This Working Paper presents an overview of structural budget balance models and the adjustments most relevant for Australia. Three models (the OECD model, the IMF model and Treasury’s previously published model in the Australian Government’s 2009-10 Budget and McDonald et al (2010)) are...

The resources boom, globalisation and other global economic forces have raised questions about whether employment and unemployment outcomes in regional Australia have become more unequal. This paper examines how the dispersion of unemployment across regions has changed over time. Our results...

This article looks at Australia’s current account deficits in light of concerns about the role of external imbalances in the global financial crisis and the difficulties now facing a number of countries that have run large current account deficits in recent years. Australia is clearly...

The size of the imbalance in China’s external payments suggests that the RMB is significantly undervalued. This does not appear to have had significant adverse effects on the Chinese economy to date, but the costs of holding down the exchange rate are likely to rise in the future. While the...

The resources boom has prompted much discussion of Australia having become a two-speed economy. There are concerns that the gains from the boom accrue largely to mining-related sectors and the states where these are concentrated, while the rest of the country is being hit by higher interest and...

This article examines the evolution of net foreign liabilities as a share of GDP in Australia and the United States. The two countries have been running similarly large current account deficits in recent years. But while net foreign liabilities have been growing steadily as a share of GDP in...

Asian governments have been accumulating foreign reserves (largely United States securities) on a large scale, as a result of maintaining fixed exchange rates or attempting to limit currency appreciation in the face of a weakening US dollar. The effects on Asia to date appear relatively benign....

The idea of Australia establishing a sovereign wealth as a response to the challenges posed by the resource boom has attracted considerable interest. Some argue that a fund investing in foreign assets, as is done in Chile and Norway, could ease pressures on trade-exposed industries resulting...

The Australian dollar has appreciated strongly over the past decade, leading to increased concerns over the impacts of the high exchange rate on trade-exposed sectors of the economy. This paper examines the underlying drivers of this rise, the exchange rate’s role as a macroeconomic shock...

A little-remarked aspect of the widening of United States trade and current account deficits since the late 1990s has been their limited effect on United States net foreign liabilities and, especially, net income. This has been possible because the United States has enjoyed both higher yields...