Dr Siddharth Shirodkar is the Principal Economist at Indigenous Business Australia. Siddharth has worked in Indigenous economic development since 2015, joining the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to work on Indigenous entrepreneurship. He has worked as an economist in the Australian Government for close to 15 years, including at the National Indigenous Australians Agency, the Treasury, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and with the former Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.
Siddharth’s PhD research was on the pathways and barriers to Indigenous Australians starting a business. He has taken a mixed-methods approach to investigate factors that are limiting opportunities for potential Indigenous entrepreneurs to get into business, including the impact of racial bias. His study involves econometric analysis and ground-breaking qualitative techniques to identify Australia’s hidden entrepreneurial potential. Siddharth submitted his PhD thesis in January 2021, and received his doctorate in July 2021.
Indigenous Business Australia
The Australian National University
ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS
- Garton P, Sedgewick M, and Shirodkar S (2010) ‘Australia’s Current Account Deficit in a Global Imbalances Context’, Economic Round-up 2010, 1, The Treasury, Canberra.
- Shirodkar S, Hunter B, and Foley D (2018) ‘Ongoing growth in the number of Indigenous Australians in business’. Working Paper 125, ANU Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Canberra.
- Shirodkar S (2019) ‘Bias against Indigenous Australians: Implicit association test results for Australia’. Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues, 22(3-4):3-34.
- Shirodkar S and Hunter B (2019) ‘Factors underlying the likelihood of being in business for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians’, Australian Journal of Labour Economics, 22(1):5-28.
- Shirodkar S, Hunter B and Foley D (2020) ‘A new method of estimating the number of Indigenous business owner-managers’. CSRM & SRC Methods paper, No. 2/2020.
- Shirodkar S and Hunter B (2021) ‘Implicit biases and their effect on Indigenous business ownership’. Australian Journal of Labour Economics, 24(1):1-24.
- Shirodkar S (2021) Unlocking Indigenous entrepreneurial potential: A mixed methods study of the pathways and barriers into business for Indigenous Australians [PhD Thesis], The Australian National University, Canberra.
MEDIA
- Three in four people hold negative view of Indigenous people - ANU website 9/6/2020
- Three in four people have an implicit negative bias against Indigenous Australians, study finds - ABC 9/6/2020
- Unconscious bias against Aboriginal Australians revealed through new analysis - Canberra Times 9/6/2020
- Three-quarters biased against Indigenous Australians, study finds - The Guardian 9/6/2020
- Three in four Australians hold racial bias against Indigenous people, study finds - SBS 9/6/2020
