Publications

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.

So is Australia really just a warmer version of England, as the immigration officer suggested to me 10 years ago?

Probably not yet, if simply for the fact that in the past decade Australia has avoided the worst mistakes made in Britain. But if Rudd continues his New Labour-like policies, Australia may well become another Britain, if only without the snow.

Complicated times provoke simple answers. As the global financial crisis keeps unfolding, the no less global intellectual elite has readily identified the culprit. Political and religious leaders, artists and even some economists are convinced greed is to blame for our economic problems. A combined Google search for “global financial crisis” and “greed” delivers no fewer than 87,900 results. But is greed really the culprit or just a convenient scapegoat? And is greed an economic category at all?