People
Gail Pacheco
Director
Email: gail.pacheco@aut.ac.nz
Phone: +64 9 921 9999 – ext: 5708
Gail Pacheco is a Professor in the Economics Department at AUT, and Director of the NZ Work Research Institute. She has considerable experience leading funded projects involving both academic and industry collaborations (with for instance the Department of Labour, the Blind Foundation, Careers NZ, United Nations Women, and Coca-Cola Amatil NZ). She is an applied empirical and labour economist and her key research expertise lies in applying econometric methodology to the emerging areas of labour and health research. Her current research agenda is in line with AUT’s multidisciplinary and applied philosophy.
Jarrod Haar
Deputy Director
Email: jarrod.haar@aut.ac.nz
Phone: +64 9 921 9999 – ext: 5034
Jarrod Haar is a Professor of Human Resource Management in the Department of Management and has tribal affiliations of Ngati Maniapoto and Ngati Mahuta. Jarrod is a Research Fellow of the Australia & New Zealand Academy of Management, an Associate Fellow of the Human Resource Institute of New Zealand (HRINZ) and won the inaugural HRINZ HR Researcher of the Year Award in 2016. In April 2016, he became the Deputy Director of the NZ Work Research Institute. His research approach spans broadly across a wide range of management topics, but with a strong focus on Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour.
Mary Hedges
Research Developer
Email: mary.hedges@aut.ac.nz
Phone: +64 9 921 9999 – ext: 8546
Mary has a PhD in Economics from the University of Queensland and works in the areas of labour economics, behavioural economics and life-course econometric modelling. She answers real-world questions about individual choice in the areas of education and health, using tailor-made analytical tools and keen economic reasoning.
Mary has over twenty years’ experience in academia. She brings to the Institute a wealth of experience working collaboratively with academia, industry, government and community agencies. Her focus is on translational research and managing projects to achieve practical outcomes, meeting the needs of the diverse interest groups involved.
Chao Li
Research Fellow
Email: chao.li@aut.ac.nz
Phone: +64 9 921 9999 – ext: 5666
Chao's research interests are in regional, urban and labour economics. His research expertise lies in topics such as regional inequality, optimal city size, city size distribution, agglomeration economies, migrant externality, and urban land area expansion, empirically on the case of China and especially on the geographical dimension of these topics. He has considerable experience handling large administrative dataset at sub-national level. Chao's current research agenda focuses on the emerging areas of labour and health economics, empirically on the case of New Zealand.
Kabir Dasgupta
Research Fellow
Email: kabir.dasgupta@aut.ac.nz
Phone: +64 9 921 9999 – ext: 5583
Kabir's research interests include Health and Labour Economics, Applied Econometrics and Policy Analysis. His previous studies have looked at the effectiveness of important US-based social policies and family-specific characteristics on child and youth mental health and behavioural outcomes. Kabir is currently working on the Transients project, commissioned by SUPERU.
Tamara Tesolin
Office Manager
Email: tamara.tesolin@aut.ac.nz
Phone: +64 9 921 9999 – ext: 5056
Tamara looks after the day to day running of the institute. Her work days are Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.