ANU was the host of the recent fourth annual Australasian Development Economics Workshop and Dr Chris Manning, Head of the Indonesia Project, shares the highlights.

Sometimes things just click. So it seemed at the Australasian Development Economics Workshop held at the ANU on June 5-6. The international flavour, a nice balance of staff, students and recent graduates among the 40 or so participants, interesting topics, and a real atmosphere of collegiality all contributed to making this event a special success. The workshop was a showcase of ANU teamwork: cooperation among academics from universities in Australia and from abroad, earnest debates among postgraduate students and staff, and the return of former students to test their latest ideas with former professors.

The Workshop was opened by the Parliamentary Secretary for Development Assistance, Hon. Bob McMullen and strongly supported by AusAID. Organized by the Arndt-Corden Division of Economics (RSPAS-College of Asia and the Pacific), the Workshop was the fourth in a series begun at the University of New South Wales in 2005. The Workshop featured some 20 speakers from Australasian universities, as well as from several research centres in the Asia Pacific region. Researchers originally from South Asia and now prominent in Australian universities (especially the University of Western Sydney and Monash) made a special contributions.

This workshop brought together researchers concerned with issues of growth, poverty and justice - topics that have been a feature of research work in various Divisions across the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, since its earliest years. Topics varied from the conventional (industrialization, export trends, determinants of poverty) to some new research areas that development economists are now grappling with (such as female genital cutting; corruption and education outcomes; decentralization and violence).

Keynote speakers featured Professor Arsenio Basliscan, a Philippine expert on the analysis of trends and determinants of poverty in Asia, and Professor Vijay Naidu, a specialist in social analysis from the University of the South Pacific. The icing on the cake for visitors to Canberra was Professor Ross Garnaut’s lucid address in the Sixth of the H.W. Arndt Memorial Lectures on "Measuring the Immeasurable: the Costs and Benefits of Climate Change" to an audience of almost 400 people in the Coombs Lecture Theatre.

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