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Our researchers
We produce a variety of research about monetary policy, financial stability, and related economic and financial issues. This page provides information on our researchers and their research interests.
Adam Richardson
Date joined: January 2007
Adam is the manager of the Central Banking Analytics team. He also spent a year working in Sydney as an economist for an international bank. Adam has an Honours degree in Economics from the University of Otago and is a CFA charterholder.
Current research interests:
- monetary policy transmission
- macroeconomic forecasting using machine learning.
Selected publications:
Evelyn Truong
Date joined: 2015
Evelyn is an adviser in the Central Banking Analytics team. She has a Masters degree in Economics from the University of Waikato.
Previous teams:
- Forecasting
- Banking Oversight.
Current research interests:
- structural VAR analysis
- macroeconomic modelling
- monetary policy.
Karsten Chipeniuk
Date joined: 2017
Karsten is a senior analyst in the Central Banking Analytics team. He earned his PhD in Economics from Indiana University – Bloomington, USA in 2017 and his PhD in Mathematics from the University of British Columbia, Canada in 2011. From 2011 to 2014, he worked as a Postdoctoral Scholar in Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology and Indiana University, Bloomington.
Current research interests:
- heterogeneous agent macroeconomics
- computational methods
- financial time series.
Selected publications:
Amber Wadsworth
Date joined: 2014
Amber is an advisor in the Money and Cash Policy team. She joined the Reserve Bank in 2014 and has worked across banking supervision, payments oversight, monetary policy, and money and cash. In 2019, she was seconded to the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructure secretariat at the Bank for International Settlements for one year. She holds a BA (Hons) in Economics and a BCom in International Business from the University of Otago.
Current research interests:
- Central Bank Digital Currency
- Innovation in digital currencies
- Payments
- Stewardship of money and cash.
Selected publications:
Cameron Haworth
Date joined: 2019
Cameron is an economic analyst in the Policy Analysis team. Cameron was a summer intern in 2017/18. He has a BSc in Mathematics and Statistics, a BCom in Economics, and a MCom in Economics from the University of Auckland. In 2021, he is commencing his PhD in Economics at the University of Auckland.
Current research interests:
- negative interest rate policy
- the design of large scale asset purchases and yield curve control
- the long-term implications of high household debt
- narrative macroeconomics.
Selected publications:
Eric Tong
Date joined: 2019
Eric is a senior analyst in the Policy Analysis team. Before joining us, he taught econometrics and international finance at the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong and the University of Auckland. Some of the topics he is working on include the impact of the coronavirus and monetary policy on asset prices, the competition effect of depreciation, and the risk premium embedded in currency value. Eric is a Research Fellow at the Victoria University of Wellington. He holds an MFin in Financial Engineering (HKU) and a PhD in Economics (Auckland).
Current research interests:
- international macroeconomics
- international finance
- asset pricing
- textual and network analysis.
Selected publications:
Jinny Leong
Date joined: February 2018
Jinny is an analyst in the Policy Analysis team. She has a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) in Economics from the University of Auckland.
Previous teams:
- Financial System Analysis
- Financial System Policy and Analysis.
Current research interests:
- monetary policy surprises
- monetary policy transmission.
Selected publications:
Julia Ratcliffe
Date joined: 2018
Julia is an economic analyst in the Policy Analysis team. Julia graduated from Princeton University in 2017 with an AB in Economics and a certificate in Political Economy.
Current research interests:
- monetary policy strategy
- business investment.
Matthew Brunton
Date joined: February 2018
Previous team: Financial System Policy and Analysis
Current research interests:
- housing market
- monetary policy strategy.
Omar Aziz
Date joined: November 2018
Omar is an adviser in the Policy Analysis team. Before this, Omar spent three years advising the Federal Government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on the national implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Earlier, he was a senior analyst at the New Zealand Treasury researching and advising on policy issues. Before that he was an adviser to the Ministry of Justice.
Omar holds a BA (Hon) in Mathematics from the University of Auckland, an MSc in Mathematics & Finance from Imperial College London, and a MPA from Harvard University’s John F Kennedy School of Government.
Current research interests:
- RBNZ Act Review (Phase 1 Implementation)
- central banking governance
- international relations and coordination.
Selected publications:
Rebecca Williams
Date joined: 2010
Rebecca is the manager of the Policy Analysis team. Rebecca has a BCom (Hons) in Economics and a BA in History from the University of Canterbury.
Previous teams:
- Research
- Forecasting.
Current research interests:
- Phase One of the RBNZ Act Review
- monetary policy transmission
- business cycles.
Selected publications:
Chris McDonald
Chris is the manager of the Forecasting team, which supports monetary policy decision making. Chris has spent much of the past decade modelling and forecasting the New Zealand economy. He has researched the effects of migration and macroprudential policies, looked at the drivers of the New Zealand dollar and developed national house price measures, among other things. Chris spent six months in 2014 at the Bank for International Settlements regional office in Hong Kong.
Current research interests:
- forecasting New Zealand economic conditions
- drivers and effects of migration
- macroeconomic modelling.
Selected publications:
Hamish Fitchett
Date joined: 2019
Current research interests:
- macroeconomic forecasting
- forecasting performance of business surveys.
India Power
Date joined: March 2021
Current research interests:
- macroeconomic forecasting
- fiscal multipliers.
Lewis Kerr
Date joined: February 2014
Lewis has an Honours degree in Economics from the University of Canterbury.
Previous teams:
- Financial System Analysis Financial Policy.
Current research interests:
- housing market
- forecasting.
Selected publications:
Marea Sing
Marea is an adviser in the Forecasting team, fulfilling the role of forecast coordinator to produce regular, high-quality forecasts in support of the Monetary Policy Committee’s decision-making process. Marea has an MPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford, and is completing an MIT in Big Data Science at the University of Pretoria. She was previously employed by the South African Reserve Bank.
Current research interests:
- the use of machine-learning and deep-learning in applied economics
- the distributional impacts of monetary and macroprudential policy
- macroeconomic modelling.
Thomas Bohm
Date joined: May 2019
Thomas is a senior analyst in the Forecasting team. Before joining us, he worked for Deutsche Bundesbank (German central bank) in the Public Finance division. Thomas holds two Master’s degrees in Economics and in Business Administration from the University of Bayreuth (Germany).
Current research interests:
- NAIRU and labour market frictions
- low wage inflation in tight labour markets
- government investment, government debt and financial debt instruments
- capital costs of non-financial businesses.
Tom Stannard
Date joined: October 2019
Current research interests:
- macroeconomic forecasting
- New Zealand’s labour market
- business investment and solvency
- international trade.
Selected publications:
Tyler Smith
Date joined: 2020
Tyler is a graduate analyst in the Forecasting team. He has a Masters of Commerce (with distinction) from the University of Canterbury.
Current research interests:
- macroeconomic forecasting
- forecasting New Zealand economic conditions.
Waran Bhahirethan
Date joined: 2020
Waran is a senior analyst in the Forecasting team. Before joining us, he was the manager and senior economist at the Government of Manitoba, Canada, where his main responsibility was forecasting core government revenues of approximately 14 billion Canadian dollars. Waran has earned Bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and History from McDaniel College, USA, an MBA in Finance from the Rochester Institute of Technology, USA, and a Master's degree in Economics from the University of Nevada, USA.
Current research interests:
- labour economics
- global macroeconomics
- global financial markets
- public finance.
Gael Price
Date joined: 2010
Gael is the manager of the Policy Research and Development team. In 2019, she was seconded for six months to Stats NZ, where she managed the team that produces the Consumers Price Index. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce and Administration (Hons) in Economics from Victoria University of Wellington.
Previous teams:
- Monetary Policy Forecasting
- Financial System Policy.
Current research interests:
- macro policy and the Māori economy
- central bank communication
- understanding and measuring labour market tightness
- dual mandates in monetary policy
- strategic research: making new ideas effective in policy.
Selected publications:
Karan Dasgupta
Date joined: February 2021
Current research interests:
- complexity and network economics
- innovation economics.
Meltem Chadwick
Date joined: June 2020
Meltem is a senior analyst in the Policy Research and Development team. Before she joined us, she worked as an economist at the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey. Meltem holds a PhD from the Birkbeck College, University of London.
Current research interests:
- monetary policy
- labour markets.
Murat Ozbilgin
Date joined: January 2018
Murat is an adviser in the Policy Research and Development team. Before he joined us, he worked as an economist at the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey. Murat holds a PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Current research interests:
- international macroeconomics
- growth and development
- business cycles
- computational methods.
Punnoose Jacob
Punnoose (alias Reuben) is an adviser in the Policy Research and Development team. He obtained his PhD from Ghent University, Belgium in 2010 and was also an intern at the National Bank of Belgium in 2008–09. After the PhD, he pursued two years of post-doctoral research at Ghent and at the Chair of International Finance, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland before moving to Wellington in 2012.
Current research interest:
- international macroeconomics
- Bayesian estimation of DSGE models.
Selected publications:
Shaun Markham
Date joined: 2019
Shaun is a graduate analyst in the Policy Research and Development team. Before joining us, he worked as a research assistant in the Economics department at the University of Otago, after completing a Master of Economics in 2018.
Current research interests:
- regional labour markets
- panel time-series econometrics.