In the midst of a national debate about housing affordability, Professor Paul Frijters joins the Young Economists’ Network to talk about his innovative analysis of corruption in the property market. In a ground-breaking recent study (with Cameron Murray), Paul looked at the record of Queensland’s Urban Land Development Authority and quantified the value of political connections for developers. The results of the study suggest that ‘many billions of dollars of economic rent are being regularly transferred from the general population to connected land owners through political rezoning decisions’. Join us for what promises to be an memorable evening with one of Australia’s most engaging and thought-provoking economists. Paul Frijters is a Professor of Economics at the University of Queensland. Paul has a wide range of research interests, specialising in happiness, labour market, health economics and econometrics. He is particularly interested in how socio-economic variables affect the human life experience and the ‘unanswerable’ economic mysteries in life. His recent research into rural-urban migration in China produced new evidence and a prediction that China would be the largest economy in the world within the next 10 years. In 2009, Paul was awarded the Economic Society of Australia’s Young Economist Award. Paul is also a contributor to the Club Troppo and Core Economics blogs. 2015 Corruption and the Property Market (2)