MEc (Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands), PhD (Monash)
,
Economics
2022
Guyonne Kalb’s research focusses on the impact of policy on people’s outcomes with a focus on people facing disadvantage, and on women’s outcomes. Her aim is to provide high-quality evidence to answer important policy questions. Her research achievements have brought analyses using data on “small” countries like Australia, the Netherlands and New Zealand to the attention of an international academic audience, while at the same time influencing social policy making in these countries by providing sound evidence on newly introduced or proposed policy changes.
As an economist her strength is in quantitative analysis, and she has made use of a broad range of data sources to understand people’s decision making and the restrictions and challenges they face in their decisions. In addition, she has been involved in several large policy evaluations to assess impacts of newly introduced policies. Her first large evaluation was in the Netherlands (pre-PhD) when she was working as a researcher at the Dutch Social Insurance Office in the 1990s. It involved evaluating an intense counselling and monitoring randomised trial for persons receiving unemployment insurance. This work was important for decision making around continuing the trial, and it also resulted in a top field journal publication in the Journal of Human Resources.
Another impactful example is the evaluation of the Paid Parental Leave (PPL) scheme introduced in Australia in 2011. Guyonne led the component of the evaluation related to the labour market impacts of PPL. The evaluation results later fed into the Senate Inquiry into the provisions of the “Fairer Paid Parental Leave Bill 2016” (2017), and it potentially influenced the scrapping of some of the proposed changes to the PPL scheme. The research was published in Feminist Economics in 2020, and was one of 15 nominees for the 2021 Rosabeth Moss Kanter International Award for Research Excellence in Work and Family. The award is presented to the author(s) of the best research paper published in one of 83 relevant journals in a given year.
Guyonne also sees the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in answering many policy questions, and has always actively sought out such collaborations. She currently is one of 15 chief investigators on the large interdisciplinary ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (LCC). The LCC research agenda aligns strongly with her research interests and expertise, as well as those of the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne, where she has been employed since 2001.
Besides the above-mentioned Senate Inquiry, she has contributed to several other inquiries and reviews related to her research as well, such as, for example, the Productivity Commission Inquiry into Childcare and Early Childhood Learning (2014/15), the National Children’s Commissioner’s National Roundtable on Young Parents and their Children in Melbourne (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2017), and the Review of the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (2021).
Currently, she is involved in an evaluation in relation to the NSW Out of Home Care system, and she is leading a large multi-disciplinary team evaluating the NSW Future Directions Social Housing reform.
Professorial Fellow (level E) University of Melbourne 2013-..
Principal Research Fellow (level D) University of Melbourne 2005-2012
Senior Research Fellow (level C) University of Melbourne 2002-2005
Research Fellow (level B) University of Melbourne 2001-2002
(Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research)
Research Fellow (level B) Monash University 1999-2000
(Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics)
Senior research officer University of New South Wales 1997-1999
(Social Policy Research Centre)
Member of the Economic Society Australia
IZA (Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn) Fellow (honorary affiliation)
Our Feminist Economics article in 2020 was one of 15 nominated for the 2021 Rosabeth Moss Kanter International Award for Research Excellence in Work and Family from over 2,500 articles published in 2020.
2005 and 2019 best paper prize for an article in the Economic Record (awarded in 2006 and 2020, respectively)
In 2020, a team led by Guyonne Kalb received the Dean’s Award for Exceptional Distinction in Research Engagement and Partnerships (Level D-E).
1.Meekes, J., Hassink, W.H.J and Kalb, G. (2022) Essential work and emergency childcare: Identifying gender differences in COVID-19 effects on labour demand and supply, forthcoming in Oxford Economic Papers, https://doi.org/10.1093/oep/gpac030.
2.Broadway, B., Kalb, G., McVicar, D., Martin, B. (2020) The Impact of Paid Parental Leave on Labour Supply and Employment Outcomes. Feminist Economics, 26(3), 30-65; DOI: 10.1080/13545701.2020.1718175.
3.Kalb, G., Kuehnle, D., Scott, A., Cheng, T. and Jeon, S.-H. (2018) What Factors Affect Physicians’ Labour supply: Comparing Structural Discrete Choice and Reduced-Form Approaches. Health Economics, 27(2), e101–e119.
4.Broadway, B., Kalb, G., Kuehnle, D., Maeder, M. (2017) Paid parental leave and child health in Australia. Economic Record, 93(301), 214 – 237.
5.Kalb, G. and van Ours, J.C. (2014) Reading to young children: a head-start in life?, Economics of Education Review, 40, 1-24.