To understand an economic reality where growth is increasingly more qualitative than quantitative and where environmental constraints need a careful understanding, economics needs a major overhaul.
The principles that drive financial markets emphasize short-term profits at the cost of long-term benefits.
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Investors are increasingly concerned about climate change, but for the markets to deploy their full capacities, the dominant principles that guide them need to be revised.
The humble zipper has some profound things to tell us about innovation, competitive advantage and international trade.
If we want economics to appeal to young Australians, it needs to move away from theory and towards tackling some of the trickiest issues faced by the next generation.
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Jim Stanford, University of Sydney and Richard Denniss, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
For economics to play a more helpful, critical role, it must abandon blind faith in the free market and embrace the social, historical, and environmental context in which economics actually happens.
The authors of the book The Making of Finance highlight the intellectual capture of the financial worlds.
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Nothing has changed since the 2008 financial crisis. Orthodox theory continues to structure the entire financial industry, yet there is an urgent need to study the social and political nature of markets.
It’s not a scam. It also won’t make you fabulously wealthy. Initiative Q wants a stable private currency for payments processing rather than a vehicle for speculation.
Amazon has lifted its lowest pay rate to US$15 an hour.
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The economic theory of comparative cost advantage is more akin to natural law – it can’t be wished away. And during the ongoing trade war ignited by Donald Trump, it has never been more relevant.
It all comes down to incentives and the size of parliament.
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News that Australian CEO pay has soared to a 17-year high at a time when ordinary workers’ wages are flatlining is ultimately bad news for economic growth and prosperity.
The treasurer referred to the A$13 billion “zombie” measures the Senate has failed to pass as a “Senate tax”, in justifying the tax increases in this budget.
Lukas Coch
The budget was extraordinary in many ways. It is an abandonment of restraint on taxes by a liberal government. It is nakedly populist and it also acknowledges that government debt can be productive.
It is an attractive proposition to say we would gain significant efficiencies if there were a limited number of major providers of government-funded human services.
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If we continue to base our views of the charity sector on incorrect assumptions and perceptions we run the risk of doing considerable damage to a national asset.
Trying to answer policy questions with economics is bound to involve ideology.
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Asymmetric information – where one party to a potential transaction knows more about the deal than the other – can cause markets to collapse. Luckily, we’ve invented a few tricks to deal with it.