Rate My Professor Robert Breunig

Robert Breunig is Professor of Economics and Chair of Tax Policy and Public Finance in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University, where he serves as Director of the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute. He earned a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Riverside in 1998, with a dissertation on the econometrics of household survey sampling, and a Bachelor of International Studies from the School for International Training in 1987. Breunig has held positions at ANU since 1998, starting as Lecturer in the Department of Statistics and Econometrics, advancing to Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor in the School of Economics and Research School of Social Sciences, Professor in the Research School of Economics, and his current role since November 2012. He was Acting Director of the Crawford School from July 2015 to December 2016. An Honours Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences and Honorary Professor at the University of Melbourne, he maintains research affiliations with the IZA Institute of Labor Economics and RFBerlin.

Breunig's research specializations include tax and transfer policy, childcare and labour supply, migration, inequality, innovation, productivity, domestic violence, business assistance programs, household economics, and econometric methods. He has authored over 75 publications in international academic journals such as Journal of Public Economics, Labour Economics, Journal of Population Economics, Economic Record, and Australian Economic Review. Key works include the book Hybrid Public Policy Innovations: Contemporary Policy Beyond Ideology (Routledge, 2018, co-authored with M. Fabian); 'Rounded Up: Using Round Numbers to Identify Tax Evasion' (Journal of Public Economics, 2024); 'Gender Norms and Domestic Abuse: Evidence from Australia' (Journal of Population Economics, 2023, awarded Kuznets Prize); and 'Individuals’ Responsiveness to Marginal Tax Rates: Evidence from Bunching in the Australian Personal Income Tax System' (Labour Economics, 2023). Breunig has influenced public policy through partnerships with Australian Treasury, Productivity Commission, Department of Employment, and other agencies. He serves on editorial boards of Journal of Quantitative Economics and Australian Journal of Labour Economics, and as Book Review Editor for Economic Record. His committee roles encompass Australian Bureau of Statistics advisory groups and government policy panels.