Pham Van Ha is a Research Fellow at the Australian Centre for Biosecurity & Environmental Economics, Crawford School of Public Policy. Before joining Crawford School, Pham was Deputy Director of National Institute for Finance and member of the Policy Advisory Group in the Vietnamese Ministry of Finance. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Australian National University in 2006. Pham’s main research areas are Environmental and Resource Economics, and Macro-Economic modelling. He published more than 30 papers and book chapters both in Vietnamese and English.

COVID-19 expertise

Dr. Pham Van Ha has extensive experience in Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) modelling. He is specialised in building and solving large regional and inter-temporal CGE models. Dr. Pham Van Ha (together with Professor Tom Kompas) has introduced a new innovative solution method for regional and inter-temporal CGE models that enables modellers to solve CGE models with more than a half of billion equations. As a result, the new solution method allows CGE modellers to examine detailed impacts of a policy change or a natural disaster to the world economy with more than a hundred countries/regions over a hundred year period and beyond.

Dr. Pham Van Ha (together with his co-authors) has a number of publications in trade policy analysis and climate change analysis using this solution method. In the context of COVID-19 outbreak, the new solution method can potentially be an important tool for global economic impact analysis and policy evaluation.