I am currently a Research Fellow in Health Economics at the Melbourne Institute of the University of Melbourne. I finish my PhD in April 2008 in the field of applied economics and I since then been working on my postdoctoral research in the field of the economics of human development.

Updated CV: -----> PDF

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Contact:  sschurer@unimelb.edu.au or +61-3-83442190.

In brief, you should know the following about me : I am crazy about unobserved heterogeneity. This is one of the reasons I chose to investigate the Role of Unobserved Heterogeneity in Labour and Health Economics in my PhD thesis. I wonder whether human beings differ in their motivations to participate in the labour market and to take good care for their health. I wondered also whether this heterogeneity would confound estimates of outcomes of interest if left unaccounted for. I learn that in cases determinants of heterogeneity, such as personality traits or cultural background, may be observable in the data-set you use for your analysis. The work of James Heckman and co-authors in my search for answers on the degree of and proxies for unobserved heterogeneity in a population (http://jenni.uchicago.edu/human-inequality/). In other cases, however, proxies for unobserved heterogeneity may be available to the applied economist, for instance, creativity, genetics, or cognitive ability and that is where panel data econometric models come in handy. I them all tried and thus I as a specialist in linear and non-linear fixed and random effects models, latent class models and random coefficient models ended up. Navigating my way through the German Socio-Economic Panel and the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics Survey of Australia (HILDA), I also accidentally become a specialist on German and Australian population descriptives. Please PhD Thesis  click to learn more about the four papers of my thesis.

Since working as a research fellow under the supervision of Anthony Scott, I have my knowledge expanded to health care systems and the role governmental financial incentives play in influencing human behaviour. I am one of the first economists to use the Australian Bettering the Evaluation and Care of Health (BEACH) dataset (http://www.fmrc.org.au/beach.htm ), as provides patient-level GP consultation data and the Australian Longitudinal Survey of Doctors (MABEL, https://mabel.org.au/), as provides socio-economic and demographic data on all types doctor.

These are my area of interest:

• Socioeconomic gradient of health/pain
• Interrelationship between labour supply and health
• The economic of psychology (e.g. locus of control)
• Financial incentives and quality of care
• Economic assimilation of immigrants and their children

In 2010 I will work on the following topics:

• Methods to heterogeneous responses to social policy interventions evaluate
• Origins of the socioeconomic gradient of health
• Welfare effects of public health insurance

Apart, I am a self-declared outdoor sportaholic. I engage in triathlon and sailing and I have for these gray, fluffy, and sleepy animals a weakness...right Koalas!

Here are some links to places where I enjoy spending my time at:

Sandringham Yacht Club: http://www.syc.com.au/

Melbourne Triathlon Club: http://www.melbournetriclub.com/

Healesville Sanctuary: http://www.zoo.org.au/HealesvilleSanctuary