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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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.
Description:
This paper celebrates the life of a businessman and central banker who, in the depression years, outshone and prevailed over both Theodore and Jack Lang. One member of the Scullin Cabinet, the fiery radical Frank Anstey recalled that 'with his seven year tenure in his pocket he was more than ever Prime Minister and the elected government was only the tube through which he issued orders'. The puzzle then is why Gibson has not received the coverage and attention that he deserves. While there has been a brief memoir of Gibson by Schedvin, no biography of him exists. Just after Gibson dies in 1934 the Commonwealth Bank, with the support of Gibson's Melbourne-based business and banking associates, was intent upon commissioning a short biography with University of Melbourne historian Sir Ernest Scott (1867-1939) assigned to undertake the task. At the same time on one of Gibson's daughters, Phyllis, wrote a doting, but incomplete, memoir of her father. The draft was never completed nor circulated but it led to an interesting sequel.
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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.
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:
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:
The Economic Record, one of the world's oldest economic journals, has a distinguished history. The flagship journal of the Economic Society of Australia and New Zealand was launched in 1925 and is approaching its 100th birthday. We undertake a forensic examination of the journal over the last 50 years, exploring issues like its content, most cited articles and most frequent contributors. This article discusses the journal's internationalisation but also identifies how Australia's top economists have, for the most part, faithfully persisted with it. The changing nature of academic publishing is explored through the patterns of collaboration, citations and dry holes.