Agricultural and Resource Economics

Agricultural and Resource Economics at Sydney has been central to the profession of the disciplines of agricultural economics and resource/environmental economics in Australia. As the inaugural Professor of Agriculture Economics at Sydney, Keith Campbell was responsible for training many of the people who went on to have major impacts on the profession of applied economics in Australia. The subsequent Professor of Agriculture Economics, Brian Fisher, was instrumental in introducing the Bachelor of Agricultural Economics, which for some time has been the Faculty’s most popular degree. Professor Fisher went on to be Director of the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics during the 1990s and into the 21st century.

More recently, the degree in Resource Economics has also been introduced, and has proven successful with students interested in a mix of science and economics applied to natural resource and environmental issues. The University of Sydney, and the Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, are now the dominant provider of undergraduate education in agricultural and resource economics in Australia. Graduates of both degrees have gone on to careers in finance, commodity trading, merchant banking, agribusiness, policy, consulting and research.

Members of the ARE group are involved in the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, and active in research and consulting in a variety of areas of agricultural and resource economics. In recent years publications and conference presentations have included papers on agricultural markets, the macroeconomic effects of foreign aid, determinants of foreign direct investment, water markets and water policy, land reform, marine reserves, natural resource accounting and measures of sustainability, bio-economics, and natural resource management and governance in developing countries. Members of the group have conducted projects in various countries, including Vietnam, Indonesia, Tonga, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Laos.

A recent initiative has been to establish REEML (the Resources, Energy and Environmental Markets Laboratory), jointly with CSIRO. This will be a focal point for research using experimental economics into environmental markets and market based instruments.