Description:
In the crucible of the 1930s Douglas Copland became an economist of international repute. In this article I consider some of the professional activities and policy advocacy Copland undertook in that decade. He might have reminded some of John Maynard Keynes with an active life and a practice of popularising economics via public channels in order to shape a more effective stabilisation policy. As an inherent educator Copland felt the public, as voters, were entitled to know how the authorities were dealing with economic problems. Never an ivory tower academic, Copland was drawn into myriad of professional and public activities that exacted a toll on his health. While a propensity for involvement in public affairs may sometimes distract an economist from pursuing research, Copland used the involvement in public policy formation to set the markers for enlightened economic management.
Description:
This paper undertakes a census of how the New Zealand university economics profession changed over a decade. It shows that this small academics economics community has become more professionalised. It also explores whether the profession has become more internationalised in the new millennium.
Description:
On a March evening in 1973 the ABC television compere of the Monday Conference programme, Robert Moore introduced his guest, Paul Samuelson, by holding aloft a copy of his economics textbook. Moore joked that Samuelson had taught more people economics than anyone else. He was also, of course, an eminent economist with major contributions in public finance, international economics and the dissemination of Keynesian economics. This paper will discuss how the Australian adaption of Paul Samuelson's Economics came about. Extensively adapted to fit Australian conditions, the two Australian authors, Keith Hancock and Bob Wallace, both at Flinders University, came up with a publishing success that was to take Australian university economics instruction by storm. They were not, however, Samuelson's first choice as adaptors. A whole generation of Australian students was brought up on Samuelson. It was also the first attempt at adapting an overseas text to suit Australian institutions and conventions. The paper assesses how well it was received and how it spawned imitators.
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.
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.
Description:
Economics, Keynes once wrote, can be a ‘very dangerous science’. Sometimes, though, it can be moulded to further the common good though it might need a leap in mental outlook, a whole new zeitgeist to be able do do. This book is about a transformation in Australian economists’ thought and ideas during the interwar period. It focuses upon the interplay between economic ideas, players and policy sometimes in the public arena. In a decade marked by depression, recovery and international political turbulence Australian economists moved from a classical orthodox economic position to that of a cautious Keynesianism by 1939. We look at how a small collective of economists tried to influence policy-making in the nineteen-thirties. Economists felt obliged to seek changes to the parameters as economic conditions altered but, more importantly, as their insights about economic management changed. There are three related themes that underscore this book. Firstly, the professionalisation of Australian economics took a gigantic leap in this period, aided in part, by the adverse circumstances confronting the economy but also by the aspirations economists held for their discipline. A second theme relates to the rather unflattering reputation foisted upon interwar economists after 1945. That transition underlies a third theme of this book, namely, how Australian economists were emboldened by Keynes’s General Theory to confidently push for greater management of economic activity. By 1939 Australian economists conceptualized from a new theoretic framework and from one which they advanced comment and policy advice. This book therefore will rehabilitate the works of Australian interwar economists, arguing that they not only had an enviable international reputation but also facilitated the acceptance of Keynes’s General Theory among policymakers before most of their counterparts elsewhere.
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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:
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:
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:
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:
The Global Financial Crisis 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. 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 intervention is resurgent. Young minds must be perplexed about the rapid revision of agenda from containing inflation in 2008 to coping with recession in 2009. This paper argues that an introductory course in the history of economic ideas could help tell them why.
Description:
This paper revisits the matter of attracting students to study economics, an issue that faces every Australian university economics department. While the Australian economy has been in a boom phase for some period it has not led to a relative increase in economic degree enrolments for local universities. While some of the Go8 universities have seen a steady increase in economics degree enrolments between 1995 and 2007, the national picture, taken over a longer period, reveals that economic degree enrolments as a percentage of the overall student population is still falling. The paper concludes with the shy hope that, apart from improvement to the syllabus and teaching methodologies, the marked economic slowdown might elicit an increase in student interest in economics. The paper closes by suggesting that now might be an appropriate time for the regimen of the ideal economics degree offered by Australian universities to be re-examined.
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:
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:
When Joan Robinson visited Monash University in 1975 she was at the height of her fame. She had just brought out a new alternative economics textbook and was strongly tipped, in the International Women’s Year, to win the Nobel Prize in economics. The Cambridge School of Economics, which she represented, was in late bloom but it was the neoclassical school that was proving resurgent and already exhibiting a strong presence at Monash. It would make for theatrics when she arrived there. Although the visit to Australia overall was only for a few months, she gave lectures to first-year students at several universities and made several public presentations. The timing of her visit was poignant, with Australia, like Britain, caught in the throes of stagflation. There was an ongoing reappraisal of macroeconomic policy. Robinson’s visit occurred while Milton Friedman, too, was visiting Australia on a stockbroker-funded lecture tour to push the monetarist explanation of inflation. Drawing on her correspondence with Richard Kahn and some of the lectures and the reaction they provoked, this paper recalls Robinson’s visit and assesses the impact, if any, it had upon Australian economics.
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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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.