The 2013 winners have now been announced. David Spencer responds in a postscript at the bottom of this article. What are economists for? Well, one obvious answer is to “do economics”, defined in the academic…
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Articles on Economics
Displaying 601 - 620 of 647 articles
Business schools should consider broader perspectives of the value of management scholarship to increase engagement and the…
What do bankers and bacteria have in common? Finite resources, quick decision-making and an appreciation of trade-offs, according to a study in Ecology Letters. So could bacterial modelling ever help us…
A slowing economy and drop in government revenue has led to an increased budget deficit, new taxes and some cuts to existing programs. Delivering the Rudd government’s long awaited economic statement…
For a brief period of time in the 1980s, one of the biggest selling t-shirts carried a print of an arrow which simply said “I’m with stupid”. It pointed to the person next to the witty wearer. In the 1990s…
Many critics of the coalition government’s “Plan A” argue that it should deviate from deficit reduction plans to instead stimulate growth via additional infrastructure spending. Recent advocates of this…
It is known as the Nudge unit; a government behavioural insights team, that draws on theories popularised in a bestselling book from Yale. Following much hype and publicity, the behavioural insights team…
How did the Australian economy, which boasts the best performance of the major advanced economies, end up with an estimated budget deficit of A$19 billion this year and an estimated debt of $178 billion…
Economists understand greed very well; after all, the urge to get rich is our discipline’s main explanation for human actions. Economists further recognise that greed can be good. When our greedy urges…
Last week we learned a famous 2010 academic paper, relied on by political big-hitters to bolster arguments for austerity cuts, contained significant errors; and that those errors came down to misuse of…
The economic literature is full of excellent articles that are not read outside small academic circles. There are, however, important exceptions. “Growth in a Time of Debt”, by Carmen R. Reinhart and Kenneth…
One certainty about economic forecasts is that, almost certainly, they will prove to be incorrect. The best forecasters can hope for is not to make systematic errors – to get it right on average – and…
The economic profession lacks a unified theory of economic growth. Textbooks and academic journals contain a plethora of models and paradigms which generate different (and sometimes contradictory) predictions…
In a rare volte-face, the International Monetary Fund this week admitted that it grossly underestimated the impact of the austerity regime it advised Europeans to adopt. A paper authored by IMF chief economist…
The last Space Shuttle recently returned to Earth. That reminded me that 45 years ago I was undertaking a PhD in physics at Australian National University, investigating the re-entry of the space shuttle…
Music fans may have noticed something odd when their favourite artists release new “best-of” compilations or remaster back catalogues for CD or iTunes. Over successive reissues, the same songs sound worse…
Universities and macro-economists still haven’t found a way to solve the crisis of economics that was triggered by the global financial meltdown says economist Martin Wolf. Speaking to an audience of economics…
The Nobel prize for economics is often awarded for relatively abstract theoretical work. Rather less often, it is awarded for work with clear practical relevance. This year, the committee responsible for…
Americans tend to stop work during economic booms rather than downfalls, according to a study from the University of Missouri…
The collapse of the child-care business ABC Learning in 2010 was an extraordinary chapter in Australian corporate history. Colourful Queensland businessman Eddy Groves, built the world’s largest publicly…
Top contributors
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Associate Professor of Markets, Public Policy and Law, Boston University
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Professor of Economics, UNSW Sydney
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Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
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Dean of Business School, University of Southern Queensland
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Professor of Economics and National Senior Teaching Fellow, Griffith University
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Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland
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Adjunct Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Adelaide
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Senior Lecturer in Economics, The Open University
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Professiorial Fellow, The University of Melbourne
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Distinguished Professor, Arthur J. Gosnell Professor of Economics, & Interim Head, Department of Sustainability, Rochester Institute of Technology
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Economist at Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University
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Professor of Economics, Manchester Metropolitan University
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Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, University of Tasmania
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Associate Professor in International Macroeconomics, Cambridge Judge Business School
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Economist, UNSW Sydney
