Featured Fellow: Professor Tom Smith

Affiliation: Macquarie University
Discipline: Accounting, auditing and accountability
Year elected: 2021

What initially drew you to your field of study?Love of research, enjoyment of interacting with and helping develop students and colleagues.

What continues to motivate your work?Being able to work with and help develop my students and colleagues.Tell us about a recent moment of motivation or inspiration?

I was intrigued by the US Supreme court overturning a 40-year-old precedent called the Chevron Deference, whereby courts would defer to regulators in the interpretation of ambiguous statutes. I was inspired to see what economics tells us about courts vs regulations and what we should expect to see in terms of winners and losers.

What should your field of study be doing more of right now?

Addressing the 3 big issues facing the younger generation now that haven’t been faced by previous generations:

– Housing affordability. The current generation is the first where home ownership seems out of reach.

– The effects of Global Environmental Change. It seems that the current generation will have to pay the price for previous generations excesses.

– High National Debt. The US National Debt is around the $40 trillion mark and growing, half of GDP goes towards paying interest on this debt. China’s National Debt is nearing $20 trillion and even Australia has a national debt of $1 trillion. This current generation will inherit this crippling debt.

We need to come up with solutions and a way forward in dealing with these challenges being faced by a generation of people for the first time.

What are you most proud of?

The National PhD program in Finance which enables students to do Theory, Empirical and Research Methods (qual, surveys, experiments) at no charge to them or their home universities. Also my own PhD students – over 50 with over 50 tier one papers in their own names.