Dr Andrew Reeson is an experimental economist working to understand factors behind human decision-making.

Dr Andrew Reeson: behavioural economist

Dr Andrew Reeson applies experimental economics to understand how people make decisions in order to inform the design of environmental policy and markets.

• 26 September 2006 | Updated 14 October 2011

Overview

• Current activities
• Background
• Academic qualifications

Current activities

Dr Andrew Reeson is part of the Markets, Incentives & Institutions team in CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems.  

His major research focus is the design and implementation of environmental policies, particularly market-based instruments (MBIs). This involves applying experimental economics to incorporate a sound understanding of human behaviour into policy design.

Current projects include:

• Carbon and land management in regional Australia. CSIRO is investigating the potential for incorporating land management activities, particularly savannah burning in northern Australia, into mainstream carbon markets, and how these may contribute to economic opportunities, particularly for Indigenous communities. We are also looking at the threats and opportunities for natural resources such as biodiversity and water from carbon markets.

• Experimental economics and the design of emission trading schemes. We have developed an ‘emissions trading simulator’ in which participants take on the role of firms in an emission trading scheme. We are applying this to test the impact of alternative market structures such as initial allocation mechanisms, banking and borrowing rules, market transparency, certainty of forward allocations and investments in alternative technologies.

• Developing competitive tenders to achieve coordinated landscape-scale ecosystem service provision, such as forming wildlife corridors. This project has involved integrating ecology and economics to design efficient and effective conservation policy instruments.

• Experimental analysis of the impacts of markets for land-use change on downstream water availability and salinity.

• Assisting in the design and implementation of a competitive tender for improving water-use efficiency among irrigators in the Lachlan Catchment, New South Wales.

• Informing the design of market-based policy options for the removal of camels and other large feral herbivores from the Australian Rangelands.

• Prediction markets. Applying market-like mechanisms to elicit information from groups of people.  We have recently launched the Australian Knowledge eXchange, an online prediction market focussing on water availability.

Background

Originally an ecologist, Dr Reeson has formal training in both ecology and economics, and research experience in the United Kingdom, Africa and Australasia. 

He spent four years as a virologist and microbiologist at the Institute of Virology & Environmental Microbiology in Oxford, United Kingdom, and was involved in some of the early field trials of genetically modified organisms. 

Dr Reeson also has experience of field ecology and molecular biology. 

Academic qualifications

Dr Reeson has been awarded the following degrees:

• Bachelor of Arts (Biological Sciences), University of Oxford, United Kingdom, 1995
• Doctor of Philosophy (Ecology & Biocontrol), Southampton University, United Kingdom, 1998
• Masters (Natural Resource Economics), University of Queensland, Australia, 2005.

Read more about Improving natural resource management by combining ecological and economic research.