Introduction

Dr Tilak Abeysinghe was formerly a senior research adviser in the Asia Competitiveness Institute, National University of Singapore (NUS) and Research Director of the Gamani Corea Foundation, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

He was a visiting professor in the Department of Economics, NUS, before retiring in July 2019, after 31 years. In the Department, he served as the Director of the Singapore Centre for Applied and Policy Economics and Executive Committee Member of the Department. He has held other important administrative responsibilities at NUS such as Deputy/Acting Headship, Director of Economics Graduate Program and Member of the Faculty Tenure and Promotion Committee. He was also a Visiting Professor at Kyoto University and Peradeniya University. 

Dr Abeysinghe obtained his Ph.D. in Economics/Econometrics from the University of Manitoba. He worked for the United States Agency for International Development (Colombo) before joining NUS in 1988. He has researched on a range of theoretical and applied econometric topics that include the Singapore economy, housing affordability, stress and cancer, quantitative health research, welfare spending and fiscal sustainability, quality adjusted labour input, and subnational economies of Sri Lanka. He has supervised 11 PhD students and a large number of Masters’ and Honours’ students.

Dr Abeysinghe has published in various reputable international outlets like Journal of Econometrics and NBER paper series. A major line of his research has been the econometric modelling of the Singapore economy, forecasting and policy analyses. As the coordinator of the Econometric Studies Unit since 1992, he has built several econometric models, one of which appears in the Routledge book, The Singapore Economy: An Econometric Perspective. Policy analyses based on these models have appeared in news media frequently. He had coordinated the column “Ask NUS economists” in The Straits Times.

Areas of Interest and Expertise

• Sri Lankan Economy
• Singapore Economy
• Econometric and Statistical Methods