Publications

It is time our politicians stand up to the highway robbers of General Motors and protect Australian taxpayers. And it would be far better to help Holden’s workers directly rather than handing out money to an American company on the brink of bankruptcy. […]

What a miserable place Australia must be if it finds itself behind a bankrupt economy and a country left ungovernable by the financial crisis. However, we may feel a bit better because Australia did not need to be bailed out by the IMF, nor did our capital cities see rallies of angry citizens which recently brought Dublin to a standstill. […]

In Germany, but not only there, the economic ideas of the 1970s are celebrating a revival. But why would anyone want to retry the old recipes for more regulation and fiscal stimulus when they so spectacularly failed back then? It may well turn out that watching Life on Mars is a better way to indulge in 1970s nostalgia. […]

Stealing a car is perhaps not the most obvious activity that economists would pay attention to. But it turns out that car theft is the perfect example to show how people react to incentives. […]

Die schweren Buschbrände, die letzte Woche im australischen Bundesstaat Victoria wüteten, haben nicht nur 181 Menschenleben gekostet, 1800 Häuser zerstört und 7500 Menschen zu Obdachlosen gemacht. Sie haben auch bei nicht unmittelbar betroffenen Australiern große Verunsicherung ausgelöst. Während die letzten Brände immer noch nicht gelöscht sind, beginnt die Aufarbeitung einer der schlimmsten Naturkatastrophen in der Geschichte des Fünften Kontinents. […]

Maybe our economists have only been reading the wrong parts of the newspapers. If they skipped the business sections and went straight to the sports news they would look into the future with a bit more optimism. At least that’s what economic research from Germany suggests. […]

Local governments could provide better services, like schools and fast development approvals if they received a higher proportion of tax revenue and a formal definition in the Constitution. There is a need for a strong and proactive local government that has more control over its purse strings and is more connected to the people it serves.
[…]

A country the size of Australia could be better served if it tried to delegate more tasks to lower tiers of government. Federalism is one way of achieving this, and many have cogently argued that it should be strengthened. Yet the very same arguments in favour of federalism also apply to local government. […]