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Kym Anderson

  • Lead Economist (Trade Policy), Development Research Group, World Bank, 2004-present (on leave from Adelaide)
  • Professor of Economics, University of Adelaide, 1991-present; Senior Lecturer, 1986-90; Lecturer, 1984-85; Executive Director, Centre for International Economic Studies, 1989-2003
  • Counsellor and deputy to Director of Economic Research, GATT (now WTO) Secretariat, Geneva, 1990-92 (on leave from Adelaide)
  • Research Fellow in Economics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, 1977-83
  • Agricultural Economist, South Australian Department of Agriculture, Adelaide, 1971-74
  • PhD 1977, MA 1976, Stanford University
  • MA 1975, University of Chicago
  • MEc 1974, University of Adelaide
  • BAgEc(Hons) 1971, University of New England
  • Dispute Settlement Panelist, World Trade Organization
  • Distinguished Fellow of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society
  • Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia
  • Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors
  • Research Fellow of Europe's Centre for Economic Policy Research
  • President of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, 1996-97

Kym Anderson has contributed to agricultural economics not only as the author of path-breaking and widely cited books and articles but also in his professional practice, which has had a direct influence on national and international economic policies. Having grown up in the humble surroundings of rural South Australia, and despite being based in the antipodes during most of his professional career (at the Australian National University and then the University of Adelaide, following graduate studies at Chicago and Stanford), he has maintained contact with the profession through a range of affiliations with universities and research networks on both side of the Atlantic, by serving on the editorial boards or as associate editor of numerous journals, and by spending extended periods of leave in the research divisions of international agencies such as the GATT Secretariat and World Bank (where he is currently). He is acknowledged as one of the world's leading authorities on the changing extent, causes and effects of distortions to agricultural trade as economies grow, and of the role the WTO rules-based global trading system can play in reducing that 'disarray' (as his mentor, the late D. Gale Johnson, aptly described it).