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.
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.
Description:
A little piece of Australiana passed away earlier this year. The historic sheep station at Blackwood, the family homestead of the Ritchies for more 170 years near Penshurst, Western Victoria, was sold to Chinese investors. We all know that Australia no longer rides on the sheep's back and the selling of Blackwood is yet another sign of the passing of the pastoral economy. This story involves an element of Australian economic history, a Scottish-Australian family and an enduring public gift they left to an Australian university. This Ritchie family were committed philanthropists and, apart from a school, a public hall and a war memorial, all at Penshurst, one of their gifts is still in evidence todya, namely, the Ritchie Research Chair in economics at the University of Melbourne. How did that come about it? It involved the relationship between a Scottish-born grazier who made his fortune here and his two sons born here.