1901–2002** 






a In this table the Lecturer level A, B, C, D and E classifications adopted in the 1990s are used. They refer, respectively, to the positions known traditionally as Senior Tutor, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader/Associate Professor and Professor. Tutors are not shown as most have been employed part–time and many only for short periods. 

92

**Table 1 (continued)** 


**Table 2: Full–time lecturers by level of appointment and start date, 1901–2003** 




# **1960–1969 (continued)**



# **1970–1979**


**1970–1979 (continued)** 


**1980–1989** 


**1980–1989 (continued)** 


# **1990–1999**


# **1990–1999 (continued)**



# **1990–1999 (continued)**





# **2000–2003 (continued)**


a In this table the Lecturer level A, B, C, D and E classifications adopted in the 1990s are used. They refer, respectively, to the positions known traditionally as Senior Tutor, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader/Associate Professor and Professor. Tutors are not shown as most have been employed part–time and many only for short periods.


**Table 3: Number of full–time Economics Lecturers at each levela, by year, 1901–2003** 


a In this table the Lecturer level A, B, C, D and E classifications adopted in the 1990s are used. They refer, respectively, to the positions known traditionally as Senior Tutor, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader/Associate Professor and Professor. Tutors are not shown as most have been employed part–time and many only for short periods.


#### **Table 4: Titled, Emeritus and Adjunct Professors, 1959–2003**

#### **Table 5: Lecturers elected Fellows (and Presidents) of the learned academies, 1952–2002**

#### **Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia**


#### **Academy of the Humanities in Australia**


#### **British Academy**


**Table 6: Lecturers who became chaired Professors (and Vice– Chancellors), by initial levela of appointment at Adelaide, 1901–2002** 


\* Sir William Mitchell was Vice–Chancellor at Adelaide (1916–42), Ed Shann at Western Australia (1921–23), Sir Leslie Melville at ANU (1953–60), Keith Isles at Tasmania (1957–1967), Peter Karmel at Flinders (1966–71) and ANU (1982–87), Sir Bruce Williams at Sydney (1967–81), and Keith Hancock at Flinders (1980–87). Prior to Mitchell, the Reverend Professor William Fletcher (who provided lectures on 'Political Economy' to B.A. students from 1878) was Adelaide's V–C 1883–87. At least one of the Economics Honours graduates (and a Rhodes Scholar) also rose to Vice–Chancellor (Deane Terrell, at ANU 1994–2000). And Ross Milbourne, who was associated with the School of Economics while Deputy Vice–Chancellor (Research) at Adelaide (1997–2000), has been Vice–Chancellor of the University of Technology, Sydney since 2001.

a In this table the Lecturer level B, C, D and E classifications, adopted in the 1990s, refer respectively to the positions known traditionally as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader/Associate Professor and Professor.

b Cliff Walsh returned to Adelaide and was Professor of Economic Studies in the South Australian Centre for Economic Studies 1992–2001 (and was SACES Executive Director 1992–98), before becoming an Emeritus Professor in the School of Economics in mid–2001.

c Sue Richardson is on extended leave without pay to take the position of Professor and Director of the National Institute of Labour Studies at the Flinders University of South Australia.

d Listed in Blaug (1999) *Who's Who in Economics*, 3rd edition.


#### **Table 7: Alphabetical list of Ph.D. graduates, 1971–2003**


#### **Table 8: Titles of theses of Ph.D. graduates, by year of graduation, 1971–2003**

#### **1971**

Sheridan, K., Growth of the firm in Australia.

Watson, A.S., An economic and statistical analysis of factors affecting the rate of growth of the Australian sheep population.

#### **1973**


#### **1974**

Mules, T.J., Supply analysis for Australian agricultural products with applications to farm and national income estimation.

#### **1978**

Lewis, M.K., Time lags and effectiveness of monetary policy in Australia.

#### **1979**

Hastings, T., The economics of public sector scientific research in Australian agriculture.

Smith, P., Keynes's finance motive: some theory and evidence.

#### **1981**

Oakley, A.C., The evolution and critico–analytical significance of Karl Marx's theory of surplus value prior to *Capital*.

#### **1982**

Lawriwsky, M.L., Managers and markets: internal organisation and external market restraints of Australian company performance.

#### **1983**

Sardoni, C., Economic crises and effective demand in Ricardo, Marx and Keynes.

#### **1984**

Burns, J.P.A., Experimentation and economic theory.

Fuller, D.E., Methods for estimating the demand for and supply of labour in urban and regional operational planning models

#### **1985**


#### **1987**

Barnard, P.O., Modelling shopping destination choices: a theoretical and empirical investigation.

Park, Y.I., Australia–Korea trade, 1962–1981.

#### **1990**

Jaforullah, M., Energy modelling in a general equilibrium framework with alternative production specifications.

#### **1992**

Peng, Z.Y., External shocks and structural adjustment in the post– reform Chinese economy: the case of the 1986 oil price fall.

#### **1994**


#### **1995**

Jiang, B.J., The emergence of a land market in China.

**1996** 


Neal, P.N., Monetary policy, credit rationing and uncertainty.

Tisato, P.M., User economies of scale and optimal bus subsidy.

#### **1997**

Easton, E.W., Rail charges and costs: transport of export coal.

Kazemian, M., Financial deregulation and the monetary transmission mechanism of the Australian economy.

#### **1998**

Cheng, Y.S., Regional income distribution in China, 1978–1995.

Chen, C., Foreign direct investment in China: determinants, origins and impacts.

#### **1999**



#### **2001**


#### **2002**




**Table 9: Alphabetical list of Masters graduates, 1950–2002** 


a Ronald Gilbert and Mel Davies graduated Master of Arts in Economics. b Jeff Ball, Martin Butterfield, Michele Dawe, Ben Hunt, Robert Lindner, Philip Pardey and Michael Young graduated Master of Agricultural Science (Economics)

#### **Table 10: Titles of theses of Masters graduates, by year of graduation, 1950–2002**

#### **1950**

Hirst, R.R., Aspects of the development of secondary industry in South Australia in recent years.

#### **1951**

Cameron, R.J., Standard hours and the basic wage: an analysis of two aspects of the work of the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration.

#### **1952**

Bailey, A.P., Survey of economic conditions in two pastoral areas of South Australia, with particular reference to the provision of credit.

#### **1953**

Grant, J.McB., Life assurance in Australia and its economic consequences.

#### **1954**

Sturmey, S.G., Economic implications of betting in South Australia.

#### **1955**


#### **1956**

Hodan, M., Economic analysis of Australian agricultural marketing.

#### **1957**

Hill, M.R., Housing finance in Australia.

#### **1958**

Penny, D.H., The role of the government in the economic development of South East of South Australia.

#### **1959**

aGilbert, R.S., Australian Loan Council, 1923–1929.

#### **1960**

Moffatt, G.G., The effects of the Japanese–Australian Trade Agreement on the Australian economy.

#### **1962**

Hefford, R.K., An investigation into the need for and use of rural credit in selected areas in South Australia.

#### **1964**

Gynther, R.S., Accountancy and changing price levels.

Peirson, C.G., The structure and financing of Australian public capital formation, 1956–57 to 1959–60.

#### **1966**

Henderson, M.S., Sources of fluctuations in outstanding advances of the major Australian trading banks.

Molhuysen, P.C., The supply of scientific skill in Australia.

#### **1967**



#### **1971**

Pflaum, P.T., A study in the family income distribution and redistribution, Australia.

#### **1972**

Edgar, R.J., The Australian pastoral houses: an industry study.

#### **1973**

Thomson, N.J., The incidence and effects of death duties on wool growers in South Australia.

#### **1974**

bBall, J.W., The economics of winter-spring versus autumn shearing. McKay, J.G., Methods of financing the Australian health services.

Rodway, D.C., Characteristics of administrators: a study of administrators in the South Australian public service.

#### **1975**


#### **1976**

Chataway, J.G., Banking and economic development: the role of the Bank of Adelaide in South Australia, 1865–1915.

Horrocks, J., Principles of disclosure for companies in Australia.

#### **1977**

Ecker, F.J., The use of stochastic processes in the study of Australian exports.

#### **1978**

aDavies, M., The South Australian Mining Association and the marketing of copper and copper ores, 1845–1877.

#### **1979**

Kerr, P., A review of the Cambridge school.

bPardey, P.G., The diffusion of trace element technology: an economic analysis.

#### **1980**

bButterfield, M.A., Regional input-output tables: a South Australian investigation.

#### **1981**


#### **1982**


#### **1983**

Hodgkinson, A.T., The regional problem in South Australia.

Kenyon, P.D., Some aspects of pricing and the investment decision in post–Keynesian economics.

Salek, A., An econometric model of Bangladesh, 1949/50–1977/78.


#### **1986**


#### **1987**

Kolf, K.P., Pricing optimality of a multi–product public enterprise.

#### **1988**

Rondonuwu, O., An economic analysis of coconut intercropping on smallholder farms in Minahasa district in Indonesia: a mathematical programming approach.

#### **1991**

Tisato, P.M., An improved bus user model and its impact on subsidy.

#### **1992**

Meng, X., Production structure of Shenzhen SEZ.

Young, D.A., Restrictions on the trade of biological resources: the case of Australian merino genes.

#### **1994**


#### **1997**

Duldig, P.J.M., The dynamics of intra–state aviation competition in South Australia.

**1998** 


Lawson, E.K., Determinants of Japanese and United States direct foreign investment and the effect of differences in the DFI determinants on Australian investment facilitation programs.

**1999** 

Hancock, K., Forest use by Indonesia's poor: modelling harvest and conversion decisions.

**2000** 


#### **2001**


#### **2002**

Quang, T.L., Study effort, social security and economic growth.

<sup>a</sup> Gilbert and Davies graduated Master of Arts in Economics

b Ball, Butterfield, Dawe, Hunt, Lindner, Pardey and Young graduated Master of Agricultural Science (Economics)


#### **Table 11: Alphabetical list of Honours graduates, 1945–2002**













#### **Family name First name Other name Year of graduation Year commenced** Tan Hock Eng 1986 1985 Taylor Gregory Frank 1966 1965 Taylor Andrew \* 1995 1994 Teh Joanna 1993 1992 Tennant Paul \* 2001 2001 Teoh Eng Hong \* 1966 1965 Terrell Richard Deane \* 1959 1958 Teubner Jonathan 1991 1990 Thompson Andrew Philip 1988 1987 Thomson Norman John \* 1970 1969 Thomson Frances 1992 1991 Thorpe Christopher Norman #\* 1974 1973 Threlfall Peter Nicholas 1975 1974 Tiernan Paul 1985 1984 Timckie David 1997 1996 Ting Martin Kah Yew 1989 1988 Toh Carolyn 1995 1994 Toohey Matthew Stephen 2000 1999 Trafford–Walker Lachlan 1986 1985 Tregilgas Alan Jeffrey \* 1972 1971 Truong Phuong Danielle ^ 2001 2001 Truscott David Craven 1965 1964 Tuckwell Roger Hamilton \* 1957 1956 Tulsi Narmon 1988 1987 Uylaki Margaret Rosemary 1982 1981 van den Dugen Peter \* 1989 1988 van der Lee Paul Joseph 1976 1975 van Elst Michael 1991 1990 Vawser Noel Keith 1947 Vitols Maira 1976 1975 Wagstaff Peter \* 1970 1969 Wait Andrew \* 1995 1994 Walshaw Timothy 1980 1979 Wang Liang Choon \* 2001 2001 Warren Matthew John 1995 1994 Waterman Ewen Leith \* 1966 1965


\* First class honours (N.B. perhaps not all are starred)

# B.A.(Hons) in Economics

^ B.Fin.(Hons)

† For those who have no official graduation record in the graduation handbooks, the year commenced is assumed to be the year in which a student studied with his or her fellow graduates.

#### **Table 12: Titles of theses of Honours graduates, by year of graduation, 1945–2002**

#### **1945**

Williams, R.

#### **1947**

Vawser, N.K.

#### **1948**

Bailey, A.P. Hirst, R.R. Stalley, D.J.

#### **1949**

Cameron, R.J. Hieser, R.O. Howard, D.W.D. Opie, R.G.

#### **1950**

Boehm, E.A. Gilbert, R.S. Grant, J.McB. Raftery, G.A. Smith, A.B.

#### **1951**

O'Donohue, R.F. Sturmey, S.G.

#### **1952**

Hill, M.R. Lewis, R.B. Penny, D.H.

#### **1953**

Gibbs, G.R., A study of the system of administration of the Royal Adelaide Hospital.

#### **1953 (continued)**

Griggs, R.L., The economic development of the ship–building industry at Whyalla, SA.

Sutton, L.M.

#### **1954**


#### **1955**

Dudzinski, M.L. Head, J.G. Medwell, J.G., Australian wage policy between 1929 and 1934.

#### **1957**

Ashcroft, J., Business taxable land and air conditioning profits.


Tuckwell, R.H., Tariff level indices.

#### **1958**

Coat, J.I., Some aspects of Australian inter–capital air transport in the post–war period.

Cockburn, M., The Commonwealth Grants Commission.

Fowler, R.M., Milk supply of Adelaide.


#### **1959**

Lithgow, J.N., The Commonwealth Grants Commission. Lawrence, M.E. The entry of private savings banks into Australia. Terrell, R.D., Income distribution and the incidence of income tax.

#### **1961**

Hicks, R.P., The developing Australian money market. Peirson, C.G., The present world shipping depression: its causes.

#### **1961**

Scarman, I.E., A company savings function.

Sherwin, R.M., Company takeover bids in Australia 1957–59.

#### **1962**

Allen, K.C., Advertising in Australia.


Sarah, N., The development of the metal trades award, 1920–30.

Semler, J.C., The wine industry in the light of economic theory.

#### **1963**


Henderson, M.S., Recent developments in Australian hire purchase.

#### **1964**

Cook, P.S., Trade associations in South Australia.

Dahlberg, D.L., A statistical investigation of post–war wool supply in Australia and South Australia.

Flew, R.J., The Adelaide taxi–cab industry: costs and profitability.

Henning, G.R., Aspects of South Australian public finance, 1928–32.

Leane, P.A., The economic aspects of parking in the central business district of the city of Adelaide.

Pflaum, P.T., Taxation of real property by local government.

#### **1965**

Bee, J.B., Apprenticeship system in South Australia.

Harries, R.I., The major white appliances industry.

#### **1965**

Lewis, M.K., Fixed deposits in the Australian banking system.

Porter, M.G., The public debt and liquidity policy.

Truscott, D.C.

Young, I.C., Capital structure and the cost of capital.

#### **1966**

Fairbairn, D.F., The measurement of real value added for selected Australian manufacturing industries.

Freney, R.Q., The nature and significance of factoring in Australia.

Mules, T.J., The South Australian potato industry.

Riegel–Huth, J.P., The manufacturing contents of exports.

Rohrsheim, G.C., The utilisation of world iron ore resources, with particular reference to their use in underdeveloped countries.

Taylor, G.F., Urban land subdivision.

Teoh, E.H., The Malayan rate of interest.

Waterman, E.L., A buffer stock for wool.

#### **1967**

Caton, C.N., Seasonal adjustment – A look at the theory and a study of Australian experience.

#### **1967 (continued)**

Chua, W.C., The Prebisch thesis and Malayan economic development since independence.

Edwards, R.G., Bank debits as an indicator of economic activity.

Emery, P.J.


Struenkmann, U., The deposit gap in South Australia.

#### **1968**

Bloch, F.A., Australian trading banks' desire for excess liquidity.

Haslam, W.R., A financial analysis of Reid Murray debentures.

Hillier, G.H., An aggregate demand function for fertilisers in Australian agriculture.

Penketh, S.G., The Electricity Trust of South Australia.

Round, D.K., Marketing margins for lamb in South Australia.

#### **1969**

Eckermann, L.D., The desirability of protection in Papua and New Guinea.

Edgar, R.J., The market performance of the Australian banks.

Hirst, J.A., Effective protective rates.

O'Brien, K.P., A central bank in the territory of Papua and New Guinea: Now or later?


#### **1970 (continued)**


#### **1971**



#### **1972 (continued)**


#### **1973**


Kwong, L.L.W.


Rosser, B.A., Disclosure by life offices in Australia.

Ruse, R.S., A discussion of monetary policy indicators in Australia.

#### **1973 (continued)**

Smith, G.J., The determinants of residential land prices.


#### **1974**



#### **1975 (continued)**


#### **1976**

Andary, J.D., Stability and growth in the Australian citrus industry.


#### **1976 (continued)**


#### **1977**

Angove, M.R., Immigration and employment in Australia.


#### **1977 (continued)**


#### **1979**



#### **1980 (continued)**

Walshaw, T., The integration factor: a measure of financial integration between the world's financial markets.

#### **1981**



#### **1982 (continuued)**

Johns, J., Financing the Commonwealth budget deficit.


#### **1983**

Easton, S.A., The identification of homogeneous risk classes.

Lim, R.S., The modern Classicals on Keynes: a critique.


#### **1984**

Abraham, D.R., Contestability theory and Aussat: an exposition, application and critique.

Archer, B.A., Interstate migration in Australia.


#### **1984 (continued)**



#### **1985 (continued)**


Ong, B.P., The cyclically adjusted budget deficit.

Parker, D.J., An interdisciplinary approach to choice behaviour: the use of the experimental methods of operant psychology to test economic theory.

Richards, G.J., Federalism as a device to limit political failure.



#### **1986 (continued)**


#### **1987**

Bassanese, D.J., Incidence theory and the F.B.T. debate.

#### **1987 (continued)**



**1989** 

Chiang, Y.C., Exchange rate determination: the case of Singapore.



#### **1990 (continued)**


#### **1991**

Carter, S.D., Corporate treasury performance measurement.


#### **1992**

Balchin, J.J., The determinants of labour absence.



#### **1993 (continued)**


#### **1994**

Appleby, S.L., The economic value of domestic cats.


#### **1994 (continued)**


#### **1995**

Clarke, P., Gender bias in union/non–union wage differentials.


**1996** 



#### **1997 (continued)**

Gosnold, P., Public housing allocation and the need for change.

Hahn, P., Economic growth and the environment: the case of Korea.

Jordan, D., Financial deregulation and bank risk.


#### **1998**


Hester, S.T., Land degradation and agriculture in Australia.

Heywood, T., The implications of ageing for Australia: problem or opportunity?

#### **1998 (continued)**



#### **1999 (continued)**



#### **2000 (continued)**

Nukic, S., Is FDI a safer form of finance? Insights for Malaysia.

Piper, D., Exchange rates and stock prices: the Australian evidence.

Radbone, J., How to price access to Melbourne's rail infrastructure.


Shipley, G., Signalling in Australian price–fixing.

Skladzien, T., Natural resource endowment and economic growth.


#### **2001**

Jenkins, A–S., Deforestation in rural Nepal: an economic model.


Nicolle, T., Co–movements between stock prices and bond yields in Australia: can the present value models be saved?


#### **2001 (continued)**








#### **Table 14: Rhodes Scholars with a University of Adelaide major in Economics,a 1938–2003**

aCrisp completed a B.A. with a major in Economics; Allgrove completed a B.Com. (but won the major prizes for dux of Microeconomics II and Macroeconomics II); and Gibbard, Nickless, Roediger and Allgrove also completed the LL.B. at Adelaide before going on to Oxford.


#### **Table 15: University awards in economics and commerce, 1901– 2002**





**Table 17: Number of new B.Ec., B. Fin., M.Ec. and Ph.D. graduates, by award, 1945–2003** 


**Table 17 (continued)** 



#### **Table 19: South Australian Centre for Economic Studies staff, 1982–2002**

(Until February 1993, The Centre for South Australian Economic Studies; jointly owned by the University of Adelaide and Flinders University of South Australia.)

#### **Director**


#### **Executive Assistant**


#### **Senior Economists**


#### **Senior Research Economists**


#### **Research Economists**


a Flinders University staff member


#### **Senior Affiliates (external and Adjunct Professors)**


#### **Affiliates (external)**


#### **Associates (internal: School of Economics staff)**


#### **Table 21: Chinese Economies Research Centre staff, 1990–1999**

(Formerly the China Economic Research Unit (1990–1995); merged into the Centre for International Economic Studies in 2000)


#### **Post–Doctoral Research Fellows**



**Table 22: The Joseph Fisher Lectures and lecturers, 1904–2003** 



**Table 23: Deans, Assistants and Librarians of the Faculty and Schools of Economics, Commerce and Graduate Business, 1946–2002** 

#### *School/Department of Economics*  **Dean/Head/Chairman**


#### **School Executive Officer**


#### **Departmental Secretary**


#### **Administrative Assistant**


#### *Librarian for Economics and Commerce*



#### *School/Department of Commerce*  **Dean/Head/Chairman**



#### **Departmental Secretary**


#### *Adelaide Graduate School of Business*


Jade O'Donohue 2000–2001

### *Faculty of Economics*


#### *Faculty of Economics and Commerce*

#### **Dean**


#### *Faculty of Performing Arts, Law, Architecture, Commerce and Economics (PALACE)*

#### **Executive Dean**


#### *Faculty of the Professions*  **Executive Dean**  Fred McDougall 2002–present


**Table 24: Number of Lecturers E, D and B–E in Australian teaching Departments of Economics with more than two Professors, 1987 and 2002\***

\* The 1987 numbers are from Jarrett et al. (1987); the 2002 numbers are calculated from current websites of the relevant departments a Includes Finance


c Includes Agricultural Economics

d 1985, after which Harcourt left for Cambridge, followed by Walsh to the ANU in 1987 and Jarrett to retirement in 1988

#### **Table 25: Average completion times for Ph.D. and Masters theses, 1948–2002**

#### *Ph.D. students*


#### *Masters students*


\*Only those students whose exact completion times are known were counted

#### **Table 26: School/Department of Economics working papers, 1970 to 20021**

#### **(a) Working Papers**


<sup>1</sup> No working papers were produced in 1997 or 2001.











#### **(b) Economics Department Papers**


#### **Table 27: South Australian Centre for Economic Studies working papers and monographs, 1982–2002**

#### **(a) SACES Occasional Paper series**



#### **(b) SACES Economic Briefings**

Two to four issues have been published for corporate clients each year since 1983 (Volumes 1–20).

#### **(c) SACES Economics Issues papers**


#### **(d) SACES monographs**


#### **Table 28: Centre for International Economic Studies working papers and monographs, 1989–2002**

#### **(a) CIES Discussion Papers**


















#### **(2) CIES Seminar Papers**

(merged with CIES Discussion Papers after March 1999)









#### **(c) CIES Indonesia Project Working Papers**





#### **(d) CIES monographs**

Goode, W. (2003), *Dictionary of Trade Policy Terms*, 4th edition, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, co– publication with the World Trade Organization and the Centre for International Economic Studies.



#### **Table 29: Chinese Economies Research Centre working papers, 1990–1999**






