Rate My Professor Habib Rahman

Habib Rahman is an Associate Professor in the School of Accounting, Economics and Finance at Curtin University, within the Faculty of Business and Law. He previously held academic positions at Monash University, Deakin University, and the University of Melbourne. Before entering academia, Rahman worked at international development organizations, including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) in Thailand. As Director of the Centre for Research in Applied Economics (CRAE) at Curtin University, he led initiatives on applied economics research. Rahman has secured external research grants from prestigious funders, including the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Global Facility for Disaster Risk Reduction (GFDRR) Nepal, the Asian-Pacific Network (APN) Japan, the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia, the Bushfire & Natural Hazard Cooperative Research Centre (BNH-CRC) of Australia, UNDP Bangladesh, and the World Bank Group. His research examines the intersections of development economics, climate change, natural disasters, and political economy, with projects such as developing frameworks for Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Pacific.

Rahman’s scholarship has been published in leading journals, informing public policies in Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nepal, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam. Key publications include “Silver lining of the water: The role of government relief assistance in disaster recovery” (2023, European Journal of Political Economy, with Akbulut-Yuksel and Ulubaşoğlu); “Storm autocracies: Islands as natural experiments” (2022, Journal of Development Economics, with Anbarci and Ulubaşoğlu); “Does credit availability mitigate domestic conflict?” (2023, Economic Modelling, with Bhattacharya and Chowdhury); “Long-term effects of malnutrition on early-life famine survivors and their offspring: New evidence from the Great Vietnam Famine 1944–45” (2021, Health Economics, with Guven, Hoang, and Ulubaşoğlu); “Weathering trust” (2020, Journal of Economic Behaviour & Organization, with Lee, Shabnam, and Jayasinghe); “Healthy air, healthy mom: Experimental evidence from Chinese power plants” (2020, Energy Economics, with Rafiq); “Floods, Bushfires and Sectoral Economic Output in Australia, 1978–2014” (2019, Economic Record, with Ulubaşoğlu, Önder, Chen, and Rajabifard); “Earthquakes don’t kill, built environment does: Evidence from cross-country data” (2018, Ecological Modelling); “Can extreme rainfall trigger democratic change? The role of flood-induced corruption” (2017, Public Choice, with Anbarci, Bhattacharya, and Ulubaşoğlu); and “Economic growth: Measurement” (2015, International Encyclopaedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, with Ulubaşoğlu). He regularly provides technical assistance to governments and non-government organizations on climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. Subsequently, Rahman joined Durham University as Professor of Economics.