Policies To Boost Australian Saving

Most Australian wage and salary earners are now required by the Commonwealth government to save nine per cent of their earnings and to have that money 'locked-away' until they reach a prescribed age. Why is that?

Australia's recent economic performance has been impressive. It has experienced steady growth since the early 1990s and inflation has averaged just 2 percent over the same period. This strong showing marks a departure from the performance of the postwar years, when falling productivity and rising inflation caused Australia's per capita income to slip from one of the highest among OECD countries to merely average. This economic turnaround is explored in this book edited by Anoop Singh, Josh Felman, Ray Brooks, Tim Callen, and Christian Thimann of the Asia and Pacific Department.

The 2010 edition of OECD's periodic survey of Australia's economy. This edition includes chapters covering recovery from the crisis, fiscal policy effectiveness, meeting infrastructure needs, and enhancing labour utilisation.

The provision of social services in Australia has changed dramatically in recent decades, raising a range of important questions about financial and democratic accountability: 'who benefits', 'who suffers' and 'who decides'. This book explores these developments through rich case studies of a diverse set of social policy domains. The case studies demonstrate a range of effects of marketisation, including the impact on the experience of consumer engagement with social service systems, on the distribution of social advantage and disadvantage, and on the democratic steering of social policy.

Joseph Halevi, G. C. Harcourt, Peter Kriesler and J. W. Nevile bring together a collection of their most influential papers on post-Keynesian thought. Their work stresses the importance of the underlying institutional framework, of the economy as a historical process and, therefore, of path determinacy. In addition, their essays suggest the ultimate goal of economics is as a tool to inform policy and make the world a better place, with better being defined by an overriding concern with social justice. Volume II assess application and policies.

This paper discusses prospects for potential growth, house prices, household debt, and financial stability risks, and tax policy reforms in New Zealand. Despite having world-class institutions and strong policy framework, income levels remain low relative to other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. During 1980–2014, per capita income levels have remained about 20 percent below the OECD's average income. Longstanding structural issues need to be addressed to boost potential growth. House prices and household debt have increased rapidly in New Zealand over the past two decades. New Zealand's low national saving rate is a source of vulnerability and likely contributes to the relatively high interest rates needed to attract foreign capital.

Joseph Halevi, G. C. Harcourt, Peter Kriesler and J. W. Nevile bring together a collection of their most influential papers on post-Keynesian thought. Their work stresses the importance of the underlying institutional framework, of the economy as a historical process and, therefore, of path determinacy. In addition, their essays suggest the ultimate goal of economics is as a tool to inform policy and make the world a better place, with better being defined by an overriding concern with social justice. Volume III explores the ethics of economics.

Global current account balances—the overall size of current account deficits and surpluses—continued to widen in 2021 to 3.5 percent of world GDP, and are expected to widen again this year. The IMF’s multilateral approach suggests that global excess balances narrowed to 0.9 percent of world GDP in 2021 compared with 1.2 percent of world GDP in 2020. The pandemic has continued to affect economies’ current account balances unevenly through the travel and transportation sectors as well as a shift from services to goods consumption. Commodity prices recovered from the COVID-19 shock and started rising in 2021 with opposite effects on the external position of exporters and importers, a trend that the war in Ukraine is exacerbating in 2022. The medium-term outlook for global current account balances is a gradual narrowing as the impact of the pandemic fades away, commodity prices normalize, and fiscal consolidation in current account deficit economies progresses. However, this outlook is highly uncertain and subject to several risks. Policies to promote external rebalancing differ with positions and needs of individual economies.