Internationally renowned economist Professor Michael Keane this month begins his five-year ARC Federation Fellowship at UTS.

Professor Keane is a world leader in choice modelling, a statistical technique that involves developing mathematical models to predict how individuals or companies make different types of decisions. "There is a certain mathematical structure that we tend to use to model decision-making, that’s common to all decisions," he says. He is known in particular for his work on dynamic choice-models, which are useful for choices that have long-term consequences.

Keane, who introduced dynamic choice-models into marketing in the mid 1990s, says that the approach is not used widely enough worldwide. He believes that there is a gap between statistically oriented economics (econometrics) and economic theory that needs to be bridged.

"Dynamic choice modelling is much more prevalent in economics than marketing but the people who do it are primarily in the US," he said. At UTS he will work on major economic issues in health insurance, retirement planning and the adoption of new technologies.

The Federation Fellowship is an important step towards countering Australia’s brain drain, says Keane. He believes that historically it has been more difficult for Australian universities to attract and retain top people unlike the US where universities openly bid against each other to secure the top talent. "Certainly in economics there is a tremendous drain of the top talent away from other countries, to the US."

The idea of coming to Australia has appealed to Keane for many years. "My family and I visited here quite a few times and I really like the culture." He was attracted to UTS because of the university's strength in financial economics, consumer choice-modelling and health economics.

At UTS Professor Keane will work with the UTS Centre for the Study of Choice (CenSoC) in the Faculty of Business, the Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation (CHERE), and the Quantitative Finance Research Centre (QFRC).