by Peter Dixon (Peter.Dixon@vu.edu.au) November 11, 2025
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Alan died on November 3, 2025, aged 88.
He had an outstanding academic record including publications in Econometrica, the International Economic Review, the Journal of the American Statistical Association, and other top journals. At 30, he was appointed to the Foundation Chair in Econometrics at Monash University. This made him Australia's first professor of econometrics. He received numerous national and international accolades. But I am not going to write about his formal record. This was covered by Williams and Snape in their excellent article in the Economic Record titled "Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Society of Australia, 1998: Professor Alan Powell" (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-4932.1999.tb02428.x)
I am going to try to give you an impression of what a great person and research leader Alan was. I was his student and worked closely with him for many years. I will take you through a timeline.
It is 1967.
The scene is a large lecture theatre at Monash University where Alan is teaching his 4th year econometrics class. I sit half-way up the back. I pay attention. I don't fidget or whisper to other students: there aren't any other students.
What is Alan teaching in this big empty room, with the flair and intensity appropriate for an oration to hundreds? I don't yet understand it, but I know it is the most important material in my four-year undergraduate course.
Alan was explaining the connection between micro-economics and econometrics. What is the point of the assumption that households choose what to buy to maximize their utility (a totally artificial concept) subject to their budget constraint? The point is that this assumption allows us to organize scarce and imperfect data so that through econometric methods we can project likely changes in the commodity composition of household spending in response to changes in prices and income.
It is 1968.
Alan is a senior and revered academic. He has gravitas and grey hair. He is my selection to stand in as father of the bride at my wedding to my Thai girlfriend, Orani. I am still addressing Alan as Professor Powell. You can imagine my surprise when I find he is only 31, just 9 years my senior.
It is March 1975.
I am calling Alan, Alan. We are having lunch in Sydney near the Reserve Bank where I am employed. Alan is talking about a major new research project to be conducted jointly by several government departments with the Industries Assistance Commission having the lead role. The task is to give the Australian government modelling capacity for projecting the economic effects of different policy scenarios for trade and immigration, particularly the likely employment outcomes from transitioning from high tariffs to low tariffs.
Alan is to be the Director of the project. He led an earlier project with similar aims at Monash University, financed by academic research grants. That project hadn't delivered the hoped-for modelling products. Nevertheless, Alan's high standing and charisma made him the first choice to lead the new project, this time within the government rather than academia.
Alan is describing an unsuccessful world recruiting trip for the project. I'm thinking, how come people didn't jump at the chance to do such important policy-oriented research? Tentatively, I suggest I might be able to help. For a couple of years, I had been trying to create an industry model that seems to be a good fit for Alan's project. Alan doesn't focus on weaknesses in my ideas or offer the opinion that they won't work, or that they are unpublishable in top journals. Instead, he enthusiastically supports my ideas and helps me articulate them. He backs me, gives me confidence and offers me a job that day. I accept.
It is June 1975.
I start work at the project, now known as IMPACT and located in Melbourne. To my amazement, Alan announces to the world that the industry model, at the heart of the project, is to be named ORANI. Has anyone ever backed a young, unproven researcher to the extent that Alan backed me? Naming the model for my wife was an audacious call and it signaled the integrity with which Alan was going to conduct the project. It also happened to be a brilliant management strategy, all but guaranteeing success.
It is July 1975.
Just talking with Alan is empowering. He is very smart, very positive and makes time to listen deeply. Getting his constructive and enthusiastic support enables me to sort out a technical problem that had stymied progress in my earlier modelling effort.
It is November-December 1975.
Fraser replaces Whitlam as prime minister, and the project is in jeopardy. We are in a weak position. We have a great product coming, but we don't have anything concrete to show the sceptics. Parts of the new government are not just sceptical, but downright hostile. Fraser's razor gang, in reviewing initiatives of the previous government, marks the IMPACT project as a high priority for termination.
Alan works tirelessly and courageously to save the project. He travels frequently to Canberra to shore up support. Meanwhile in Melbourne, Alan's team works desperately to get results. We owe it to Alan to make a success of the project. As it turns out, Alan does save the project, although with reduced staff.
IMPACT, 1976-1978.
By the end of 1976, we have results which are published by Alan in March 1977 in volume 1 of IMPACT's first progress report.
Under Alan's leadership, we all know that IMPACT is important, and we are proud to be part of it. There is an active social life in the group, including sports, dinners and lengthy post-work analyses over a few beers on Friday. There are no silly squabbles of the type that often beset research groups. How could anyone be petty or mean when Alan is so generous?
Alan gets us a gig with the Crawford Enquiry into what the Fraser government styles as the “malaise” in Australian industries. The ORANI team together with Alan produce the IMPACT package showing that the problem is at the macro level, not the industry level. Crawford receives this information respectfully but ignores it. The ideas underlying the IMPACT package become influential in the 1980s in the Hawke-Keating era.
IMPACT, 1978-2001.
By 1978, it was clear that the IMPACT Project is a big success. Models developed at IMPACT were producing insights on a wide range of economic issues, well beyond the original agenda. Nevertheless, the project was again under threat. Alan returned full-time to academia, first as Richie Professor of Research in Economics at the University of Melbourne and later, from 1991, as a professor with a personal chair at Monash University. In these positions, Alan was able to run a smaller IMPACT project with grants from the Industries Assistance Commission and academic sources.
During this period, Alan trained graduate students many of whom went on to distinguished careers. He made contributions in applied macroeconomics and consumer behavior. But most of all he continued to back people, to provide them with opportunities and to give them the confidence to achieve big things. Two examples are Ken Pearson and Tom Hertel. These are certainly not the only examples, but they are the most spectacular.
Ken Pearson was a highly credentialled mathematician at La Trobe University. In the early 1980s he heard about the ORANI model. He recognized that the solution method being used to solve ORANI was too model-specific. Alan immediately saw Ken's potential and hired him at IMPACT. The outcome is the GEMPACK software.
GEMPACK is now used under license by economic modellers in about 700 sites in 95 countries. In chapter 20 of Elsevier's Handbook of Computable General Equilibrium Modeling published in 2013, the proprietors of GEMPACK and its main competitor, GAMS, conducted a computational comparison between the two packages. GEMPACK was the overwhelming winner. I suspect that since then GEMPACK has moved further ahead.
Tom Hertel visited IMPACT in 1990-91 as a Fulbright Scholar. Encouraged by Alan, he developed the idea of a global network of economic modellers. Members of the network would populate ORANI-style models with data for their own countries. These models would then be linked to form a global model, computed with GEMPACK. The outcome is the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP), headquartered at Purdue University.
The GTAP database now covers about 160 countries. For each country it identifies national and international flows for 65 commodities. The GTAP model has been applied thousands of times in analyses of policies in trade, environment, immigration and many other areas. The GTAP network contains about 33,000 members, drawn from almost every country in the world.
The Alan A. Powell award, given annually for outstanding service on the GTAP advisory board is a fitting recognition by Tom of Alan's major contribution to GTAP's success.
Postscript.
In 1993, IMPACT merged with the Centre of Policy Studies (CoPS) at MONASH. The principals in CoPS were key members of Alan's original IMPACT team. In 2014, CoPS moved to Victoria University. CoPS wins contracts for quantitative economic analysis in Australia, the U.S., China, Canada and many other countries, and continues Alan's tradition of cutting-edge, policy-relevant research. The IMPACT-CoPS group, founded by Alan, is celebrating its 50th year.