Speaker Bios

Dr Rahul Sen is a Senior Lecturer at the AUT Business School, Faculty of Business Economics and Law, besides being a Fellow at NZIRI and an Adjunct Research fellow at the Auckland based New Zealand-India Trade Alliance (NZITA). He was previously a Research Fellow with the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore from 2003-2007, prior to joining AUT University in Auckland in 2008. A graduate of National University of Singapore (NUS), Dr Sen is an applied trade economist focussing on economic integration in the Asia-Pacific, that relates to Empirical and Policy Analysis of Bilateral and Regional Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), having published numerous papers, articles, books and book chapters on the subject. In recognition of his expertise, his paper on FTAs involving the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) member countries was included at the 2006 IMF-World Bank Annual Program of Seminars in Singapore. More recently, in recognition of his expertise in this area, He was invited to be an Advisory Committee Member for the ILO funded project “Improving worker rights in globalising economies: Assessment of labour provisions in trade and investment arrangements” involving the International Institute for Labour Studies, Employment and Social Development, Canada and State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, Switzerland over 2013-2016. Rahul was the only trade economist in the committee and his inputs were included in their project papers as well as in the ILO (2016) report titled Assessment of labour provisions in trade and investment arrangements. This report was presented for policy discussion among ILO members at their bi-annual governing body meetings that year. Rahul’s research findings have been widely cited by researchers working on Asian economic integration. His most recently publication is a UNESCAP ARTNet Working paper on Tariff liberalization in the RCEP trade agreement and impact on India`s automobile industry. In 2018, Rahul was appointed as one of the international team of advisors at Infinite Sum Modelling (ISM), which is a global economic and management consulting firm with branches in USA, Canada, China and India, that is involved in training, research and consulting projects utilizing economic modelling techniques worldwide. He is presently working on research projects involving the use of the recently launched multi-country GTAP 8 and 9 databases, related to India, New Zealand and other Asia-Pacific economies. Impact of trade war, Brexit, technological disruptions, and labour provisions on bilateral and regional trade and investment flows are the subject of his current research.

At AUT, Rahul has successfully supervised several Honors and Masters Dissertation to completion on topics related to New Zealand-China Intra-Industry Trade, and Investment flows in the New-Zealand China Free Trade Agreement. He supervised to completion, a postgraduate student dissertation on Impact Assessment of Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) on bilateral exports of Lao PDR and EU in 2017. He is presently co-supervising a dissertation on Trade Agreements and Climate change in the New Zealand context.