There has been a large decline in the volatility of Australian output over the past 40 years. This paper looks at the causes of this decline. Accounting for part of the change have been substantial changes in the inventories cycle. Abstracting from changes in the inventories cycle there have...

We use the multi-sector and multi-country G-Cubed model to explore the potential role of three major shocks – to productivity, risk premia and US monetary policy – to explain the large movements in relative prices between 2002 and 2008. We find that productivity shocks were major drivers of...

Quarterly national accounts data are amongst the most important and eagerly awaited economic information available, with estimates of recent growth regarded as a key summary indicator of the current health of the Australian economy. Official estimates of quarterly output are, however, subject to...

In this paper we examine the information content of business survey information, focusing in particular on some of the characteristics of the net balance statistic. A number of Australian business surveys are appraised. Four aspects are examined: the extent to which surveys are correlated with...

JM Keynes was more important to Australia than Australia was to him. Yet the connections are many and varied, and worthy of some attention. As has been said, ‘a survey of the rise and fall of Keynesian economics in Australia’ is ‘an important story which still has to be written’; but it...