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SACES Staff

Mr Michael O'Neil, B.A., B.Ec., B.Soc.Admin, M.B.A
Michael O'Neil is Executive Director of the Centre. Michael has extensive experience in regional economics, industry analysis, labour market economics, population and demographic studies, agricultural economics, program evaluation, and corporate strategy and planning. In the position of Executive Director, Michael is responsible for oversight of the Centre’s operations and performance within a University environment, including the bi-annual Corporate Economic Briefing Report and Economic Issues Paper series.  He has supervised and contributed to numerous studies, research and consulting projects for Commonwealth and State/Territory Government agencies, the business sector and a host of non-government agencies.  Projects include major policy and program evaluations in agriculture including impact of the drought and water security, defence and the mining sector, ITC, electronics, regional economic development, the development of social indicators to monitor the quality of life in cities and regions and economic and social assessment of the gambling sector in Australia.  Michael has also contributed to studies on interstate business cost comparisons, the competitiveness of the South Australian economy and regional development.  He has been active in the preparation of economic and social profiles for regions and provincial cities within South Australia.  Michael has also been extensively involved in analysing the performance of industries including studies into mining and manufacturing, specifically electronics, automotive, information and communications technology, food processing, and water industries.

Mr Jim Hancock, B.Ec. (Hons)
Jim Hancock is Deputy Director of the Centre.  He has more than 15 years experience in applied economic and statistical analysis, having spent the last 10 years at SACES and prior to that working as an economist and then manager in South Australian Treasury.  Since joining the Centre he has worked on projects in a range of areas including macroeconomic performance and growth, cost-benefit analysis, econometric analysis of labour market programmes, environmental evaluations, competition policy, regulatory issues and public finance.  At Treasury his work covered a range of areas including macroeconomic monitoring and forecasting, tax policy issues, evaluation methodologies and market structure issues.  He is also a visiting lecturer in the School of Economics at University of Adelaide.

 Mr Steve Whetton, B.Ec. (Hons.), M.Sc. (Economics)
Steve is a Senior Research Economist at the Centre.  He has an honours degree in economics from the University of Adelaide and an M. Sc (Economics) from the University of London and has been an economist at SACES for 5 years.  He has considerable experience in economic modelling having developed computer based models for the Northern Territory Labour Market and was instrumental in the national development of the star rating system for the Job Network.  Steve’s significant experience in undertaking public policy evaluations includes supervising several major national research and evaluation projects for DEWR, FaCS and NOIE and heading up the evaluation branch of the UK Health and Safety Executive.  Whilst working at the UK Department of Trade and Industry he was the UK delegate to the OECD’s Innovation and Technology Policy Working Group.

From 2003 to 2006, Steve worked as an economist for the UK government, first at the Health and Safety Executive (the statutory body in the UK which regulates the risks to workers and the public from the workplace) then with the Department of Trade and Industry.  As well as heading up the Evaluation Branch within the HSE’s economics team Steve took a leading role in transforming HSE’s business planning process to support its move to programme based working, and managed a £2 million research project.  At the Department for Trade and Industry Steve was economist in the Office of Science and Innovation with responsibility for R&D and Technology policy, acting as the principal source of economic expertise on R&D and technology-based innovation, maintaining and extending the evidence base and disseminating knowledge in co-operation with policy colleagues and HM Treasury. 

Mr Anthony Kosturjak, B.Ec. (Hons)
Anthony is a Senior Research Economist at the Centre.  Anthony joined the Centre in 1999 after completing an honours degree in economics at the University of Adelaide.  Since commencing at the Centre, Anthony has worked on projects in a range of areas, including program evaluation, labour market analysis, regional development issues, economic and financial evaluation of public infrastructure proposals, benefit cost analysis, input output analysis, demography and regulated infrastructure issues.  He has extensive experience analysing particular industries, having undertaken numerous studies in respect of water infrastructure proposals, mining, the information and communications technology (ICT) sector, electronics and gambling.

In addition to being the regular author of a macroeconomic chapter in the Centre’s Briefing Report, Anthony has contributed to and edited various issues of the Centre’s Economic Issues series.  In his Honours dissertation he considered the economic impacts on consumers and the music industry of permitting parallel imports of sound recordings.

Dr Nicola Chandler, B.A. (Hons) in Economics, M.A. (Econ) in Agricultural Economics, PhD (Econ)
Nicola joined the Centre in 2007 as Senior Research Economist. Nicola has extensive experience in applied economics having worked for a variety of public and private sector organisations across a range of subject fields.  She has worked as Research Assistant for Commodities Research Unit Limited in London, Research Economist for LMC International Ltd in Oxford, and was Senior Advisor for the New Zealand Ministry of Transport. While at the Ministry of Transport, she was responsible for managing a high profile economics-based research project and was involved in forming policy, liaising with other government departments and consultants, and presenting research papers to the Transport Minister and other senior government officials.  She also represented the Ministry overseas in countries including Australia, Norway, Germany, the UK and the USA.

More recently, Nicola worked as a Senior Economist with Business and Economic Research Ltd in New Zealand.  Her role at BERL was to research economic issues and produce quantitative and qualitative economic analysis for clients.  She also contributed to and edited the BERL Monthly Monitor and quarterly BERL Forecasts.

Mrs Elizabeth Stephens, B.Ec
Elizabeth Stephens, Senior Research Economist, has recently joined the Centre from the Centre for International Economics in Sydney where she worked on a range of projects including reviews of aspects of the National Landcare Programme, government cost-sharing arrangements for Biosecurity strategies, identification of priority infrastructure investments and uptake of Australian agricultural research programs in the South Pacific.  Prior to that, she held positions in a number of government agencies including the NSW Department of Energy, Utilities and Sustainability, the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal and the Tasmanian Treasury.  She has extensive experience working on economic aspects of regulatory issues, competition policy and energy market issues both in regulatory agencies and in policy departments.  She has excellent project management skills.  Elizabeth has an Economics degree from the ANU.

Mrs Davina Dolman
Davina Dolman has been with the University since 1979 and more specifically with the Centre since 1990. Davina is the Centre's Executive Assistant. She is responsible for financial administration and office management.