Economic Policies
The Nobel Prize winning economist James Tobin once said that the study of economics “offered the hope, as it still does, that improved understanding could better the lot of mankind”. One of the ways in which it does this is through the implementation of economic policy that helps to ameliorate boom-and-bust cycles, reduces unemployment, contains inflation or lifts people’s living standards in sustainable ways.
Fiscal Policy and Public Debt
Economic Policies, Economic Video | 2nd October 2021 Login or subscribe to view the full video and presentation slides Login Subcribe In this webinar Saul focuse public debt. How worried should we be about the increase in the amount of debt incurred by Australia’s federal and state governments since the onset of Covid-19? Is it important that public debt be “paid off” […]
Video and Presentation Slides: Fiscal Policy and Public Debt
Economic Policies | 29th September 2021Saul Eslake's webinar on fiscal policy and public debt. How worried should we be about the increase in the amount of debt incurred by Australia’s federal and state governments since the onset of Covid-19? Is it important that public debt be “paid off” at some point in the future? What criteria should we use to judge whether any given level of public debt is “sustainable”? If the level of public debt is, or were to become “unsustainable”, what could or should be done?
The “corrupt bargain” imposed by the Morrison Government
Australian Society and Politics, Economic Policies, Recent Media Interview, Tasmania | 28th September 2021Saul talks to Tasmania Talks‘ Mike O’Loughlin about Tasmania’s Treasury’s findings regarding the “corrupt bargain” imposed by the Morrison Government regarding the distribution of GST revenue among the states and territories, 28th September 2021
Old wine in new bottles: more ‘rent-seeking’ from South Australian manufacturing interests
Economic Policies, Publications, The Australian Economy | 17th September 2021There’s a new lobby group pleading for preferential treatment for manufacturing in the name of ensuring ‘sovereignty’, a word of which the present Federal Government is especially fond. But it boils down to the same old rent-seeking that has been a feature of Australian manufacturing policy for most of the past 120 years. (Full text […]
The ‘corrupt bargain’ underpinning WA’s budget surpluses
Australian Society and Politics, Economic Policies, Taxation | 16th September 2021Article published in the Australian Financial Review on 16th September 2021, examining the way in which Western Australia’s budget surpluses are being bolstered at the expense of the rest of Australia by the ‘corrupt bargain’ over shares of revenue from the GST imposed by the Morrison Government three years ago
Housing Grants: more harm than good
Australian Society and Politics, Economic Policies, Housing, News, Recent Media Interview, The Australian Economy | 15th September 2021Saul talks to Tasmania Talks‘ Mike O’loughlin on 14th September, 2021 about housing affordability crisis
Housing affordability crisis with Brooke Corte
Australian Society and Politics, Economic Policies, Housing, News, Recent Media Interview, The Australian Economy | 14th September 2021Saul talks to 2GB‘s Money News‘ Brooke Corte about housing affordabilty crisis
This is a recession – we’re just not calling it one
Economic Policies, Publications, The Australian Economy | 9th September 2021Op-ed published in the Australian Financial Review of 9th August 2021 – arguing (1) that we are in a recession now, irrespective of whether we have two consecutive quarterly contractions in real GDP, and (2) that although it shares some of the ‘responsibility’ for this second recession, the federal government’s fiscal policy response to it […]
