Welcome to the Centre for Increasing Returns and Economic Organisation (CIREO)

The Centre promotes research on the implications of increasing returns for economic analysis, economic organization, and policy. Of particular interest to the Centre are the network effects of the division of labour and the extent to which such network effects are responsible for generalised increasing returns. In efforts to endogenise division of labour in general equilibrium settings, the work of the centre largely relies on the techniques of modern inframarginal analysis and non-classical mathematical programming.

News and Activities

2008

• 25 May, 2008: Yew-Kwang Ng presented an invited keynote speech on 'Consumption Trade-off versus Catastrophes Avoidance: A Perspective on Global Warming' at the opening plenary session of the Shanghai Forum. The international academic forum, hosted by Fudan University and sponsored by Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies, explored the theme of “Economic Globalization and the Choice of Asia”, with over one hundred international delegates and hundreds of graduate students and staff of Fudan University attending the session.

2007

• 24 October, 2007: Yew-Kwang Ng presented a speech "Happiness studies: Some implications for Public Policy and Economic Analysis" following the AGM of the Victorian Branch of the Economics Society of Australia.

• 25 September, 2007: (see picture below left) We are delighted to announce that Yew-Kwang Ng has received the 2007 Distinguished Fellow Award of the Economics Society of Australia at the Society's Annual Dinner, recognising his contribution to the development of economics. (Faculty News Article)

• August, 2007: (see picture above right) The 2007 Xiaokai Yang Memorial Lecture was delivered by Professor Catherine Mann of Brandeis University at the 36th Australian Conference of Economists in Hobart during 24-26 September 2007. (Conference Program & Biography, Details)

• August, 2007: Yew-Kwang Ng chaired the special session "Economics, Happiness and Public Policy", and presented a speech "Happiness studies: Some policy implications", at the 36th Australian Conference of Economists in Hobart during 24-26 September 2007. Christis Tombazos also presented his work on specialization and wage inequality in the session "Inequality".

• July, 2007: Christis Tombazos has been named as the new co-editor of Division of Labour and Transactions Costs Journal, joining Guangzhen Sun.

• 22 February, 2007: Workshop on "International Trade, Globalization and Income Distribution" organised by Pushkar Maitra and Dyuti Banerjee will be held in Room 365 Menzies Building, Clayton Campus, Monash University. Christis Tombazos will be presenting the paper "Specialization, Trade in Intermediate Goods and Wage Inequality". (Details)

• January, 2007: Professor Kenneth Arrow of Stanford University, Nobel Laureate in Economics, who is a member of the advisory board of the Centre, has accepted the invitation to an Honorary Professorship in our department for a further term of three years.

• 6 January, 2007: Christis Tombazos presented his work on specialization and wage inequality in session "Factor Endowments, Relative Prices, and International Trade" of the 2007 annual conference of the American Economic Association. The session was organised by C. Tombazos and was Chaired by Rob Feenstra (UC-Davis). Other session participants included Thomas Chainey (U. Chicago), Paul Bergin (UC-Davis), Klaus Desmet (U. Carlos III), Stephen L. Parente (U. Illinois-Urbana-Champaign), Gordon Hanson (UC-San Diego), George Alessandria (Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia), Horag Choi (U. Auckland), Igor Livshits (U. Western Ontario), Howard Shatz (Rand Corporation), and Kim J. Ruhl (U. Texas-Austin) (Details)

2006

• 25 December, 2006: Yew-Kwang Ng presented a keynote speech “Under-consumption? Over-investment? A perspective from behavioural economics and happiness studies”, presented at China in Retrospect, Fudan University.

• 17 December, 2006: Yew-Kwang Ng presented a keynote speech "Population and Labor Mobility: Some Conceptual Issues with reference to China", presented at the 2006 International Symposium on Contemporary Labor Economics, Xiamen University. (Details)

• 15 December, 2006: Yew-Kwang Ng presented a keynote speech "Towards an Internationally Acceptable National Success Indicator" at the Fourth Biennial Conference of Hong Kong Economic Association, Chinese University of Hong Kong. (Details)

• 14 December, 2006: Yew-Kwang Ng presented a keynote speech “The Economics of Sustainable Development”, at Governments, Markets and Sustainable Development, an open forum jointly organised by Hong Kong People’s Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD) and Hong Kong Economic Association. (Details)

• 25-27 September, 2006: 2006 Xiaokai Yang Memorial Lecture was delivered by Professor George Mailath of Yale University at the 35th Australian Conference of Economists in Perth. The speaker was introduced and the session was chaired by Christis Tombazos, Deputy Chair of the Xiaokai Yang Memorial Fund (Details)

• 21 September, 2006: Seminar by Professor George Mailath of Yale University entitled "Extreme Adverse Selection, competitive Pricing, and Marekt Breakdown" was presented at Monash.

• 1 September, 2006: Yew-Kwang Ng presented the Trevor Swan Distinguished Lecture in Economics at ANU on "Increasing returns and economic efficiency". This public lecture series was sponsored by ANU College of Business and Economics, Crawford School of Economics and Government, and ANU College of Asia and the Pacific. (Details)

• 21 August, 2006: Seminar "The Future of Europe" was presented by Professor Victor Bulmer-Thomas of the Chatham House Royal Institute of International Affairs. The seminar was held at Monash University sponsored by Monash Institute for the Study of Global Movements and CIREO. (Details)

• June 2006: Special Issue of Economic Papers (vol. 25 no. 2), dedicated to the memory of the late Xiaokai Yang's 2nd Anniversary of Passing was published. This issue included contributions from Yang's colleagues and friends (Details).

• 15-19 May, 2006: Mr Richard Alexander Roehrl of Transport and Tourism Division, United Nations ESCAP, visited the Centre. Mr Roehrl gave a seminar presentation entitled "Asian Infrastructure Development: Economics and Public Policy Issues" during his visit.

• 27 April, 2006: Special Seminar by Professor James Mirrlees of the University of Cambridge, 1996 Nobel Laureate in Economics, organized by Yew-Kwang Ng and Guang-Zhen Sun was held at Monash University. The seminar was sponsored by the Department of Economics and the Centre of Policy Studies, (Details)

• Professor Kenneth Arrow of Stanford University, Nobel Laureate in Economics, affiliated with the Department and the Centre, has joined the Department of Economics as an honorary professor.(Details)

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