Warren joined the then Faculty of Agricultural Economics in 1960, the year in which the department’s first cohort of students were approaching completion of their degrees. He joined as a lecturer, ultimately achieving the Chair in Agricultural Economics.
Warren was a member of the team that created in 1987 the Centre for Water Policy Research and was its foundation Director.
He was also the leader of an application for seed funding from the Kellogg Foundation to establish a Rural Adjustment Unit. This was granted $1 million in 1976, subsequently morphing into the Rural Development Centre, later called the Institute for Rural Futures.
Warren committed university seed funding to the launch of the full-fee MBA program and the then School of Business Administration. He drove the foundation of the School of Law in 1993. Both initiatives have proven to be well-conceived and very successful.
Warren was Chair of the Academic Board from 1988-90, and Dean of the Faculty of Economics, Business and Law from 1990-95.
He earned his PhD from UNE in 1969, was made Emeritus Professor on his retirement in 1995, and was granted an Honorary Doctorate in 2002.
In retirement, Warren served as: Special Adviser Natural Resources to the NSW Premier’s Department; Chair, NSW Government Independent Advisory Committee on Socio-economic Assessment; Member, NSW Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal; Chair, NSW Government Land and Water Management Plan Assessment Team; and Associate Commissioner, Industry Commission.
Warren will be remembered as a first-rate economist, a reliable friend, a mentor to all he supervised, and a profoundly insightful researcher: a charming intellectual colleague.
His death notice can be found here.
