The ESA Central Council and the heads of Economics departments at various Australian universities have had a number of discussions about declining enrolments in Economics and the lack of diversity in enrolments. There are low enrolments of women, but there are also low enrolments of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. This is largely due to the decline in the number of high schools that offer Economics as a subject. High schools in disadvantaged areas are particularly unlikely to offer Economics.

Poll 60

Australia’s leading economists believe Australia can sustain an unemployment rate as low as 3.75% – much lower than the latest Reserve Bank estimate of 4.25% and the Treasury’s latest estimate of 4.5%.

The most important development to report is that our project on Advancing Women in Leadership in Economics, with the acronym IEA-WE, has been fully launched. This is a multi-year project that has been generously funded by Co-Impact Foundation and the Open Society Foundation. 

A number of prestigious awards were bestowed upon worthy economists at ACE2023, held in Brisbane.  Read on to find out who won the 2023 ESA National Awards.

The Australian Conference of Economists (ACE) 2023 was held from the 9 - 12 July 2023 in Brisbane, Queensland. 

The aim was to organise a conference with interest to all economists, both academic and professional. Only by a balanced approach of practice and theory can we solve the problems our society faces.

Poll 59

Our panellists were asked the following 2023 budget question: "On May 9, the government delivered a budget designed, in the Treasurer's words, to strike a balance between relief, repair and restraint'.  What grade would you give the budget, given that objective: A, B, C, D, E or F?"

Wes Mountain/The Conversation, CC BY-ND - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/

Poll 58

When panellests were asked to find an extra A$20 billion per year to fund government priorities like building nuclear submarines and responding to climate change, Australia’s top economists overwhelmingly back land tax, increased resource taxes, an attack on negative gearing and extending the scope of the goods and services tax.

Photo credit by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

The Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) and the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia are seeking the views of researchers in Australia on how assessment practices in universities, governments and the private sector shape research careers and how they influence researchers’ choices and priorities.

The latest tranche of archival records has been released in the Bank’s digital archive, Unreserved. It includes additional records from the Bank’s Research Department in the 1970s which span issues of contemporary relevance in relation to inflation shocks, the first Research Discussion Papers and early quantitative work on economic modelling and forecasting.

The Central Council Executive is delighted to see the return of the Eminent Speaker Series.  Professor Joshua Gans of University of Toronto will visit three locations as part of this program.  If you missed seeing Professor Gans in person, you can follow the links here to catch up on his presentation.

The call for papers for contributed sessions closes on Feb 28.  Papers can be submitted here.

Poll 57

Australia’s top economists have overwhelmingly endorsed intervention to restrain gas and electricity prices, with only three of the 47 leading economists surveyed believing the best thing the government can do is to leave things to the market.

Photo credit: Wes Mountain/The Conversation, CC BY-ND

The Reserve Bank has been releasing a large volume of digitised archival records to the public through our digital archive (called Unreserved). These records span nearly 200 years of Australia’s economic, financial and social history. The latest release includes records about the work and influence of Dr HC Coombs along with additional records from the Bank’s Research Department, with much of the new information covering the period from the Bank’s ‘separation’ from the original Commonwealth Bank in 1960 through to the early 1970s.

In 2022, NSW WEN hosted its inaugural writing competition as part of the Credible Economist series.

Australian Conference of Economists (ACE) 2022 was held from 10 to 13 July 2022 in Hobart, Tasmania as an in-person event.  Our theme, Economics in the New Normal, sought to address the challenges that a post-pandemic world faces.

It is with great sadness that the Economic Society of Australia acknowledges the passing of Professor Geoffrey Brennan.

Geoffrey Brennan was an outstanding scholar, who did ground-breaking work in economics and philosophy and at their intersection and played a major role in the development of PPE as a global interdisciplinary research program.