Lee Davis

Director

Lee Davis is a Director with the CIE’s Sydney office, having joined the CIE in 1998. Lee specialises in the following areas.

• International trade policy, including the development and use of computable general equilibrium models to analyse the implications for countries of liberalising their trade and investment policies (whether liberalisation be unilateral, bilateral or multilateral in nature). Studies include: quantifying the economic impacts of Australia entering into trade and investment agreements with Indonesia (in 2009), India (2008), Korea (2008), China (2006 and 2008), Japan (2005), Malaysia (2005), the United States (2001 and 2004), Thailand (2002 and 2004); the economic impacts of New Zealand entering into agreements with China (2004) and Korea (2007); and the economic impact of various APEC countries entering into a free trade agreement.
• Review and reform of investment laws and the wider investment environment to improve a country’s ability to compete for foreign direct investment on a sustainable basis and, in so doing, contribute to private sector development and economic growth. Major studies include reviewing and reforming investment laws and incentives in Cambodia, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands and Uganda, and providing strategic advice to the Australian investment promotion agency (Austrade).
• Cost–benefit analysis to determine whether a proposed government policy reform or program will deliver a net benefit to the country, including the use of statistical techniques for estimating stakeholders’ willingness to pay/accept a change to their circumstances, and options for maximising benefits or reducing the costs associated with the policy reform/program.
• Development work, with projects providing economic governance, program evaluation, capacity building, policy advice and analysis having been undertaken for bodies such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and Foreign Investment Advisory Service in Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, South Korea, Uganda and the Solomon Islands.

Before joining the CIE, Lee worked at the Industry (now Productivity) Commission — Australia’s principal microeconomic advisory body.

Lee can be contacted at our Sydney office.