Dr Nathan Kettlewell is a Associate Professor in the Economics Department at UTS. His research aims to improve people’s economic and social welfare, either by informing better policy decisions, or helping people to make better informed choices. He is an applied microeconomist who has written many papers in the areas of private health insurance, economic preferences, and mental wellbeing. His research on private health insurance explores topics related to consumer wellbeing and public finance, such as the role of government incentives on demand for private insurance, how insurance affects demand for healthcare, and the rationality of consumer behaviour. His research on economic preferences aims to understand why we make the decisions we do by uncovering the causes of individual variation in decision making traits, like risk aversion and trust. 

Nathan created and is responsible for the Australian Twins Economic Preferences Survey (ATEPS) – a survey of more than 1,100 adult twins, which aims to investigate the role of genes and environment on the formation of decision-making traits. ATEPS is supported by funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course, and from UTS.

In 2022, Nathan was awarded the Rising Star Award by the Australian Health Economics Society, recognising him as “a person whose work is beginning to make a significant impact nationally and internationally, reflecting either scientific excellence or policy impact (or both).” He has also received the UTS Business School Research Award for Early Career Academics (2022), the Research with Relevance award (2024) and the Engaged People award (2024). 

Nathan’s research has been published in leading economics journals such as Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and Journal of Health Economics. He is a research affiliate of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course, and the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

Nathan joined UTS in October 2019. He obtained his PhD from the UNSW Sydney in 2017, and worked at the University of Sydney between 2017-2019.