The CAMA RBA Shadow Board is a project by the Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, based at the ANU, which asks industry and academic economists what interest rate the Reserve Bank of Australia should…
When FIFA awarded the 2014 World Cup finals to Brazil seven years ago, it looked as if the tournament would be a coming out party for the country. Now, the picture is far more mixed. It has become fashionable…
To paraphrase The Wire’s Stringer Bell: “Product, my dear colleagues. Product”. When the putative “CEO” of the Barksdale drug gang was referring to “product”, he possibly wasn’t thinking of the “gross…
Treasurer Joe Hockey’s first budget creates a clear path almost to a surplus. Our children will pay much less for current spending. Real political courage was required to get this far. But the budget also…
Charis Palmer, The Conversation and Emil Jeyaratnam, The Conversation
Since publication this infographic has been amended. The original version stated the NDIS was scaled back. There are no planned cuts to the funding of the NDIS.
In the industrial era, economic growth has become equated with human progress, with a fundamental assumption that material growth and consumption inevitably leads to improvements in our well-being. Over…
What does the now sustained recovery in the UK and the still tentative signs of recovery in the eurozone tell us? According to some on the right, it says all is good in the world, austerity has been successful…
Germany’s envied “Mittelstand” of modest, family-owned companies which have underpinned the country’s emergence from the financial crisis has given Europe a problem. It has helped turned the country into…
Gautam Appa, London School of Economics and Political Science
It seems highly likely that Narendra Modi will be the next elected prime minister of India. One reason for that has been a well-orchestrated campaign to represent Modi as some kind of legislative miracle…
James Whitmore, The Conversation and Michael Hopkin, The Conversation
Climate change is already having a major impact on the planet, with impacts forecast to worsen significantly, according to the latest summary of peer-reviewed climate science from the Intergovernmental…
Carsten Holz, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
The world’s second-largest economy has become the second-most watched and yet investors, politicians and economists are never quite clear what it is they’re looking at. China’s premier, Li Keqiang, is…
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…
How happy do you feel today? How satisfied are you with your life? Do you think your life has any worth? These are the kind of questions increasingly put to survey respondents as academics and politicians…
Mark Taylor, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick
The Office for National Statistics has issued the welcome news that UK GDP rose 0.8% from July to September this year. This is the fastest rate of increase in the past three years and is the third consecutive…
The Indian economy is in trouble. The anticipated tapering of the US Federal Reserve’s aggressively expansionary quantitative easing program has seen a drying up of capital inflow into a country with a…
There has been much, and justified, criticism, of Tony Abbott’s decision to conceal the costings of his policies until two days before the election, when the electronic media blackout will be in place…
Carl Obst, The University of Melbourne and John Wiseman, The University of Melbourne
**A more sustainable Australia.* As the 2013 election campaign continues, we’ve asked academics to look at some of the long-term issues affecting Australia – the issues that will shape our future.* How…
“We have among the lowest of budget deficits and debt to GDP of any other major economies in the developed world… If it’s so bad, Mr Abbott, why have we been given by the three ratings agencies a AAA credit…
In the verbal volley between Gillard and Abbott, Swan and Hockey, there is a conversation that we are not hearing. It bubbles below the consciousness of mainstream Australia, a conversation that is old…