Peter David Drysdale AO (born 24 October 1938, in Grafton, New South Wales) is an Australian economist and writer.

He is Emeritus Professor of Economics in the Crawford School of Public Policy in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University.

[3] He is also co-editor of East Asia Forum, which is consistently cited in Reuters, The Telegraph, The Australian Financial Review, PBS, BBC News and Global Times, among others.

He was brought by Sir John Crawford to the Australian National University where he received his PhD in 1967 under the supervision of Max Corden.

A volume of essays by some of his former student commemorating his retirement, Japan’s Future in East Asia and the Pacific (edited by Mari Pangestu and Ligang Song), was published in 2007.