Rate My Professor Joe Hirschberg

Joe Hirschberg is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics within the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Melbourne, a position he has held since June 1994. Before joining the University of Melbourne, he served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Southern Methodist University from July 1985 to July 1993. Hirschberg earned his PhD in Economics from the University of Southern California, completing his doctoral studies from September 1978 to December 1984.

Hirschberg's research centers on applied economics and econometrics. His research interests include applied econometrics techniques, economic applications of cluster analysis, measuring anti-competitive behaviour, measuring productivity, quantitative analysis of tertiary education, energy economics, labor economics, econometric modeling, data envelopment analysis, and bootstrapping. He conducts research in various economic applications utilizing advanced econometric methods, such as graduated driver licensing regulations, electricity consumption patterns under feed-in tariffs, hedonic pricing models, Australian telecommunications services, and statistical intervals comparisons.

Selected key publications by Hirschberg include "Grading Journals in Economics: The ABCs of the ABDC" (2020), "Visualising Time: A Compendium of Time Series Plots" (2020), "Confidence Intervals for Ratios: Econometric Examples with Stata" (2018), "Inverting the indirect - the ellipse and the Boomerang: Visualising the confidence intervals of the structural coefficient from two-stage least squares" (2017), "Coding Style and Practice: Are All Programs Equal?" (2022), "A Semiparametric Fractile Approach to Dichotomous 50% Dose and Willingness to Pay Analysis" (2022), "Investment in Australian Aboriginal Art" (2020), "The influence of student experiences on post-graduation surveys" (2015), "Gaming after lockdowns: return to the slots" (2025), and "Cluster analysis for measuring welfare and quality of life across countries". His publications have accumulated over 2,499 citations on Google Scholar. Hirschberg has also authored numerous working papers for the Department of Economics at the University of Melbourne on topics including time of day substitution using second moments of demand and computer knowledge and earnings in Australia.