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Professor Flavio Menezes

Director, AIBE

Faculty of Business, Economics and Law
f.menezes@uq.edu.au
+61 7 344 31279

Overview

Flavio Menezes is a Professor of Economics and Director of the Australian Institute for Business and Economics at the University of Queensland (UQ). Flavio is also the Chair of the Queensland Competition Authority and a member of the NDIA’s Pricing Arrangement Reference Group. Professor Menezes was a member of the Expert Panel for the Special Disability Accommodation (NDIS) 2022-2023 price review. He was the president of the Economic Society of Australia (Queensland) from 2016 – 2018 and a member of the advisory board of the Federal government’s 2019 – 2020 Deregulation Taskforce.

He was the Academic Dean of the School of Economics at UQ from 2009 to 2015, the chair of the Research Evaluation Committee for Economics and Commerce, Excellence of Research in Australia (ERA) 2018, and a member of the same committee for ERA 2015. Professor Menezes was an elected member of UQ’s Academic Board and of its Standing Committee from 2018 to 2021. Prior to joining UQ in 2006, he was a Professor of Economics and a Professor of Regulatory Economics at the Australian National University and the foundation director of the Australian Centre of Regulatory Economics. He was a (part-time) Vice-President at Charles Rivers Associates International in Canberra from 2005 to 2006.

Professor Menezes is a fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. He is an associate editor of Journal of Public Economic Theory and was the co-editor of the Economic Record from 2016 to 2022. He has published extensively on the economics of auctions, competition and regulatory economics, industrial organisation, and market design. He is a sought after UQ Expert on Australian economic policy. Professor Menezes’ engagement with industry and government is significant.

His experience includes advising the federal government, the AEMC, the ACCC, IPART, the QCA, and the ACT and Victorian governments on market design issues in regulatory environments. He has also provided economic advice to many private and public organisations on competition and regulatory issues in telecommunications, defence, fisheries, water, gambling, natural resources, electricity markets, dairy, smart cities, banking, aged care, the NDIS, early childhood education and childcare, health, and transport.

Research Interests

  • Competition and Regulatory Economics
  • auction theory and market design
  • public economics including taxation

Research Impacts

Research undertaken by Professor Menezes has contributed to several areas in economics:

  1. Competition and regulatory economics: Prof Menezes’s research on competition economics is frequently cited in regulatory proceedings in Australia and overseas. For example, his advisory work on incentive mechanisms is cited in submissions to the Australian Energy Regulator and the IPART. His advisory work on asset valuation is cited in decisions by the Australian Energy Regulator and ERA. His research on the economic theory of auction and market design underpinned his expert reports that were pivotal in the Australian Competition Tribunal’s 2017 decision on the $11B merger of Tabcorp and Tatts Group. Professor Menezes’s research on public-private partnerships underpinned advice provide to governments and international organisations on how to procure complex transport infrastructure.
  2. Price regulation approaches for aged care: The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety engaged Prof Menezes to review price regulation approaches that may be appropriate for application in the aged care sector. Prof Menezes’s advice directly informed the recommendation to introduce an independent Pricing Authority in the aged care sector (Royal Commission Final Report 2021, p.150).
  3. Competition and design in auctions: Prof Menezes’s research on multiple-unit auctions has been used to explain low revenue in some spectrum auctions in the United States and in Europe. Spectrum auctions have been redesigned as a result and his work is cited in patent applications for Clock Auctions (patent no. US7729975B2) and by Google (patent no. US8204818B1). His research on right-to-choose auctions provided an alternative design for the sale of a set of commonly ranked objectives. It has been considered to allocate spectrum of frequency and landing slots at airports and is cited in patents for computer-based right distribution systems (patent no. US7689210B2).
  4. Entry and corruption in auctions: Prof Menezes’s research has provided important insights into market design across a range of sectors. When entry into auctions is endogenous, having a larger number of potential bidders does not necessary lead to higher expected revenue in an auction; this implies that efforts to secure many bidders may be misplaced, and instead focus should be on competitive bidders. Moreover, when corruption is possible, particular care needs to be taken when designing auctions to minimise the impact of corruption on efficiency and on the seller’s revenue.

Qualifications

  • Masters (Coursework) of Economics

Publications

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Grants

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Supervision

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Publications

Featured Publications

Book

Book Chapter

  • Market design for new leaders

    Menezes, Flavio (2015). Market design for new leaders. So you want to be a leader: influential people reveal how to succeed in public life. (pp. 371-385) edited by Philip Crisp. Melbourne, Victoria, Australia: Hybrid Publishers.

  • The Microeconomics of corruption: The classical approach

    Menezes, Flavio M. (2001). The Microeconomics of corruption: The classical approach. Corruption & anti-corruption. (pp. *-*) edited by Peter Larmour and Nick Wolanin. Canberra : Institute of Criminology: Asia Pacific Press.

Journal Article

Conference Publication

  • Endogenous mergers under multi-market competition

    Kao, Tina and Menezes, Flavio M. (2009). Endogenous mergers under multi-market competition. 17th European Workshop on Equilibrium Theory, Paestum, Italy, 13-15 June, 2008. The Netherlands: North-Holland Pub. Co.. doi: 10.1016/j.jmateco.2009.06.013

  • Can game theory be saved?

    Menezes, F. and Quiggin, J (2007). Can game theory be saved?. ESAM07 Australian Meeting of the Econometric Society, Brisbane, Australia, 3-6 July 2007. Brisbane, Australia: Econometric Society.

  • Welfare enhancing mergers under product differentiation

    Kao, T. and Menezes, F. (2007). Welfare enhancing mergers under product differentiation. ESAM07 Australian Meeting of the Econometric Society, Brisbane, Australia, 3-6 July 2007. Brisbane, Australia: Econometric Society.

Other Outputs

Grants (Administered at UQ)

PhD and MPhil Supervision

Current Supervision

  • Essays on electricity market design for the energy transition

    Master Philosophy — Principal Advisor

    Other advisors:

  • Essays on Natural Disaster and Labour Market

    Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor

    Other advisors:

  • COMPARING OPEN AND SEALED BID AUCTIONS: EVIDENCE FROM PUBLIC PROCUREMENT

    Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor

    Other advisors:

Completed Supervision

This staff member is a UQ Expert for media in the following fields:

Public economics, Competition economics, Regulatory economics, Economics, Auction and market design, Market design, Taxation of multinationals, Australian economic policy

They are happy to lend their expertise to your articles or broadcasts and share their research discoveries and insights with the community via media channels.

For additional assistance with story ideas, general advice and information or help with seeking further experts, please email the UQ Media Team or telephone (07) 3365 1120.

Links

ORCID: 0000-0003-0889-9551

Scopus ID: 7003915132

Personal Profile: Link

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