School of Economics, The University of Queensland

The School of Economics is pleased to announce a number of ARC discovery grants awarded to the following people:

Associate Professor Peter Earl (pictured right) & Dr Lana Friesen (pictured left) have been awarded $349,000 (2010-2013)

A study of consumers' competence when choosing between complex mobile phone contracts and the regulatory implications of their coping strategies.

The main outcome of this project will be a better understanding of which kinds of mobile phone contracts and methods of displaying them to potential users are the biggest sources of decision making errors, and which techniques for coping with a plethora of such contracts are the most reliable ones. This knowledge will be used to derive recommendations for consumer policy agencies and advice for consumers that will increase financial welfare and reduce mental stress for consumers. Some of the findings may have implications for regulators seeking to design consumer protection policies in other area where firms deliberately offer customers opaque
contracts.

Dr Shino Takayama & Professor Rabee Tourky have been awarded $270,000 (2010-2012)

Information and market price manipulation in trade

As we can see from the financial crisis, speculative trading in financial markets can have real world effects. Inside traders can exploit their information for more profits. At this stage, we do not fully understand the role of diverse information in the financial system and we need better ways to model price manipulation and information in a dynamic setting. This proposal seeks to supply a reference framework for analysing price manipulation. Recently, there has been an increasing interest in the informed trader's dynamic strategy. By strengthening this research area, this project will give new momentum to Australian economic theory.

The school of Economics and UQ continue to be successful in a number of ARC grants awarded. The schemes aim to expand Australia’s knowledge base and research capability and foster the international competitiveness of Australian research.