Many Australian women will know the G20 summit is coming up in Brisbane, but they may not think it has much relevance to their daily lives. But that is not the case. Joe Hockey needs us, and he may not…
“But who do you think’s right, Prof? The optimists or the pessimists?” At the end of my sustainability economics course in 2007, students were challenging me to end 20 years of professional fence-sitting…
The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems – the problems of…
Since 1990, GDP per person in China has doubled and then redoubled. With average incomes multiplying fourfold in little more than two decades, one might expect many of the Chinese people to be dancing…
Last week the IMF revised its 2014 global economic growth forecast down to 3.3% from the 3.7% expected six months ago, confirming that most economies around the world, Australia included, continue to underperform…
What does genuine economic progress look like? The orthodox answer is that a bigger economy is always better, but this idea is increasingly strained by the knowledge that, on a finite planet, the economy…
A newly released report called Better Growth, Better Climate draws the seductive conclusion that “we can create lasting economic growth while also tackling the immense risks of climate change”. But while…
When the central bank governors and finance ministers from the G20 agreed in February to increase growth by at least two percentage points over the next five years, they fell short of delivering a common…
With France remaining economically stagnant, Italy falling back into recession, and Greece and Portugal still struggling to stand on their feet, the international community often looks to Germany, not…
The speed and scale of China’s rapid economic growth has led to widespread degradation of its densely inhabited coastlines, according to an analysis of 60 years of social, economic and environmental data…
The UK’s economy is highly unbalanced; we have the worst regional disparities in the developed world and London’s property prices are also the world’s most expensive – second only to Monaco. Rebalancing…
What are the risks in the economic outlook for Australia? Typically, prognosticators take a scenario-based (aka “story-telling”) approach to answering this sort of question. And usually these scenarios…
Inequality is limiting South Africa’s economic progress in more ways than we think. For most of the past 20 years, it was simply assumed that economic growth on its own would reduce inequality. This is…
What do the latest growth figures teach us about Europe? First, the overall growth performance of the European Union is worse and more fragmented than expected. GDP in vulnerable countries such as Greece…
Imbalances in the share of growth across the regions continue to be deep-rooted, the Office of National Statistics has confirmed. By 2012, the South East was the only region that had only just crept ahead…
The Confederation of British Industries (CBI) has claimed the UK is seeing not just any economic growth, but “the right kind of growth”. But if there a right kind of growth, then there must be the wrong…
So the International Monetary Fund has revised its economic growth forecast for the UK upwards. It now expects 2.4% growth in the UK this year, up from the 1.9% they predicted a few months back. Cue celebratory…
Britons have been warned that they must save six times more for their pension or face poverty. The message is that it’s time to embrace deferred gratification and start saving. The average pension pot…
After a lifetime promoting sustainability – sadly, with limited success – last year I sat down to consider what will happen to my beloved world over the next 40 years. The main question I asked myself…
Principal Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, and Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne