About “Atakelty Hailu”

Atakelty is an agricultural and resource economist. He had a strong and early desire to become a ‘scientist’ but no interest in economics. That is, until after the devastating (and partly man-made) Ethiopian famine of 1984/5 and until he realised that there was in fact a field of study that put both people and nature (including agriculture) at the centre of it — Agricultural Economics. He obtained a BSc degree in Ag Econ from Alemaya University (1990). After two years working at Alemaya, he moved to Canada to study for a master’s degree at the University of Alberta where he, with the encouragement of his supervisor, ended up pursuing a PhD instead (1998). He then worked as a postdoctoral researcher with the Canadian Sustainable Forest Management Network before joining the University of Western Australia as a lecturer in 2001.Atakelty has received numerous academic awards, including the Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award for 1996-1998 from the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society (CAES), and a Chancellor’s Gold Medal for his undergraduate academic achievements in Alemaya. His research interests include efficiency and productivity analysis, whole-farm bioeconomic modelling, environmental policy design, and agent-based computational economics.Atakelty is the winner of the prestiguous Publication of Enduring Quality Award (CAES, 2018).