Tag Archives: economic policy

Economic Policy covers the aims and the instruments of state economic interventionism. As a broad problematique it existed from the very birth of the science of the economy. However, as a special subject-area it was inaugurated in the interwar era and formalized by the beginning of the post-World War II era. Since then, Economic Policy faced serious ups and lows within economic analysis and policymaking. Particularly within Mainstream Economics (the nowadays dominant tradition within...

Economic Policy After The Midterm Elections  Will economic policy change much aa a result of the midterm elections? After all, the GOP has taken the House of Representatives, if only narrowly, with inflation and the economy supposedly the top issue, especially for those supporting the GOP. Will this reappearance of “divided government” have an impact on economic policy? My bottom line is probably not too much, although there is the serious...

I took part in a UQ Economics Thought Leadership event last week, looking at this topic. It was a family event as my cousin Robynne, who has done lots of work in this field (currently chairs the Board of the NSW Aboriginal Housing Office, as well as being a professor at UTS among lots of other positions), also took part. Here’s a link to the UQ page with a video recording and here are my Powerpoint slides. My contribution was to link the discussion on Indigenous disadvantage to...

by Lekha Chakraborty and Amandeep Kaur[1] The macroeconomic uncertainty during the Covid-19 pandemic is hard to measure. Economists and policymakers use the “output gap” variable to capture “slack.” It is a deviation between potential output and actual output, which is a standard representation of a “cycle.” The potential output is an unobserved variable. There is an increasing concern about the way we measure potential output—decomposing the output into trends and cycles. This is...

by Lekha Chakraborty and Amandeep Kaur[1] The macroeconomic uncertainty during the Covid-19 pandemic is hard to measure. Economists and policymakers use the “output gap” variable to capture “slack.” It is a deviation between potential output and actual output, which is a standard representation of a “cycle.” The potential output is an unobserved variable. There is an increasing concern about the way we measure potential output—decomposing the output into trends and cycles. This is...

That’s the headline for my latest piece in Independent Australia. Opening paras AS WE WAIT anxiously for the arrival of a COVID-19 vaccine, which will be made overseas, most Australians will welcome the news that a new vaccine manufacturing plant will be built in Melbourne to produce vaccines for influenza and Q fever (and possibly for future pandemics), as well as antivenenes for snake and spider bites.The plant is the result of a deal between the Commonwealth Government and...

For some reason, I’ve been asked to do an interview with a Korean radio station about the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, frequently described as “the world’s largest trade deal”, on the basis that the countries involved have a combined population of 2.2 billion, more than any previous deal. The most interesting thing about the deal is what’s not in it (also, who’s not in it, notably India and the United States). Early drafts followed the classic pattern, with strong...

[embedded content] Instead of videos a series of podcasts on the history of political economy, and its relation to economic policy in the United States. This is based on a course I teach for undergraduates.

… is Australia Post a commercial operation or a public service? That’s the headline for a piece I wrote for The Guardian (my first there in quite a while). A key point is that the deal that allegedly justified the expensive gifts was, in essence, the continuation of an arrangement established a hundred years ago between what was then the Post Office and the publicly owned Commonwealth Bank. Whoever put that arrangement together deserves commendation, but I doubt that they were...

Ross Gittins makes some obvious, but important, points about what is lsot when vital public services are contracted out. As he says, economists have known this since the work of Oliver Hart, last century, but it’s only now penetrating the policy establishment. In the UK, which led the charge for outsourcing under Thatcher, insourcing is the New Big Thing. Unlike Hart, I’m not in the running for the Economics Nobel, but I’ve spent much of the last thirty years supplying empirical...