This page is optimized for a taller screen. Please rotate your device or increase the size of your browser window.

Kelly
Wyett

Senior Adviser for Economic Growth Practice, Abt Australia

Kelly Wyett is Abt's Senior Economist, with 15 years of experience in international development and economic policy. Her work has focused on economic growth, fiscal policy, macroeconomics, economic governance, infrastructure policy, private sector development, and trade and investment policy. She has extensive experience delivering technical assistance, training, and capacity building activities, evaluating aid investments, facilitating workshops, writing and editing, analyzing data, forecasting economic variables, and designing surveys. Kelly has worked in Indonesia, the Philippines, other Southeast Asian countries, the Pacific, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Kelly leads Abt's economics practice, with responsibility for strategy, team development and growth. Her analysis of a COVID-19 survey identified previously unknown impacts on worker productivity and wellbeing and recommended that employers step up their support to workers. This work was shared with business associations and hundreds of the member firms throughout Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) used Kelly’s review of the Aus4Reform Program to design their subsequent iteration of their support for economic reform in Vietnam.

At Prospera (the Australia Indonesia Partnership for Economic Development), Kelly advised the Indonesian government on the impact of and economic policy response to COVID-19. The government subsequently implemented a recommendation regarding micro-grants for MSMEs. Before Covid-19, Kelly led technical assistance projects on infrastructure policy, industrial policy, and other economic reforms. At the World Bank, she delivered capacity building activities as a long-term Indonesian Ministry of Finance advisor. She helped deliver a Public Expenditure Review, which analyzed an array of government expenditures. She also has worked for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT), Harvard’s Center for International Development, the Reserve Bank of Australia, and economic consultancy Castalia.  

Expertise:

  • Economic governance and policy reform, economic growth, growth diagnostics  

  • Impact of COVID-19 and the economic policy response to COVID-19  

  • Macroeconomics, monetary policy, fiscal policy, public expenditure reviews, subsidy reform 

  • Infrastructure policy and planning, Public Private Partnerships, private investment in infrastructure  

  • Economic diversification, product space analysis, structural transformation, industry prioritization, industrial policy, State-Owned Enterprise reform, private sector development  

Key Projects:

  • Review and scoping study of Aus4Reform (economic reform program) in Vietnam for DFAT 

  • Analysis of a COVID-19 impact survey across large formal firms in Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia—Investing in Women Program 

  • Analysis and advice for the Indonesian Ministry of Finance on the economic policy response to Covid-19 in Indonesia, including: support to MSMEs, the sectoral impacts of the crisis, the impact on employment, design of a rapid survey to track the impact of Covid-19 

  • Papua New Guinea Economic Diversification and Product Space Analysis for DFAT 

  • Uganda Growth Diagnostic and Product Space Analysis while at Harvard Center for International Development 

Publications:

  • "South Sudan: The Birth of an Economy." Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization 7, no. 1 (2012) 

  • “Escaping a Rising Tide: Sea Level Rise and Migration in Kiribati”. Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies. (2013) 

Kelly Wyett