Mr Chris Murphy

Chris Murphy is Visiting Fellow, ANU (from 2014)

Chris Murphy specialises in economy-wide modelling. He began his career at The Treasury in 1978 and then led an economy-wide modelling team at the Office of EPAC. He was Lecturer then Senior Lecturer in Econometrics at the ANU from 1986 to 1991. He then led economy-wide modelling teams at Access Economics, Econtech, KPMG Econtech and Independent Economics. He commenced as a Visiting Fellow at the ANU in 2014.

He developed the Murphy macro-econometric model of the Australian economy and subsequently developed models of the same type for the Governments of New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia and Abu Dhabi for use in macroeconomic policy analysis and forecasting.

Chris has developed a series of computable general equilibrium models of the Australian economy for assessing the effects of tax reform proposals. These models were used by the Australian Government in the lead up to the introduction of GST, in the Henry Tax Review report and in the 2015-16 Tax Review process.

In 2016 Chris was commissioned by The Treasury to model the proposed cut in the company tax rate from 30 to 25 per cent and his report was released by The Treasury on Budget night. Opinion pieces by him on the proposed company tax cut appeared in The Australian and the Australian Financial Review newspapers in June 2016. Later in 2016 he was commissioned by The Treasury to review of its economic modelling capability and his review was released early in 2017.

Also in the area of public economics, Chris has modelled the economic impacts of Australia’s system of horizontal fiscal equalisation between the states and territories.

Chris has also modelled labour market policies including for migration, education and industrial relations. His recent migration policy modelling work includes analysis for the Migration Council of Australia and the Singapore Ministry of Manpower.