Bill Mitchell

Biography

Professor Bill Mitchell holds the Chair in Economics and is the Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), an official research centre at the University of Newcastle. He is also on the board of CofFEE-Europe, which is a sister centre established at the University of Maastricht, The Netherlands. He currently supervises 9 PhD students, with topics covering labour, macroeconomics, spatial econometrics, regional development and financial economics, most of which involve applied econometric modelling. He has published widely in refereed academic journals and books and regularly gives conference presentations abroad. He has received regular research grant support from the national competitive grants schemes operated through the highly competitive Australian Research Council (currently holding 5 ARC grants) (the ARC is equivalent to the National Science Foundation in the U.S. or the ESRC in the U.K.). He enjoys significant on-going international research funding ($USD100,000) from a private benefactor from the USA (since 2000). In 2003, he was appointed as an Expert Assessor of International Standing for the Australian Research Council in the Discovery Grant round. Researchers who occupy these positions are in the ARC's own words "chosen for specialist knowledge and high research reputation." He continues in this role. He has also successfully gained research funding from the Department of Employment, Education and Training (competitive grants), the Commonwealth Grants Commission (competitive grants), the European Commission, Centrelink, the Chifley Foundation (competitive grants) and QANTAS airlines. He has extensive consulting experience and has written 26 major commissioned reports since 1988. His work for QANTAS involved extensive modelling and forecasting. He is on the editorial board of the Economic and Labour Relations Review and the Australian Journal of Labour Economics. He is on the management committee of ARC Research Network in Spatially Integrated Social Science (ARCRNSISS) and is a convenor of the Methods, Tools and Techniques Paradigm Forum for ARCRNSISS. He has extensive experience in University management and administration at senior levels. He maintains a high commitment to community activities. He has been regularly called to appear as an expert witness in industrial matters in the relevant state and federal tribunals and at various Federal government enquiries (Senate and House of Representatives). His work in the recent childcare industrial cases in Victoria and NSW underpinned the major realignments in the relevant State and Federal Awards in that sector. He is also a regular commentator on labour markets and labour relations in the national radio and press (through oped features). The external impact of his work is evidenced in a number of ways: His seminal work on job guarantee schemes has attracted international attention and application. It has directly informed the policy agenda of the New Zealand Mayors' Taskforce on Jobs which signed an MOU with the New Zealand Government to guarantee jobs for all youth in NZ. In Australia, the Australian Local Governments Association all endorsed the Job Guarantee model as a desirable regional policy model. In Argentina, the Head of Households program, which began in 2001 was strongly influenced by the Prof. Mitchells published work and presentations made by him international conferences in Chicago and New York (1998). His recent work has been acknowledged by his peers as being of high quality. The 2005 paper (see 10 best) published in the Australasian Journal of Regional Studies won the 2006 John Dickinson Memorial Award for the best paper published in that journal during 2005. This award is provided by the Australia New Zealand Regional Science Association. 

Research Interest

Econometrics , Economic Theory, Applied Economics