Professor Michael Keane from the Australian School of Business has been awarded a prestigious ARC Laureate Fellowship.
The fellowship will allow Professor Keane to undertake a major new program of modelling to design new policies in areas such as health insurance, aged care and superannuation. This will eventually help people with their superannuation choices and decision making when it comes to working out where to invest, and so make better retirement decisions and improve their wellbeing in retirement.
Professor Keane said "Prudent decisions in relation to private health insurance, superannuation and aged care are becoming increasingly important for people to reach retirement with adequate provision of resources. With substantial flow-on implications for the Australian aged pension system, developing a better understanding of how people make decisions in these three key areas is of clear national importance. For example, we need to work out why and how people choose one fund over another, or differentiate between the risks in investments or types of insurance."
Professor Alec Cameron, Dean of the Australian School of Business at the University of New South Wales said "I am delighted that Professor Keane has been awarded the Fellowship. He is a leading international expert in the fields of econometrics and applied microeconomics. Ranked in the top 1% of Economists worldwide, Professor Keane has an outstanding, sustained track record in methodological innovations in statistics, particularly in the area of choice modelling."
"Professor Keane's research is a living example of ASB's mission to build high impact research that is both rigorous and relevant to the broader community. Highly complementary to his role within the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research, his research will position Australia as a research leader in this field internationally, and produce outcomes of major economic and social benefit to Australia," said Professor Alec Cameron.
The Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship scheme supports excellence in research by providing project funding in addition to a salary supplement and salary-related support for world-class researchers and research leaders to use their talents in Australia.