Dr Jenny Gordon

Nonresident Fellow
Dr Jenny Gordon
Biography
Publications

Dr Jenny Gordon is a Nonresident Fellow at the Lowy Institute and also a Honorary Professor at the Centre for Social Research and Methods at the Australian National University. Jenny is a member of the Australian International Agricultural Research Centre’s Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Advisory Panel, and on the Asian Development Bank Institute’s Advisory Committee.

Until recently Jenny was the Chief Economist at DFAT, joining in November 2019 to establish the Office of the Chief Economist (OCE), bringing together trade and investment economics with development economics. In the two years since its inception OCE expanded the data analysis and communication outreach to the department, building interactive dashboards, and offering more complex systems analysis backed by sound empirical evidence to support policy and program development and delivery. The program of development investment evaluation was incorporated into OCE in 2000.

Jenny joined DFAT from Nous Group, where she was the Chief Economist. Jenny’s work included the development of policy options for increasing business investment in innovation using a human centred design approach, and measuring the economic impact of earth and marine observing on the APEC economies.

Jenny spent 10 years with the Australian Productivity Commission as Principal Adviser (Research). She led the 2010 inquiry into reform of the not-for-profit sector and the 2012 inquiry into the approaches to regulatory reform, and major roles in inquiries into reforming aged care, childcare systems, migration, and the Five year Productivity Review. Prior to this she was a partner at the Centre for International Economics (TheCIE), where she worked on a wide range of issues, including financial development in Asia after the Asian Financial Crisis, benefit cost evaluations of major research proposals and completed R&D investments, and strategic planning for R&D investment.

She has a PhD in Economics from Harvard University and started her professional career at the Reserve Bank of Australia.

Hope for gold: The value in the Olympics
Hope for gold: The value in the Olympics
An economic case is hard to make. Reputational risks abound. Yet hosts want the Games, and that’s no bad thing.
The China alibi
The China alibi
A geopolitical contest between the United States and China should not stop Australians assessing their own economic interests.
The macroeconomic limit of American exceptionalism
The macroeconomic limit of American exceptionalism
There are hard rules to the forces driving the current account deficit, no matter how it is calculated.
Economically, Australia has been lucky – what matters now is what we do next
Commentary
Economically, Australia has been lucky – what matters now is what we do next
Originally published in The Conversation
Fighting risk in everything, everywhere, all at once
Fighting risk in everything, everywhere, all at once
Most government institutions are not designed to consider more than their portfolio of interests – and that doesn’t work in a more complex world.
The Fix: “Get your kicks…”
The Fix: “Get your kicks…”
Your weekly Interpreter feature to rake up resources and reads you might otherwise miss.
China’s slowdown is nothing to celebrate
China’s slowdown is nothing to celebrate
The heady rates of economic growth were always going to fall – but is boom time over for commodities?
Reforming Australia’s trading system
Commentary
Reforming Australia’s trading system
Originally published in the East Asia Forum
Reforming Australia’s trading system – a long hard slog but worth the effort
Reforming Australia’s trading system – a long hard slog but worth the effort
Confidence in the quality of traded goods and services relies on certification that agreed standards are met. That’s a regulation challenge, too.
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