Agenda: A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)1 IntroductionGovernments use a variety of methods including public opinion polling and focus group discussions to elicit their constituents' preferences (Lees-Marshment, 2015). These methods typically require...

In the wake of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), the governments ofAustralia and New Zealand undertook a variety of economic stimulus measures, including home insulation and heating retrofit programs. Australia's Home Insulation Program (HIP) ended...

IntroductionA great deal of attention is currently being paid to establishing the extent of inequality in New Zealand and whether it has risen in recent years. With the work of the Labour Government's 2018 Tax Working Group well underway, and a proposed...

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)1.IntroductionThe Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) was introduced in New Zealand in 2003 as a method of allocating research funding to tertiary education organisations on the basis of research performance,...

Judith Brett's The Enigmatic Mr Deakin constitutes the fifth biographical study of Alfred Deakin. It succeeds the admiring salute of Murdoch (1999 [1923]), the inscriptional chronicle of La Nauze (1965), the revelatory exposé of Gabay (1992) and the...

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)IntroductionThis study tests whether metropolitan activity centre (AC) planning actually produces activity centre-like behaviours among commuters. State planning authorities in Victoria, Australia, have been attempting...

Alex Millmow's A History of Australasian Economic Thought(Routledge, London, 2017)Several surveys of Australian and Australasian economics have been produced over the last half century or so. Craufurd Goodwin's Economic Enquiry in Australia, published...

IntroductionThank you very much for inviting me to give tonight's address. In considering what to speak about that would be of most interest and use to the Economic Society of Australia membership here in Canberra, I was inspired by my understanding...

IntroductionChinese outward direct investment (ODI) in Australia has been a hot topic for debate for many years. For example, during 2008-09, the scale and speed of the surge of Chinese state-owned enterprises' (SOEs') investment in Australia raised...

IntroductionAustralia is a large and diverse country. This diversity is obvious when we compare the densely populated southeast to the sparse and underdeveloped north, but significant economic differences exist even across rural areas. As the country...

IntroductionThe start of the 'millennium boom' can be dated as 2002-03 (Grafton 2012). The Western Australian (WA) Government was a major beneficiary of that boom, with the value of the state's export of iron ore growing hectically in response to China's...

IntroductionOur regulatory system must protect public health, welfare and safety and our environment while promoting economic growth, innovation, competitiveness and job creation. It must be based on the best available science (Office of the Press Secretary...

IntroductionSince at least the time of Adam Smith, economists have been alive to the vision of a relatively small number of 'special interests' benefiting themselves at the expense of the public weal. But distortions are today so endemic, it is tempting...

IntroductionBetween 2011 and 2013 Australia was engaged in a sustained debate about freedom of speech. This paper provides an institutional economic analysis of the key public policy issues in that debate. The first issue concerned restrictions on 'hate...

IntroductionIn the last 20 years, the three eastern Australian states of Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales (NSW) have significantly reduced the number of local councils. In the mid-1990s, Victoria slashed the number of local councils from 210...

IntroductionThe purpose of this paper is to describe a long-standing problem in the provision of mental health services in Australia,2 and to outline a reform that addresses this problem. By way of background, we describe first some 'big picture' financial...

IntroductionThe Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement is being sold as a 21st-century free-trade agreement (FTA) involving 12 member countries: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the US and Vietnam....

Jan Libich (ed.), Real-World Economic Policy: Insights from Leading Australian Economists(Cengage Learning Australia, 2015)The book is a treasure trove of economic policy lessons that brings together some of the brightest Australian economic minds. It...

Angus Deaton, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality(Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2013)Professor Deaton's qualification for tackling this ambitious subject is acknowledged by his award of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Economics....

Could 'it' happen here?Australia survived the global financial crisis relatively unscathed, despite much higher interest rates than in other developed countries (see Figure 1). But our exceptional status may be short-lived. In May 2015, the cash rate...

In 2008, the Australian government announced it would freely guarantee all retail and wholesale deposits in Australian banks, subsidiaries of foreign-owned banks, credit unions and building societies. Until the global financial crisis, the Australian...

IntroductionIn a 2012 poll, 63 per cent of Australians said that they were 'strongly against' '... the Australian government allowing foreign companies to buy Australian farmland to grow crops or farm livestock' (Lowy Institute 2012). A further 18 per...

IntroductionI started my Bachelor of Economics at Monash University in 1963. My arrival intersected the publications of Noel Butlin's two seminal pioneering works, Australian Domestic Product (1962) and Investment in Australian Economic Development,...

IntroductionA conventional cost-benefit analysis (CBA) of transport projects invariably focuses on items such as savings in travel time and fuel costs, as well as on changes in any externalities such as negative environmental outcomes or vehicle crashes....

AbstractThe Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) Report attempts to quantify the quality of research undertaken in Australian universities in the field of 'Applied Economics'. The paper shows it is difficult to reconcile the ERA rankings with the...

AbstractDespite advice to parliament that patents are granted only for 'a significant advance over what was known and what was available to the public'^sup 2^ the evidence shows this is not the standard used. The actual standard is a scintilla - a marginal...

AbstractAt the onset of the Global Financial Crisis governments around the world implemented fiscal stimulus packages. A key component of many of these packages was aimed at stimulating consumer spending. In Australia and the United States, for example,...

AbstractFifty years ago, a paper entitled 'College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage' was published in a somewhat obscure journal, the American Mathematical Monthly (currently a 'B' journal, according to the Australian Business Deans Council)....

AbstractIn its 2011 NDIS report, the Productivity Commission rationalises its policy recommendation by means of a cost-benefit analysis, claiming that 'the benefits of the [National Disability Insurance] scheme would significantly outweigh the costs'....

AbstractThe basic puzzle about the power to tax is how to limit the capacity of government to exploit taxpayers, while at the same time not overly hampering the government in going about its useful activities. Standard economics fondly believes that...

There is much to agree with in Darryl Biggar's comments on my article. Nonetheless, it does demand the examination of a number of issues.First of all, it is illusory to think preventing firms from recouping investments prudently incurred can protect...

AbstractThis paper uses Australian Bureau of Statistics fiscal incidence figures to track trends across the period 1984 to 2010 in one key aspect of the Australian welfare state - whether welfare policies have favoured the elderly at the expense of the...

AbstractThis paper documents the history of coastal management in Byron Bay and its implication for the property rights of landowners and other stakeholders. It finds that, until recently, planning for an uncertain future in a warming climate has overshadowed...

This paper examines the difficulties inherent in regulation as a solution to market failure and, especially, to natural monopoly. It highlights the way regulation itself introduces new risks into the supply of natural monopoly services, including the...

AbstractThe Productivity Commission report 'Disability Care and Support' recommends tort liability be replaced by a compulsory, government-run, no-fault scheme. But theory and evidence indicate moving to a no-fault scheme will increase the accident rate....

Introduction2Sir William Beveridge, 1879-1963, was a distinguished figure in the history of public policy. His 1942 report Social Insurance and Allied Services - widely known as the Beveridge Report3 - played a key role in the development of the British...

Susan Howson, Lionel Robbins (Cambridge University Press, 2011)Lionel Robbins was one of the most distinguished economists of the twentieth century. For 30 years, from the late 1920s to the late 1950s, he held the principal chair in economics at the...

Richard Pomfret, The Age of Equality: The Twentieth Century in Economic Perspective (Belknap Press, 2011)It is quite a challenge to survey the economic history of the twentieth century in a little over 200 pages. Richard Pomfret deftly charts a course...

The theory of modelling, and fitness for purposeIn a classic discussion of mathematical models in the social sciences, the philosopher Max Black describes models as metaphors, raising the fundamental, and long-debated, question of in what sense (if any)...

AbstractThis paper examines the modelling undertaken by the Commonwealth Treasury of the costs of an Australian emissions trading scheme, published in 'Strong Growth, Low Pollution'. Despite its considerable technical sophistication, we argue that this...

IntroductionThe Commonwealth Treasury commissioned KPMG Econtech to model the efficiency of the existing Australian tax system. The report was an input to the 2010 'Henry Review' of the Australian tax system (henceforth AFTS), and proved very influential...

In late 2008 the global financial crisis (GFC) sparked a boom in Keynesian economic commentary and activist fiscal policies. The Australian government responded with an immediate $10.4 billion 'cash-splash' to households (Commonwealth Treasury 2008),...

IntroductionIn December 2010 the Commonwealth Government announced that the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Treasury would establish a joint 'ATM Taskforce' to analyse reforms to Australia's ATM market in 2009 which aimed to improve the competition...

Are there projects of such self-evident value that they ought to be exempt from even the most rudimentary cost-benefit analysis? Seemingly so, according to the former Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner, as long as it's the National Broadband Network (NBN)....

AbstractThe Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics estimates of the costs of road congestion in Australian capital cities ($9.4 billion in 2005 and projected to more than double by 2020) are widely cited. But these projections appear...

AbstractThe total cost of structural fires and bushfires in Australia was estimated at around A$18 billion in 2010, or about 1.5 per cent of GDP. This cost includes some A$16 billion devoted to managing the risk. At the same time, Australia's fire fatality...

Just about all economists agree that international trade in goods and services is beneficial and should be unrestricted. There is much less unanimity, however, on the benefits of international capital flows. The volatility and 'sudden stops' experienced...

The Academy in DecayThe academy and the agoraOver several decades diverse strategies have been applied to increase the number of university graduates in Australia. In the 1940s, for example, the Curtin Labor government funded an increased number of scholarships,...

AbstractThe paper explores the merits of utilising citation counts to measure research output in economics in the context of a nationwide research evaluation scheme: the New Zealand Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF). Citations were collected for...

AbstractDespite public interest and public inquiries as long ago as the 1989 Human Rights Commission and the consequent increase in funding by the Hawke and subsequent governments, the 2006 rate of homelessness in Australia was 32 per 10 000, only marginally...

The Australian Defence Force is held in high regard; the Department of Defence is not. Longstanding concerns about inefficiency, compounded by a succession of fiascos and bungles, have entrenched the perception that Defence is poorly managed. Earlier...

Nicholas Wapshott, Keynes Hayek. The Clash That Defined Modern Economics (Scribe, 2011)Opinion about the role that government should play in the macro economy tends to conform to a rhythm, an ebb and flow, determined by circumstances and influenced by...