CRMA News
Chronological Order
16-17 October 2009
7th Annual UniSA TP Workshop
The 7th Annual UniSA Trade Practices Workshop was held from 16 to
17 October at the InterContinental Adelaide and the event was a great
success. It was the first time that the conference had been held in the
Adelaide CBD and speakers included US counsel Terry Calvani of Freshfields
Bruckhaus Deringer and Dr Cento Veljanovski, Managing Partner of Case
Associates in London and Adjunct Senior Research Fellow in the CRMA. The
Workshop attracted 65 delegates this year, including a number from New
Zealand, a member of the Competition Commission of Pakistan and several
judges from Australia and NZ.
13 October 2009
Quality
research = quality teaching
Congratulations to Martin Shanahan, Ken Adams and Paul Kershaw who, together
with Dr Erick Meyer from the University of Durham, have been awarded a team
Award for Teaching Excellence in the Australian Learning and Teaching
Council’s Australian Awards for University Teaching.
The award acknowledges the efforts of
the ‘Learning to Learn’ team in developing and embedding a sophisticated,
research-based approach to teaching and learning in first-year economics.
Their focus directly fosters independent learning and motivates students to
become more aware of their own learning. The awards are worth $25,000 each,
and recognise the nation's top university teachers. With only 24 awards
granted in 2009, this is significant and prestigious achievement. The
awardees will attend a ceremony at Parliament House in Canberra where they
will be presented with their Award by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister
for Education, The Honourable Julia Gillard.
1 September 2009
Beverly Kennedy in the AFR
CRMA Research Assistant, Beverly Kennedy, had
an opinion piece appear in The Australian Financial Review. Her
article was titled “Policy must extract
value from e-waste” and appeared on page 63.
28 July 2009
CRMA at the CLEA Annual Meeting
Two papers written by members of the CRMA have been accepted for
presentation at the prestigious 2009 Meeting of the Canadian Law and
Economics Association to be held at the University of Toronto in October:
Merger Review and the Dangers of Two Firm Local Nexus Criterion by
Manish Agarwal and Derek Ireland (Carleton University) and Dynamic
Influences on Legal Dispute Settlements: The Case of Regulatory Decisions in
Sweden by Magnus Söderberg and David Round.
1 July 2009
CRMA welcomes its new Adjunct Senior Research Fellow
The CRMA is pleased to
announce the recent appointment of Dr Cento Veljanovski, as Adjunct Senior
Research Fellow for a term of three years. Cento is Managing Partner of Case
Associates, London, IEA Fellow in Law and Economics, Institute of Economic
Affairs, and an Associate Research Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Legal
Studies and an Affiliate of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Competition Law
& Policy at Queen Mary College, both at the University of London.
The Global Competition Review 2006 survey voted Cento one of the most
'highly regarded' competition economists. He has over thirty years of
experience assisting lawyers and companies throughout European Union (EU)
Member States and other countries in Europe, Australia and North America;
has been a Director/Partner of several management and economics consulting
firms; has sat on the Board of listed public companies; and been a Director
of an economics research institute. Cento has also provided economic
assistance in a number of the world's largest mergers and has written widely
and is on the editorial boards of the UK Competition Law Reports, Journal of
Network Industries, and other Journals. His most recent books are Economics
of Law (IEA, 2006) and Economic Principles of Law (Cambridge University
Press, 2008).
The CRMA looks forward to its research collaboration with Cento in the
coming years.
10 June 2009
CRMA members win funding from the Swedish
Competition Authority
Magnus Söderberg and David Round have received funding of approximately
AU$62,000 from the Swedish Competition Authority to undertake research on
the factors influencing the decisions of regulatory authorities and courts.
Manish Agarwal to deliver paper at upcoming
Bangalore conference
CRMA PhD candidate, Manish Agarwal, had his paper titled “Do Merger Regulation
Regimes Impede Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A)?” accepted for
presentation at the 4th International Conference on Public Policy and
Management in August. The conference is run by Indian Institute of
Management, Bangalore, a premier Business School in Asia and this year’s
theme is Managing Global Economic and Governance Challenges. Manish’s paper
examines the impact of merger laws on cross-border Mergers and Acquisitions,
and it has policy implications for the design of merger laws.
29 May 2009
CRMA members win ARC funding
Sarah Wheeler, Henning Bjornlund and Martin Shanahan together with
Darla Hatton MacDonald (from CSIRO), Dr Inderpal Singh (NSW Department of
Energy and Water) and Kurt Klein (University of Lethbridge), have been
awarded $367,000 over three years by the Australian Research Council (ARC),
for the ARC Linkage-Project “Improving water market outcomes through a
better understanding of market behaviour”. The project also attracts
industry funding of over $165,000, and industry partners include Murray
Darling Basin Commission, Goulburn Murray Water, NSW Department of Energy
and Water, Department of Sustainability and Environment and University of
Lethbridge, Canada. CRMA PhD student, Adam Loch, and Alec Zuo will also be
involved in the project.
The project will focus on water resources and their sustainable use,
probably the most important issue facing the rural sector. The research team
will investigate the water reform process and the aim to secure water for
the environment; the economic and social impacts resulting from structural
change within the irrigation sector; and the impact of properly functioning
water markets in facilitating the process of water reform. It is anticipated
that the study will enable policy makers and water managers to optimise the
positive outcome of water markets and increase the likely success of
programs to purchase environmental water.
20 May 2009
2009 CRMA Award recipients
David Round presented the CRMA Honours Award to its first ever
recipients, Laura Bateman and Katharina (Kat) Surikow, at the School of
Commerce's annual Prizes and Awards Ceremony. The Award is worth $5,000 and
is awarded annually to up to two outstanding final year students who have
completed relevant third year School of Commerce courses and who are
accepted into the Bachelor of Business (Honours)/Bachelor of Commerce
(Honours) Program and who will write their honours thesis on some aspect of
market regulation. Congratulations Laura and Kat!
26 March 2009
David Round appointed to NZ High
Court
On March 5 the Attorney-General of New Zealand appointed David Round as a
Lay Member of the High Court of New Zealand for a five year term, to hear
cases relating to competition and regulation under the New Zealand Commerce
Act. He now holds a total of four similar appointments in the District Court
of South Australia (two appointments), the Australian Competition Tribunal,
and the High Court of New Zealand.
10 March 2009
Henning Bjornlund appointed to Minister's
Advisory Panel
Henning Bjornlund has been appointed to the Minister’s
Advisory Panel on a Renewed Water Management and Allocation System to advise
the Minister of the Environment in Alberta, Canada. The first meeting of the
panel is on 3 March in Calgary, Alberta.
26 February 2009
Henning Bjornlund wins Fellowship
Henning Bjornlund is the winner of the 2009 Thesiger-Oman International
Human Fellowship. This fellowship is granted by the Royal Geographical
Society in London to one human geographer each year working on water issues
in arid regions. The award is for GBP 7,500 and will be used to partly fund
the research project 'An analysis of institutional arrangements of the falaj
irrigation systems in Oman' and to support the fieldwork of Henning's PhD
student Ahmed al-Marshoodi.
2 February 2009
Director presents paper in San Francisco
On January 6 David Round presented a paper written by him and Martin
Shanahan entitled 'The economics degree in Australia: down but not out' at
an international symposium in San Francisco organised by the US National
Council on Economic Education. The other invited papers came from the UK,
Japan and Korea. This symposium was part of the annual AEA meetings. While
in San Francisco, he also attended the annual meeting of the Editorial Board
of Review of Industrial Organisation, of which he has been a member for over
20 years.