Dr. Chinthani Rathnayake
Post Doctoral researcher - Theme 5
Dr. Chinthani Rathnayake is a post-doctoral research fellow working closely with Professor Bill Malcolm in Theme 5. Chinthani is specialised in social benefit-cost analysis, agricultural value chain analysis, farm management decisions, interview design and implementation, modelling of agricultural and food industries for policy analysis and impact assessment of investments in agriculture. Her current research is focused on social benefit-cost analyses of using nitrogen fertilisers in Australian agricultural industries and demand elasticities for nitrogen fertiliser products in Australia. As part of the analyses, Professor Bill Malcolm and Chinthani developed a method to assess the economic surplus generated from nitrogen use in agriculture, while also accounting for the external costs associated with nitrous oxide emissions from nitrogen fertilisers.
Chinthani completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne in 2022 under Professor Bill Malcolm on evaluating economic impacts of a government policy banning the use of Glyphosate on the tea industry in Sri Lanka. As a part of the PhD research, she developed an Equilibrium Displacement Model for the tea industry to assess welfare impacts arising from exogenous shocks across markets along the value chain and wider industry.