It is with great sadness that we mark the passing of Associate Professor Duncan Ironmonger AM, FASSA, whose life’s work advanced economic research and analysis in Australia, with a distinguished career closely tied to the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Melbourne.
Dr Duncan Ironmonger, an economist, was associated with the Faculty of Business and Economics from 1966 when he joined the Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic and Social Research and subsequently became its deputy director and then acting director. He moved to the Department of Economics in 1992.
Born in Orange, New South Wales, Ironmonger attended Yass High School and Canberra Grammar School. He completed the first two years of his Bachelor of Commerce as a part-time student at Canberra University College, an affiliate of the University of Melbourne, and his final year at the University of Melbourne. He then proceeded to a master’s degree in economics. His Cambridge PhD (1962) on the characteristics approach to demand analysis was path-breaking but the delay in publication (as New Commodities and Consumer Behaviour, 1972) lessened its impact. From 1963 to 1966, he was a division director at the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Dr Ironmonger joined the Melbourne Institute as a senior research fellow and was promoted to Reader in 1969. He was, in effect, the deputy director with administrative responsibilities. His detailed knowledge of Australian statistics and experience with computers facilitated the development of an economic database, probably the first in Australia—at this time, official statistics were available only in hard copy. The computerised information formed the basis of a short-term forecasting model. He was the founding editor (1967–75) of The Australian Economic Review and contributed to the reviews of the economy that appeared in each issue.
He was a familiar face on television news services, expounding his views on the economy. Drawing on the work of the Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, he led the introduction of consumer surveys: the index of consumer sentiment has been published continuously since 1973. Dr Ironmonger lectured in econometrics to students enrolled in the MA in economics (1967–74). On Professor Ronald Henderson’s retirement as director of the institute in 1979, Ironmonger became acting director.
Following the appointment of Professor Peter Dixon as director of the Melbourne Institute, Dr Ironmonger established and directed the Centre for Applied Research on the Future in the Faculty of Architecture and Planning (1986–91). He then returned to the Faculty of Business and Economics, establishing the Households Research Unit in the Department of Economics. He was at the forefront of developing estimates of time use by Australian and international households with a specific focus on the calculation of the economic value of unpaid household work.
Dr Ironmonger held external positions including being on the board of the State Bank of Victoria (1984–90). He was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2013 for his significant service to economics as a researcher, author and academic. Even after his official retirement, Dr Ironmonger remained dedicated to pushing the boundaries of economic understanding. He will always be remembered as one of the great economic minds of his era.