The Economic Society of Australia (ESA) has awarded the ESA Distinguished Fellow Award 2026 to CEPAR Director Scientia Professor John Piggott AO.

John Piggott, Scientia Professor at UNSW Business School, led the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR) as its Director from 2011 to 2024 and continues to lead its successor centre at UNSW, building it into a centre of national and international standing, and has been at the forefront of the economics of pensions, retirement and population ageing for more than two decades. His research, motivated by policy questions since his return to Australia in 1979, spans taxation, redistribution, health insurance and ageing.

He has more than 140 publications, with placements in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies and Journal of Public Economics, among others. His jointly authored 1988 Review of Economic Studies paper remains the most cited journal article on Australian health economics, and his 2005 work on separating idiosyncratic and systematic longevity risk anticipated retirement income products now offered commercially. 

His policy contributions are equally substantial. He served on the Henry Tax Review Panel (2008 to 2009) and the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Superannuation, worked with the Japanese Government at cabinet level on pension issues from 1999 to 2008, and has advised the World Bank, APEC and the governments of Indonesia and Kazakhstan on pension reform. He delivered the Academy of the Social Sciences Hancock Lecture in 2013, serves as book review editor of the Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, and has been a member of the ARC College of Experts.