Economist Kym Anderson was working in Geneva when his mind got to thinking about his Adelaide Hills farm – and his plans to plant a vineyard.
It was the 1990s and Emeritus Professor Anderson was working on global trade issues with the World Trade Organization. At the same time, Australia was embarking on an export-led wine sector boom.
“As part of my due diligence for planting a vineyard I explored Australia’s four past wine sector booms – and subsequent plateaus – over the previous two centuries,” Prof Anderson recalls.
“Since the fifth boom was clearly export driven, that encouraged me to look at how global wine markets had been developing.”
Prof Anderson went on to plant his vineyard – and then continue his research into the economics of the wine sector, writing two books on wine’s globalisation and compiling statistical compendia on global wine markets since 1860; on the Australian wine sector’s growth and cycles since 1843; and on what winegrape varieties have been grown in the world’s wine regions since 1990.
Born in the town of Naracoorte, near South Australia’s famed Coonawarra wine region, Prof Anderson says economics was never really on his radar until an opportunity came up in his final year of schooling to apply for a cadetship in agricultural economics.
He won the cadetship and moved to Armidale, NSW, to undertake a four-year Bachelor of Agricultural Economics degree at the University of New England – “a wonderful learning environment, with perhaps the best agricultural economics department in the southern hemisphere at the time (late 1960s).”
As part of his cadetship, he then returned to South Australia to work for the SA Dept of Agriculture (now PIRSA) for three years.
“That experience gave me good exposure to the South Australian agricultural sector – including the wine sector, as my classmate and then work colleague, Stephen George, was doing some research on the wine sales tax issue before he left to become a winemaker (ultimately establishing Ashton Hills Vineyard).”
Prof Anderson then went to the United States of America to undertake a doctorate in international and development economics at the University of Chicago and Stanford University; before returning to spend six years as a research fellow in economics at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra.
In 1984 he returned to Adelaide to take up a lecturing position, and in 1989 he became foundation Executive Director of the Centre for International Economic Studies at the University of Adelaide. In the mid-2000s, Prof Anderson took a three-year sabbatical to become Lead Economist (Trade Policy) at the World Bank in Washington DC. Today, he is the George Gollin Professor Emeritus in Adelaide’s School of Economics and Public Policy, and foundation Executive Director of its Wine Economics Research Centre.
Prof Anderson’s recent research has focused on empirical analysis of the Doha Development Agenda of the World Trade Organization; global distortions to agricultural incentives; the economics of agricultural biotechnology (GMO) policies globally; and wine globalisation. He has published more than 40 books and 400 journal articles and chapters in other books. Three of his books received prizes from the OIV (International Organisation of Vine and Wine) for the world’s best wine books, in 2014 and 2018.
In 2015, Prof Anderson was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) for his contribution to economics and the wine sector.
Prof Anderson still lives on his beloved Adelaide Hills farm – and continues to enjoy researching the economics of wine in between focusing on global trade issues and chairing international agricultural research institutes.
“It’s always a joy to come home to a good Australian wine, particularly a Shiraz or Pinot Noir,” he said.