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Category: Economic research

Why the Water Supply Needs a Splash of Competition – Peter Coombes

Why the Water Supply Needs a Splash of Competition
The article above was printed in the Australian Financial Review on Thursday 19 January under the same title “Why the Water Supply Needs a Splash of Competition” by Professor Peter Coombes, Urban Water Cycle Solutions, Independent Research and Consulting.  See also the website urbanwatercyclesolutions.com

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Billion-dollar concessional loan a waste of taxpayers’ money – Paul Kerin

In a recent article in The Australian, Paul Kerin presents evidence that the sharemarket expects Adani’s proposed Carmichael mine in Queensland to create substantial shareholder value. This demonstrates that the Federal government’s proposed $1 billion dollar loan to Adani would be a waste of taxpayers’ money. The full article is available here.

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The WTO is important for the world, and good for Australia – Arne Klau

“Time to admit that the WTO’s day is done” was the headline on a piece by Zoe McKenzie in this newspaper last week. Certainly, nobody would deny that progress in the Doha Round has so far been unsatisfactory and that there is more scepticism about trade liberalisation in many parts of the world than 25 […]

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Labor market reform – Bill Carmichael

The proposal to restore the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) is under attack from the Opposition, the ACTU and the CFMEU.  Opposition Leader Shorten has confirmed he will respond “like a union organiser.”
Their reaction has been to shoot the messenger rather than engage with the message, as they have  done with the moderate reformist […]

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View the 2016 Harcourt Lecture presented by Professor David Vines

There was a great turnout for the 2016 Harcourt Lecture hosted by the School of Economics, with many braving the weather to hear from Professor David Vines from the University of Oxford. Professor Vines gave a special lecture on ‘Individuals, Institutions and Ideas: Australia’s Macroeconomic Policy-making System from Federation to 2020.
Watch the full video of […]

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Nobel Prize in Economic Science awarded to Oliver Hart of Harvard University and Bengt Holmström of MIT

This year’s Nobel Prize in Economic Science was awarded to Oliver Hart of Harvard University and Bengt Holmström of MIT for their contributions to contract theory. Contracts play an important role in many economic relationships between employers and employees, firms and consumers, and etc. Contract theory studies the optimal way to design contracts to ensure that both parties take mutually beneficial decisions when they have different interests.
Holmström’s theories in the 1970s considered the […]

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SME business confidence & conditions up – NAB

The NAB’s June quarter survey of SME businesses (released today) shows both business conditions and confidence up in all states, although SA and WA (in particular) lag behind other states. Nationally, multiple measures of business conditions – particularly trading and profitability – were up, although employment conditions remain “lacklustre”. The business confidence index is up […]

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Voting again beats minority government – Paul Kerin

In an article in today’s Australian, I expand on the argument I made on the Adelaide Economic Policy Forum article last Monday (available here) that unless one party can form a majority Federal government, it would be in the public interest to go back to the polls. The key point is that a majority government […]

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Services the key to post-election growth – Christopher Findlay

As we move into the post-Federal-election period, there is continuing debate about where growth will come from and what voters thought of the pitches on this question made by the various parties. Data always helps these debates and here’s an example. This is a story about exports – and services exports in particular.
An article on […]

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Federal election: should we vote again to save the economy? – Paul Kerin

In my January column in Company Director, titled “The election effect” (and available here), I pointed out that economic research shows that in the year leading up to an election, business investment is (on average) about 5% lower than it otherwise would be. As business investment accounts for about 15% of GDP, a typical election […]

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