Tag Archives: economic policy

International Studies Quarterly has just published a symposium responding to a paper by Henry Farrell and me, which has been released from behind the paywall for the occasion. Our paper has the fairly self-explanatory title “Consensus, Dissensus, and Economic Ideas: Economic Crisis and the Rise and Fall of Keynesianism ” In our paper we looked at the resurgence of fiscal Keynesianism in the immediate aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis and of the successful counterthrust leading to...

David Blowers from the Grattan Institute has a piece in The Conversation (also on the ABC) headlined A high price for policy failure: the ten-year story of spiralling electricity bills. It’s not bad, and is notable for the observation that History may judge the introduction of competition to the retail electricity market as an expensive mistake. I don’t think we need to wait for history; in fact, we didn’t need to wait until 2017. Most of the problems that have subsequently emerged...

I’m working with Troy Henderson from the University of Sydney on a book chapter looking at union responses to the idea of a universal basic income (UBI),which have covered a range from supportive to strongly hostile, with the latter view predominant in Australia. Here’s a draft of my section of the chapter. Comments much appreciated. UBI, work and unions The concept of a universal basic income (UBI), has been advanced in a number of different forms, notably including guaranteed minimum...

I’ve had plenty of disagreements with Andrew Norton about education policy. But I couldn’t write a better response to the government’s decision to end open access to university education for young Australians than this one. So, I’ll just link to it and open comments.

I’ve just been invited to make a submission to a Senate inquiry into TAFE in South Australia. From what I can glean, this is a politically motivated exercise by the Turnbull government to make capital out of some embarrassing failures in a Labor state. But it gives me the incentive to write something about the catastrophic failure of vocational education and training in Australia, a failure for which there is plenty of blame to go around. Rather than making political capital out of such...

Where thinks tanks are at there best is investigating long terms trends and international best practice, lifting eyes above the day to day crisis management of civil servants.One such area is Land Value Taxation.  In our age of rentier capitalism, poor productivity and a housing crisis our latest policy hero seems to be Henry George, with think tanks across the political spectrum championing it.  Of course it is far easier to propose a policy reform than to get down to the nitty gritty...

Both Labor and the LNP have released their economic policies just two days before the state election. This isn’t just a matter of “costings”. Essentially, all the new expenditure items and tax reductions were announced with some fanfare during the campaign, while the revenue measures and expenditure cuts needed to fund these goodies have been kept under wraps until now. This is a terrible way to run an election, but the “hardheads” on both sides obviously think it’s a good idea (the same...

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post making some observations on the closely related ideas of a Universal Basic Income or Guaranteed Minimum Income. The most important was Observation 1: Any UBI scheme can be replicated by a GBI with the same effective marginal tax rates, and vice versa I meant to follow up with a more detailed exploration of financing issues, but all sorts of other things intervened. However, I’ve now prepared a draft, which is over the fold. Comments and criticism...

Expanding on a post a little while ago, I have a piece in Inside Story arguing that multi-factor productivity, the Holy Grail of microeconomic reform for the last few decades, is a residual that is and should be equal to zero. From getting the idea to publishing it took me a few weeks. That’s a huge contrast from last century when the best I could have hoped for is an article in a low-prestige journal, taking a year or more and reaching an audience of, at most, a few hundred. That’s...

I have a piece in The Conversation about the decision to cut weekend penalty rates. This decision needs to be put in the context of forty years of policy aimed at pushing down wages, eroding conditions (such as the weekend) and weakening the position of unions. I talked to Fran Kelly on ABC RN Breakfast just now. Hopefully a link and transcript will be available soon.