Vale Lew Evansđ
Lew Evans ONZM is remembered as an economist, colleague, mentor and farmer
A generation of economists will be saddened to learn of the death of Lew Evans in May 2026.
Lew was one of New Zealandâs finest academic economists and was widely published in prestigious international academic journals. The citation for his NZAE Distinguished Fellow award in 2005 noted that his contribution spanned the fields of agricultural economics, econometrics, economic organisation and the effects of competition law and regulation on the performance of firms and markets.
Lewâs research had public policy relevance for New Zealand firms and markets and for our laws and public institutions. His work was influential in competition policy, contract design and organisational form and ownership in the electricity and gas industries and the telecommunications, transport, dairy and health sectors.
Lew grew up on his familyâs high country farm in Marlborough. Like notable New Zealand economists Bryan Philpott and Bruce Ross, Lewâs route to economics came through agriculture. Lew worked for five years as a farm adviser with the Department of Agriculture following his BAgrSc degree at Lincoln College. After completing his masterâs degree at Lincoln, he departed New Zealand to study at the University of Wisconsin, where he undertook an MA in Agricultural Economics, followed by an MS and PhD in Economics.
Back in New Zealand, he took up a position at Victoria University of Wellington, where he was appointed Professor of Economics in 1988. Lew did not however give up on farming. Home for Lew and Sharon was their 300-hectare property near PÄuatahanui, north of Wellington, where they farmed deer, sheep, cattle and trees. Lew and Sharonâs generosity in hosting colleagues, graduate students and visiting academics at their farm was legendary. One such visitor was Kansas-born Nobel prize winner Vernon Smith who visited New Zealand in 2000. Smith, like Lew, had also spent his childhood on a family farm and wore his trademark string bolo tie and cowboy boots.
In 2011 Lew was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to education. Lew was a committed and dedicated researcher, and sometimes he was a little grumpy about the time teaching took away from his work. Yet perhaps his most enduring legacy is the number of students and colleagues whom he mentored over the years, and his ability to make economics understandable to policy makers, lawyers and regulators. In 1998 he established the New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation (ISCR), which undertook high-quality academic research targeted at public policy issues. Its newsletter, Competition and Regulation Times, published between 2000 and 2014 contained articles accessible to business, legal and public policy audiences. Many of those articles remain relevant and informative today. ISCR also took on summer interns and research students, springboarding their careers in economics, law and public policy.
Lew became Professor Emeritus in 2014 and continued providing advice and guidance on New Zealandâs most important market, competition and regulatory questions. He was a Senior Consultant to economics consulting firm NERA through to 2022 and a Ministerial Appointment to the Access Panel of the New Zealand Core Dairy Database through to 2025.
In later years Lew and Sharon returned to live in his beloved Marlborough. Lew died in Blenheim on 27 May 2026, aged 82 years. Those of us who knew Lew and his work offer our deep condolences to his family and friends. We remember him with great fondness and know that he will be sorely missed. NZAE and Asymmetric Information invite readers to share memories of Lew on this page.
[A personal note from the Editor: Lew introduced me to economics, delivering the first economics course I attended, and gave me my first economics job â as a Research Fellow at the ISCR. Under his direction, my initial task was studying rail in New Zealand â a topic that has followed me doggedly ever since! Youâll be missed, Lew â Dave.]
I had the extraordinary good fortune of working with Lew as a colleague and as a co-author. Lew taught me invaluable lessons about economics and about research. It was an honour and a pleasure to write his citation when he became a Distinguished Fellow of the NZ Association of Economists - an honour that he richly deserved. I will miss Lew as a person, as a colleague and as an exemplar of how an economist should apply their skills to address real-world economic matters.
Arthur Grimes
Thanks, Judy, for your tribute to Lew! I met him a few times and gratefully acknowledge the important contribution he made to Economics, particularly (for me) his observations and writings on the dominance of opportunity cost of hydro generators in the wholesale electricity market in New Zealand. This topic is badly misunderstood in other markets (eg the NEM in Australia) and so I continue to refer to journal articles either authored or co-authored by him on the subject.