Riccardo Welters

Riccardo Welters, PhD (Maastricht University, Netherlands) is currently Associate Professor in Economics at the College of Business, Law and Governance, Division Tropical Environments and Societies, James Cook University (JCU).

Qualifications

Associate Professor Welters graduated in economics from Maastricht University in 1997, including a semester at the University of Trento, Italy, as an Erasmus exchange student. He completed a PhD in economics from Maastricht University in 2005 studying employer recruitment behaviour re the long-term unemployed.

He holds research fellowships at the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market, Maastricht University, the Netherlands, the Centre of Full Employment and Equity, University of Newcastle, Australia and at the Cairns Institute, JCU, Australia.

Experience

Associate Professor Welters has more than 20 years of experience in (labour market) economics research and higher education in Australia and the Netherlands. He has been seconded to the positions of Head of Discipline—Economics, Acting Head—School of Business, and Head Academic Group—Economics and Marketing, all at JCU. He was Deputy Director—Centre of Full Employment and Equity at University of Newcastle.

Welters has taught economics classes at bachelor, honours, masters and research higher degree level in the Netherlands, Australia and Papua New Guinea, next to substantial course coordination roles at JCU. He has supervised more than fifteen Honours/Masters/PhD students to completion at JCU.

Welters has consulted widely with industry partners, either through consultancy arrangements (including Australian Defence Organisation, Townsville Enterprise Limited, Advance Cairns, and Townsville City Council) or through research partnerships (including ARC Linkage project LP130100344 with Youth+ Edmund Rice Education Australia, Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, Northern Territory Department of Education, Catholic Education Office of Western Australia, The Brotherhood of St Laurence, Centacare Townsville, and the European Think Forward Initiative - a consortium of private sector companies Amazon Web Services, CEPR, DELL, Deloitte, IBM, ING).

Research impact

Associate Professor Welters has published more than 40 journal articles / book chapters / papers in conference proceedings and has published a substantial number of research reports for industry partners (google scholar: >800 citations; H-index: 16; I10-index: 26). His most recently published article ‘Homeownership, the unemployed and financial hardship’ is in the Journal of Housing Economics. Welters has presented his work at over 35 conferences / symposia across the world. He has served as Assessor for the Australian Research Council and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research.

Professional service

Associate Professor Welters is a regular media commentator on economic matters, particularly relevant to the North Queensland region.