New Visiting Professional Fellow to enhance city links
A unique new role at the School of Accounting and Commercial Law will facilitate links between the School and Treasury.
Professor John Creedy arrived last month in Wellington from the University of Melbourne to take up a three-year fixed term position as Visiting Professorial Fellow.
This newly created position requires Professor Creedy to split his time evenly between Victoria University and the Tax Strategy section of the New Zealand Treasury.
He says that in his initial ‘settling in’ phase he is keen to meet a wide range of people.
“One of my main objectives is to encourage links between Treasury and Victoria, for instance to encourage young, bright Treasury staff to undertake part-time postgraduate study, as well as to encourage our postgraduates at Victoria to do research that is of interest to Treasury,” says Professor Creedy.
Professor Creedy says that research on New Zealand policy issues would be enhanced by the greater availability of the kind of Confidentialised Unit Record Files (CURFs) available in other countries.
“Access to data is currently very difficult for New Zealand academics, who often have to resort to using overseas datasets. I also believe that it is possible to produce work that is of direct relevance to New Zealand and can attract international attention.”
With 37 authored books and 17 edited books under his belt, and more than 250 refereed journal articles, Professor Creedy is a well-seasoned academic. His main research interests have been in public finance, public economics and labour economics. He has held full professorships in the UK, the US and Australia. He also has previous experience working in New Zealand Treasury, from 2002-2003.
“I‘m excited about the opportunity of doing policy-related work and linking it with academia,” he says.