Pomp and peculiarity : how two portraits epitomized the repute of two eminent Australian economists
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: History of Economics Review Vol. 85, no. 1 (2023), p. 72-85
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- Description: Economists, it seems, should be guarded about having their likeness taken for posterity. The end product is not as predictable as the legacies they leave behind. This article discusses such possibilities with the two portraits undertaken by two different artists of the leading figures of interwar and postwar Australian economics.
Australia and the Keynesian revolution
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: The seven dwarfs and the age of the mandarins : Australian government administration in the post-war reconstruction era Chapter 3 p. 53-79
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- Description: When the Nobel prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz visited Australia in 2010 he commended the Rudd Government’s policy response to the Global Financial Crisis as a proper and effective pre-emptive measure. The stimulus, which staved off any creeping sign of recession, bore a considerable Treasury imprint; and it could be said that the official family of economic advisers, that is, the Treasury and the Reserve Bank of Australia, were in their concerted action never so Keynesian in practice. It is appropriate then to visit the Keynesian revolution in post-war Australia recalling that three of the mandarins, Roland Wilson, John Crawford and H.C. ‘Nugget’ Coombs, were professionally trained economists. Moreover, as J.K. Galbraith reminds us, the Keynesian revolution was really a ‘mandarin revolution’, that is, an intellectually powered one.
Douglas Copland's battle with the younger Brethren of economists
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Economic History Review Vol. 53, no. 2 (2013), p. 187-209
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- Description: This article discusses the problematic relationship between Douglas Copland and the new generation of post-war Australian economists. Copland felt that their view of economic policy was contrary to Australia's best interests. The critique and feud was to last right up till Copland's retirement. The article shows how Copland's views differed from those of inside economists and therefore the official policy line. Australian Economic History Review © 2013 Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd and the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand.
- Description: 2003011224
The changing sociology of the Australian academic economics profession
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Economic Papers Vol. 29, no. 1 (2010), p. 87-95
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- Description: This article undertakes a census of how the Australian economics profession changed over the span of eleven years. It shows that the academic economics community has become more professionalised. It also explores which departments are expanding or contracting and whether there is any truth in the claim that the profession is becoming more Americanised.
Cicero's children : the worth of the history of economic thought for business students
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Economic papers Vol. 28, no. 4 (2009), p. 355-365
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- Description: Despite talk about the first sightings of the ‘green shoots of recovery’ the Global Financial Crisis which began to unfold in August 2007 is likely to exert some impact upon the prevailing economic and political philosophy. The big question for economic and business instructors is to ponder whether it will lead to any significant changes in economic and business syllabus at Australian universities. The teaching of mainstream economics is durable and usually resistant to change. Yet the crisis has certainly caused rumblings in the teaching of first-year economics. As one ABC reporter recently asked ‘How do you teach economics at a time like this?’ There is certainly a great curiosity among the young about what went wrong. Moreover they wish to know why neoliberalism has failed and why state interventionism is resurgent. Young minds must be perplexed about the rapid revision of agenda from containing inflation in 2008 to coping with recession in 2008. To paraphase the lyrics to the old Talking Heads song ‘Once in a lifetime’ ‘You may ask yourself, well… how did we get here?’ This is what they and we are asking themselves. This paper argues that an introductory course in economic ideas could help tell them why.
Cicero’s children : The worth of economic history and economic thought for business students
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at ATEC 2009 : 14th Annual Australasian Teaching Economics Conference : What does the financial crisis tell us about teaching and learning economics?, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Queensland : 13th-14th July, 2009 p. 156-167
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- Description: Despite talk about the first sightings of the ‘green shoots of recovery’ the Global Financial Crisis which began to unfold in August 2007 is likely to exert some impact upon the prevailing economic and political philosophy. The big question for economic and business instructors is to ponder whether it will lead to any significant changes in economic and business syllabus at Australian universities. The teaching of mainstream economics is durable and usually resistant to change. Yet the crisis has certainly caused rumblings in the teaching of first-year economics. As one ABC reporter recently asked ‘How do you teach economics at a time like this?’ There is certainly a great curiosity among the young about what went wrong. Moreover they wish to know why neoliberalism has failed and why state interventionism is resurgent. Young minds must be perplexed about the rapid revision of agenda from containing inflation in 2008 to coping with recession in 2008. To paraphase the lyrics to the old Talking Heads song ‘Once in a lifetime’ ‘You may ask yourself, well… how did we get here?’ This is what they and we are asking themselves. This paper argues that an introductory course in economic ideas could help tell them why.
- Description: 2003007357
The economist as gadfly : The machinations of Lord John Vaizey’s life
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at 22nd Conference of the History of Economic Thought Society of Australia, University of Notre Dame, Fremantle, Western Australia : 14th-17th July 2009
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- Description: It has been 25 years since Lord John Vaizey, the English economist and educationist passed away in July 1984. Today, Vaizey is almost a forgotten figure in modern British history and even more in the fields of political economy and economics of education where he first made his mark. His work is now rarely cited and, even in political histories of the Thatcher decade, or the travails of the Labour governments before then, his name rarely reappears. This paper reassesses his life, especially the last decade of his life when Vaizey, basked in the limelight, and enjoyed some of the glittering prizes. It was a decade when Vaizey took some major ideological turns, one of the most controversial being his decision to leave the Labour party after 30 years of membership. The paper revisits the reasons why Vaizey renounced democratic socialism, Keynesianism and, along with that, the beguiling promises of social science. It reflected his peculiar interest in political failure along with disillusionment in democratic socialism. The switch meant that this Cambridge-trained economist who described himself once as ‘a deeply flawed puritan, dedicated to work, self improvement, the cultivation of the intellect, goodness and truth’ had to convert, albeit reluctantly, to monetarism and ditch the post-war Keynesian consensus.
- Description: 2003007362
Crank or Proto-Monetarist? : J.K Gifford and the cost-push inflation fallacy
- Authors: King, John E. , Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: History of Economics Review Vol. 47, no. Winter (2008), p. 54-71
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- Description: Abstract: This paper examines the career and contribution of J. K. Gifford (1899-1987), the Foundation Professor of Economics and first Head of the Department of Economics at the University of Queensland, and one of the first in Australia to write an introductory textbook. Gifford's publications were often poorly written and with few references. They focussed mainly on monetary theory and inflation and towards the end of his career concentrated on challenging the notion of a wage-price spiral. Much of his work on the 'cost-push fallacy' seems to have been based on a crude kind of monetarist thinking: governments were prone to allow monetary growth to sustain high profit levels that businesses enjoyed in an inflationary environment. However, his policy proposals were not those of the freemarket Right and focussed on safeguarding employees' interests by ensuring that their wages increased at the rate of inflation plus productivity growth, thereby limiting the scope for employers to benefit from inflation. Although he saw the money supply as exogenous and prone to be mismanaged by governments, be did not articulate a model of the demand for money or defend the stability of the velocity of circulation. His most important article, a brief paper in the Journal of Political Economy in 1968, came about from his objections to the original Phillips analysis, and argued that correlation does not establish causation. Precisely this argument could also be levelled against the monetarist thinking of Milton Friedman and it was not long before the paper's basic argument was used by Nicholas Kaldor in this way
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003006062
The boom we did not have : Australian economics degree enrolments, 1990-2007
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at 13th Australasian Teaching Economics Conference: Enhancing the Effectiveness of Learning and Teaching in Economics, University of Western Sydney, Parramatta Campus, New South Wales : 28th September 2008 p. 118-126
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- Description: Recently the Australian economy notched up seventeen years of uninterrupted economic growth. Not long after there was another burst of market turbulence following the shake out on Wall Street. Economic issues are never really off the front page and business economists appear almost every night on the TV news. One might think that with the preoccupation with economic news it would spell a greater student interest in economics. Australian university economists have been concerned with the decline in student interest in their subject since the mid 1990s and have now perhaps become acclimatised to it. This paper revisits the issue, updates the student enrolment data and ponders the future.
- Description: 2003007358
The History wars of economics : The Classification struggle in the history of economic thought
- Authors: Kates, Stephen , Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: History of Economics Review Vol. 47, no. Winter (2008), p. 110-124
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- Description: C1
- Description: 2003006063
The two tribes of 'The Econ': A study of economists and economic media commentary in Australia
- Authors: Millmow, Alex , Courvisanos, Jerry
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Economic Papers Vol. 26, no. 2 (2007), p. 101-117
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- Description: This article analyses and speculates upon an interesting but unsettling development within the Australian economic profession. It argues that there is a schism within the profession when it comes to providing economic commentary to the media. We argue that only financial market economist voices dominate in the Australian media when it comes to commentary on current economic issues. This has implications for the acceptance of economic policy since these economists are apt to uphold the interests of their employer. In contrast, academic economists suffer from a lack of recognition and reach in the media, which biases the promulgation of economic policy options in the broader community. We present evidence showing that todays generation of academic economists, in contrast to previous generations, is becoming reticent on matters of public policy.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003005184
Girls and economics : An unlikely coupling
- Authors: Millmow, Alex , Bookallil, Cheryl
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Economic Papers Vol. 25, no. 3 (2006), p. 221-234
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- Description: While total undergraduate enrolments at Australian universities are increasing, enrolments in Economics are falling--a source of alarm for economists. By appealing to females, economics could effectively tap into the largest sector (58%) of the undergraduate student population. This study suggests that gender is contributing to the falling enrolments. Males need the prospect of money to entice them to study more economics but females require a connection between studying economics and employment opportunities. Providing visible role models may be a practical step to encouraging more females to read economics. More concentration on 'feminising economics' in the undergraduate curricula could help women to believe that they have a contribution to make to the discipline.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001790
How Milton Friedman came to Australia : A case study of class-based political business cycles
- Authors: Courvisanos, Jerry , Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Australian political economy Vol. 57, no. (2006), p. 112-136
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- Description: Thirty years ago, in April 1975, Milton Friedman, came to Australia to declare that the world economic situation manifestly unsound.[1] Friedman asserted on that trip what Michael Kalecki predicted in his 1943 article would be the response of ‘captains of industry’ to Keynesian macroeconomic policies; it was that ‘…government expenditure financed by borrowing will cause inflation’ (Kalecki, 1990: 348). A chorus of Australian businessmen and mandarin economists came out in support of Friedman, leading to the demise of Keynesian macroeconomic policy and the rise of neo-liberal policies. Milton Friedman, at the time was the Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago; and acknowledged head of the ‘Chicago School’ of monetary economics, called ‘monetarism’. A year later, in 1976, Friedman received the ‘Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel’, confirming his status in the financial community and the neo-liberal mainstream of the economics profession during this period. At the time he was also a regular contributor to Newsweek magazine.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001782
Trends in economic degree enrolments within Australia 1990-2004
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australasian Journal of Economics Education Vol. 3, no. 1&2 (2006), p. 111-124
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- Description: This paper argues that unlike the American experience where economic degree enrolments have now staged a complete recovery from the decline in the 1990s the situation in Australia remains subdued.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003002154
Australian economics in the twentieth century
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Cambridge Journal of Economics Vol. 29, no. 6 (Nov 2005), p. 1011-1026
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- Description: In this, the eightieth year of the formalisation of the Australian economics profession, a survey of it seems appropriate. While the profession's beginnings were marked by an idiosyncratic, heterodox tradition, the paper finds that those attributes have by now been largely dissolved by internationalisation. To demonstrate this, two periods in Australian economic history, and the role of economic opinion within each, are examined. One concerns the mobilisation of native economics expertise in developing policies to deal with the Great Depression, while the latter episode covers the rise of neo-liberal policy or economic rationalism in Australia. Unlike the interwar period and the post-war era, contemporary Australian economics, despite its policy success in reforming the economy has problems in attracting young minds to its fold.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001166
D.B. Copland and the aftershocks of the Premiers' plan 1931-1939
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at the Australian Conference of Economists, 2005, Melbourne : 26th September, 2005
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- Description: Since Roland Wilson’s (1951) tribute to L. F. Giblin as ‘the grand old man’ or father figure of modern Australian economics there has been a tendency to underestimate the achievements and legacy of Douglas Berry Copland. It became fashionable, moreover, with the post-war generation of economists to belittle his contribution to interwar Australian economic thought especially that relating to stabilisation policy. Copland was quite aware of the chiselling away at his reputation. Commenting to a friend while reading Harrod’s biography of Keynes he wrote ‘Still reading Keynes and I remember most of the controversy and the discussion he was involved from the 1920’s onwards. A few of us had been working on similar lines and I have somewhere a set of memorandums to the government of NSW from 1932 to 1936 urging with all the persuasion I could muster an expansionist policy, but we could not get pass the Commonwealth Treasury. It would be fun to dig them out now and circulate for the younger brethren who still think we are past praying for. I’m sure he (Keynes) would disown Coombs and his school if he was with us now’. By that reflection Copland revealed not just his close dealings with Keynes but his fear that a hydraulic Keynesianism was taking hold within the Australian economics fraternity. It also showed Copland’s pride of the policy advocacy and controversies he had actively participated in during the 1930’s.
- Description: 2003001451
Searching for a 'first class man' : The appointment of the inaugural Ritchie professor of economics
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: History of Economics Review Vol. 42, no. Summer 2005 (2005), p. 57-66
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- Description: This paper recalls the extraordinary lengths to which the University of Melbourne went to fill one of its most prized and ambitious endowments – the Ritchie Chair in economic research. Following a rebuff from an eminent English economist, an international head-hunt was conducted by two committees. While there was some interest in the names put forward, it was D.B Copland who rather unselfishly solved the problem by suggested a local enigmatic figure who had been initially overlooked. The subsequent appointment proved a wise one and reflected well upon the man who initially suggested it.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001165
The mystery of Edward Shann
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: History of economics review Vol. 42, no. Summer 2005 (2005), p. 67-76
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- Description: Seventy years ago a bizarre tragedy befell one of Australia’s most eminent economists just minutes after giving his evening lecture. This paper revisits the case of Edward Shann and, in particular, the forensic evidence that persuaded the coroner to conclude that he took his own life. The paper presents new evidence that might contest that finding. In doing so, a brief account is given of Shann’s illustrious career.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001164
Niemeyer, Scullin and the Australian economists
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2004
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Economic History Review Vol. 44, no. 2 (2004), p. 142-160
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- Description: This article revisits the Niemeyer mission to Australia in 1930 and shows how it facilitated the entry of local economists into the art of policy making. Until then the Scullin government had little regard for the worth of academic economists, a view shared by bankers and central bankers alike. With Niemeyer’s dogmatic advice considered too draconian by a vacillating government, Australian economists, led by L. F. Giblin and D. B. Copland, were galvanised into providing a more palatable alternative. This advice eventually transformed into the Premiers’ Plan which complemented the devaluation and wage cut, both of which had been implemented in January 1931. While the Plan in its entirety was deflationary it was a more equitable and imaginative blueprint than Niemeyer’s.
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- Description: 2003000764
The power of economic ideas : Australian economists in the thirties
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2003
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: History of Economics Review Vol. 37, no. (2003), p. 84-99
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- Description: C1
- Description: 2003002492