Team Profile

BAEconomics has extensive experience across the energy, minerals, infrastructure, agriculture and natural resources sectors. We employ the best and brightest in these fields to deliver innovative insights to your organisation, grounded in applied economics and overlaid with practical, business-oriented perceptiveness.

Our background is broad-based having extensive experience in consulting to mining and energy companies, industry associations, agribusinesses, food retailers, utilities and electricity generators, the manufacturing sector, the World Bank, United Nations bodies and Australian Federal and State government agencies. We have served on government committees and boards in Australia and internationally.

Dr Brian Fisher

Managing Director
BScAgr (Hons I)
University of Sydney
PhD DScAgr (Honoris Causa)

Brian is one of Australia’s most respected advisers on climate change, emissions trading and the economic impact of current and future climate and energy policies. He is a well known commentator on Australian agricultural, minerals and energy commodities. He previously held the position of Executive Director of the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE).

Brian was first appointed Executive Director of ABARE in 1988. He left the Bureau briefly for a senior position in the Federal Department of Primary Industries and Energy before returning to ABARE as Executive Director in 1995.

Prior to heading up ABARE, Brian was Professor of Agricultural Economics at the University of Sydney and became Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture at the University in 1987. He was appointed Adjunct Professor of Sustainable Resources Development in 2003.

Concurrently with his position at ABARE, in 1993 Brian was appointed one of the experts completing the socioeconomic assessment of climate change for the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Second Assessment Report. He played an integral role in the international climate change negotiations as economic adviser to Australia’s negotiating team in the lead up to, and at, the third Conference of the Parties in Kyoto.

He again fulfilled that role at the fourth, fifth and sixth Conferences of the Parties of the UNFCCC and was engaged as one of the experts completing the IPCC’s Third and Fourth Assessment Reports. Brian is also approached by government departments and private firms to advise on climate change, emissions trading and the economic impact of current and future climate and energy policies.

Dr Fisher has been the government board member on a number of statutory corporations including the Council of the Australian Institute of Marine Science. Brian has published over 290 papers and monographs.

In addition to his position with ABARE in 2003 and 2004 he was an Associate Commissioner of the Productivity Commission and in 2005 the Chairman of the Prime Minister’s Exports and Infrastructure Taskforce. He received the Farrer Memorial Medal in August 1994, became a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia in November 1995, was awarded the Public Service Medal in 2002 and received an Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2007. He holds a PhD in agricultural economics and a DScAgr (Honoris Causa) from the University of Sydney.