Professor of Economics and PLuS Alliance Fellow, UNSW
Richard Holden is Professor of Economics at the UNSW Australia Business School and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow from 2013-2017.
Prior to that he was on the faculty at the University of Chicago and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received a PhD from Harvard University in 2006, where he was a Frank Knox Scholar.
His research focuses on contract theory, law and economics, and political economy. He has written on topics including: political districting, the boundary of the firm, incentives in organizations, mechanism design, and voting rules.
Professor Holden has published in top general interest journals such as the American Economic Review and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
He is currently editor of the Journal of Law and Economics, and is the founding director of the Herbert Smith Freehills Inititative on Law & Economics at UNSW.
He has been a Visiting Professor of Economics at the MIT Department of Economics and Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School.
His research has been featured in press articles in such outlets as: The New York Times, The Financial Times, the New Republic, and the Daily Kos.
The costs of the shutdown are overestimated -- they're outweighed by its $1 trillion benefit
May 20, 2020 15:51 pm UTC| Economy
As Australia begins to relax its COVID-19 restrictions there is understandable debate about how quickly that should proceed, and whether lockdowns even made sense in Australia in the first place. The sceptics arguing...
Vital Signs. The evidence that lockdowns work may not be gold standard, but it's good
May 04, 2020 13:31 pm UTC| Economy
As Australia begins gradually to relax some of its containment measures (so-called nonpharmaceutical interventions or NPIs) we are confronted with a number of questions when will children be back at school full...
It's just started: we'll need war bonds, and stimulus on a scale not seen in our lifetimes
Apr 30, 2020 08:46 am UTC| Insights & Views
Governments are being asked to do the near impossible: to deliver on both health and the economy. In many circumstances doing both at the same time would be completely impossible. But fortunately in Australia we have...
Modelling tells us the coronavirus app will need a big take-up, economics tells us how to get it
Apr 26, 2020 05:30 am UTC| Technology
With Australias test-confirmed daily COVID-19 infection rates continuing to fall to relatively low levels, there is considerable discussion about when and how the successful containment measures might be...
Australian and US rate cuts underline seriousness of the coronavirus crisis
Mar 06, 2020 03:44 am UTC| Investing Central Banks
This week the Reserve Bank of Australia did something everyone expected and the US Federal Reserve did something almost nobody expected. Both are revealing. At its monthly meeting Australias central bank cut official...
Vital Signs: a 3-point plan to reach net-zero emissions by 2050
Mar 01, 2020 12:21 pm UTC| Insights & Views Nature
Every January Larry Fink, the head of the worlds largest funds manager, BlackRock, sends a letter to the chief executives of major public companies. This years letter focused on climate risk. Climate change has become a...
A connected world makes this coronavirus scarier, but also helps us deal with it
Feb 15, 2020 07:54 am UTC| Insights & Views Technology Health
The health implications of the Wuhan coronavirus (now called Covid-19) outbreak are, obviously, deeply concerning. At the time of writing, it had infected more than 50,000 people and killed more than 1,300. Cities and...
Trade War Escalates: China Strikes Back