Projects & Publications

Projects & Publications

Please note: the list below does not include unpublished, sensitive and commercial-in-confidence projects.

Recent Projects

• August 2021 – IGC VAT Consumer Incentives Dashboard: Visualization tool was developed in collaboration with Twivwe Siwale using the R programming language and the Shiny package. The visualization tool provides a typology of consumer incentive schemes in use around the world classified by category.
• May 2020 – IGC COVID-19 Policy Response Dashboard: Developed the IGC COVID-19 policy response dashboard tool in collaboration with IGC colleagues. Tool developed using the R programming language and the Shiny package. The IGC COVID-19 policy response dashboard provides an interactive means for exploring government policy interventions aimed at addressing the pandemic across the world.
• October 2019 – Speaker at the 2019 Effective Altruism Conference: Invited speaker at the the 2019 Effective Altruism Conference in Sydney, Australia. Presentation focused on budget transparency work in Myanmar.
• September 2019 – Introductory Course on R Programming for policy advisors and economists: Provided training in the R Statistical Programming language for policy advisors and economists in Sydney, Australia. Event hosted by the Microsoft Reactor Hub.
• March to July 2019 – Publication: “Public Finances and the Social Contract in Myanmar: Reflections from the City Life Survey“: In 2019 I partnered with the Asia Foundation Myanmar to take a deeper dive into results from their 2018 City Life Survey to contextualize and triangulate its findings against other sources of evidence. The paper takes a more conceptual approach and looks at what theory and data can tell us about social cohesion and state-society relationships in an increasingly urbanized Myanmar.
• February 2019 – Technical contributor to “Enter the Dragon: Australia, China and the New Pacific Development Agenda“: Provided Jubilee Australia with a technical briefing on the accuracy and applicability of the cross-country regression methodology being used to justify the government’s proposed infrastructure investment fund. Report was used as input into the report ‘Enter the Dragon’ which was published by Jubilee Australia in partnership with Caritas Australia and the UNSW.
• December 2018 to January 2019 – Program Evaluation: Beyond the Stars: Fiji Pilot development intervention: In cooperation with the Phoensight Foundation, I helped evaluate the impact of S1T2’s development intervention ‘Beyond the Stars’ (BTS) using a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis on data collected during their 5-week pilot in the pacific.
• May 2018 – Inter-parliamentary Budget Oversight Workshop: led the design, planning and evaluation of major national inter-parliamentary workshop on Myanmar’s economic planning and budget oversight processes. Involved managing staff, budget planning, the production of technical content and facilitating discussions between high-level officials during the day. Event was a major success with over 100 Myanmar parliamentarians attending in addition to high-level foreign representatives and international dignitaries. The event resulted in the first national public statement outlining the priorities for improving democratic accountability in Myanmar’s national and subnational budgets, planning laws and audit reports.
• July and November 2017 – Inter-parliamentary Conferences on Budget Oversight: Worked with team of foreign and local advisors to design, plan and evaluate major national conferences on Myanmar’s budget, economic planning and audit processes. Conferences designed to provide newly elected parliamentarians with an understanding of the process and how their input can serve their constituents. Events were some of the first involving direct engagement between the parliament, civil society and government ministry officials.
• September 2016 – Joint Report on Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations in Myanmar: Led the development of a joint research report on the state of fiscal decentralization in Myanmar and how intergovernmental fiscal relationships impact government budget allocations. Involved proposal development, research management, data analysis, managing an interdisciplinary research team and designing the research dissemination strategy.
• August 2016 – Myanmar’s first open budget data portal: Led a team of international statisticians to develop Myanmar’s first open budget data portal. Portal provided the first widely accessible and user-friendly approach for citizens, the media and researchers to easily view, analyze and share how Myanmar’s government was allocating public funds. Website’s launch was widely covered in the media and has since resulted in the formation of a dedicated budget monitoring initiative by ‘Ananda’.

Recent Publications

• 2020 – Public Finances and the Social Contract in Myanmar: Reflections from the City Life Survey, the Asia Foundation.
• 2017 – New Kids on the ASEAN Block: Myanmar SMEs and Regional Economic Integration, Journal of Southeast Asian Economies (JSEAE), vol. 34 no. 1, 2017, pp. 4-38 [with Dr Thomas Bernhardt and S Kanay De].
• 2016 – Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations in Myanmar: current processes and future Priorities in public financial management reform, Japan International Cooperation Agency and the Centre for Economic and Social Development, Yangon, Myanmar [with Lauren Dunn, Cindy Joelene, S Kanay De and Mai Betty].  
• 2015 – State and Region Public Finances in Myanmar, The Asia Foundation and Centre for Economic and Social Development, Yangon, Myanmar [with S Kanay De and Andrea Smurra].
• 2015 – Making Public Finance Work for Children in Myanmar – An Overview of Public Finance Trends 2011-12 to 2014-15, UNICEF and the Centre for Economic and Social Development, Yangon, Myanmar [with Dr Zaw Oo, A. Bonnerjee, Phoo Pwint Phyu].
• 2014 – Myanmar SMEs’ Participation in ASEAN and East Asian Regional Economic Integration – with a Focus on Food and Apparel Manufacturing, Centre for Economic and Social Development, Yangon, Myanmar [with Dr Thomas Bernhardt and S Kanay De]
• 2014 – Estimating the Global Costs of Violence, Journal of Business, Peace and Sustainable Development, Issue 2 2013 [with Dr Matias Vaira and Daniel Hyslop].
• 2012 – Quantitative Approaches to Risk Screening Roads for Climate Change Risks, Transportation Research Board, Washington DC [with Daisuke Mizusawa and Chen Chen].
• 2011 – The second international food and fuel price shock and Forum island economies, Economic Roundup, the Department of the Treasury [with Richard Wood and Martin Gould].
• 2010 – An Empirical Analysis of Price and Income Elasticities of Papua New Guinea’s Exports, Pacific Economic Bulletin, Volume 25 Number 2, pp.140 151 [with Dr Albert Wijeweera].