Ralph has been a longstanding member of the NZAE, including serving on the Council from 2003-2007. He was actively involved in proposing and furthering several initiatives which now a core part of the NZAE. Life membership was a particular push by Ralph, and he played a role in celebrating the early workers for NZAE Distinguished Fellows. Ralph was involved in the drive to set up a form of “lifetime achievement awards” to complement the annual Economist of the Year. He also wrote citations for several [Peter Lloyd and Brian Easton]. In terms of his contributions to the NZ economics profession more widely, Ralph along with Gary Hawke was keen to record our history, both economic and of the early economists. This had various aspects, but included their joint history of agriculture [Hawke & Lattimore (1999) Visionaries, Farmers & Markets: An Economic History of New Zealand Agriculture], their work on the early days of economics as a discipline [Hawke & Lattimore (2002) Scoping the History of Economics in New Zealand] plus of course the successive editions of the short macroeconomic history of NZ that started as A Briefing on the NZ Economy with Paul Dalziel.