About the Author
Dr Leonie Pearson is an ecological economist who has spent over two decades refusing to let economics be boring. She has worked across Australia, Southeast Asia, the UK, and China, advising governments, securing over $60 million in research funding, and somehow managing to make cost-benefit analysis genuinely compelling in a classroom. In 2025, the Lao PDR Government awarded her the Friendship Cross for her contributions to rural development policy — proof that good economics, done well, actually changes lives.
Economic Policy Analysis Playbook grew out of four years of award-winning teaching at the University of Canberra, where students discovered that economics could be taught through real ministerial briefs, policy games, and problems that actually matter. The book is the distilled, battle-tested version of that approach: rigorous where it needs to be, diverse in its perspectives, and deliberately light on theory that never survived contact with a real policy problem. It is free and open access — because good economic thinking belongs to everyone, wherever they are.
When she is not writing, teaching, or winning international honours, Leonie leads major research programmes in Southeast Asia, directs the UC Research for Development Network, and advises on Australia’s most significant water policy frameworks. She believes the best economists are the ones who’ve sat across the table from a decision-maker with a deadline — and this book was written for the people who want to be at that table.
