Peter Martin, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
The Conversation’s distinguished panel predicts unusually weak growth, dismal spending, no improvement in either unemployment or wage growth, and an increased chance of recession.
Happiness may well be a choice, but it is a difficult choice. And much that might make that choice a little easier depends on the choices of influential others.
We’ve two options of keeping ourselves out of recession, neither of them easy. The government will have to abandon its determination to get the budget into surplus.
It it wasn’t for a surge in government spending economic growth would be extraordinarily weak. As it is, it’s the weakest since the global financial crisis.
Peter Martin, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
The Reserve Bank cut interest rates on Tuesday because we weren’t spending or pushing up prices at the rate it wanted. On Wednesday we might find things are worse than it thought.
Mike Salvaris, The University of Melbourne; Fiona Stanley, The University of Western Australia, dan Kate Lycett, Murdoch Children's Research Institute
Countries around the world are taking society’s happiness and well-being into account when formulating policy. So, why is Australia so focused on economics as the sole marker of progress?
Economic growth should be reimagined not only at the macro level, but also at the micro, business level. Social enterprises offer new, collaborative approaches to growth that maximize societal impact.
Peter Martin, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
The Conversation has assembled a forecasting team of 19 academic economists from 12 universities across six states. Together, they assign a 25% probability to a recession within two years.
Warren Sanderson, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York); Sergei Scherbov, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), dan Simone Ghislandi, Bocconi University
Most researchers use the UN’s Human Development Index to measure each country’s progress, but that system has flaws. A new, simplified index aims to do it better.