Andrew Leigh author photo
Image via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Andrew Leigh

Born: August 03, 1972 – Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Andrew Leigh is an Australian economist, politician, and author whose books examine inequality, economics, and evidence-based public policy. His notable works include Battlers and Billionaires, Randomistas, and The Shortest History of Economics, and his writing has helped popularize research on social mobility, tax policy, and randomized trials.

Biography & Author's Journey

Andrew Leigh was born in Sydney in 1972 and built the kind of résumé that made several careers possible. He took first-class honours degrees in arts and law at the University of Sydney, went on to Harvard for an MPA and a PhD in public policy, worked as a lawyer in Sydney and London, served as associate to Justice Michael Kirby, and then moved into economics because he saw it as a stronger tool for addressing poverty and disadvantage. By his mid-thirties he had become a professor of economics at the Australian National University. The decisive turning point came in 2010, when he left academia for electoral politics, carrying with him a family ethic that, as he later put it, treated a life well lived as a life of service. ((https://www.aph.gov.au/A_Leigh_MP?utm_source=openai))

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Quotes

quote
It is hard to imagine a greater honour than to represent your friends and neighbours in our national parliament
-First Speech
quote
An equality of manners is a lovely thing, but as many a homeless person has observed, you can’t eat politeness
-Counting the Cost of Inequality
quote
A politics of love requires us to value citizens of other countries
-The Politics of Love
quote
Americans want to change the world. Europeans are more inclined to enjoy it
-Can America Live Up to the American Dream?
quote
Scepticism isn’t the enemy of optimism: it’s the channel through which our desire to solve big problems translates into real results
-How the Randomistas Can Help Fight Inequality
quote
Inequality and community are two sides of the same coin
-Address to the Australian Progress Conference
quote
Australians don’t sit back and wait for problems to solve themselves – we step up, we work together, and we get things done
-Address to Co-op Federation Assembly

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