The transition from Keynesian to Monetarist economics in Australia : Joan Robinson’s 1975 visit to Australia

When Joan Robinson visited Monash University in 1975 she was at the height of her fame. She had just brought out a new alternative economics textbook and was strongly tipped, in the International Women’s Year, to win the Nobel Prize in economics. The Cambridge School of Economics, which she represented, was in late bloom but it was the neoclassical school that was proving resurgent and already exhibiting a strong presence at Monash. It would make for theatrics when she arrived there. Although the visit to Australia overall was only for a few months, she gave lectures to first-year students at several universities and made several public presentations. The timing of her visit was poignant, with Australia, like Britain, caught in the throes of stagflation. There was an ongoing reappraisal of macroeconomic policy. Robinson’s visit occurred while Milton Friedman, too, was visiting Australia on a stockbroker-funded lecture tour to push the monetarist explanation of inflation. Drawing on her correspondence with Richard Kahn and some of the lectures and the reaction they provoked, this paper recalls Robinson’s visit and assesses the impact, if any, it had upon Australian economics

The boom we did not have : Australian economics degree enrolments, 1990-2007

Recently the Australian economy notched up seventeen years of uninterrupted economic growth. Not long after there was another burst of market turbulence following the shake out on Wall Street. Economic issues are never really off the front page and business economists appear almost every night on the TV news. One might think that with the preoccupation with economic news it would spell a greater student interest in economics. Australian university economists have been concerned with the decline in student interest in their subject since the mid 1990s and have now perhaps become acclimatised to it. This paper revisits the issue, updates the student enrolment data and ponders the future

Douglas Copland's battle with the younger Brethren of economists

This article discusses the problematic relationship between Douglas Copland and the new generation of post-war Australian economists. Copland felt that their view of economic policy was contrary to Australia's best interests. The critique and feud was to last right up till Copland's retirement. The article shows how Copland's views differed from those of inside economists and therefore the official policy line. Australian Economic History Review © 2013 Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd and the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand

Australia and the Keynesian revolution

When the Nobel prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz visited Australia in 2010 he commended the Rudd Government’s policy response to the Global Financial Crisis as a proper and effective pre-emptive measure. The stimulus, which staved off any creeping sign of recession, bore a considerable Treasury imprint; and it could be said that the official family of economic advisers, that is, the Treasury and the Reserve Bank of Australia, were in their concerted action never so Keynesian in practice. It is appropriate then to visit the Keynesian revolution in post-war Australia recalling that three of the mandarins, Roland Wilson, John Crawford and H.C. ‘Nugget’ Coombs, were professionally trained economists. Moreover, as J.K. Galbraith reminds us, the Keynesian revolution was really a ‘mandarin revolution’, that is, an intellectually powered one

Searching for a 'first class man' : The appointment of the inaugural Ritchie professor of economics

This paper recalls the extraordinary lengths to which the University of Melbourne went to fill one of its most prized and ambitious endowments – the Ritchie Chair in economic research. Following a rebuff from an eminent English economist, an international head-hunt was conducted by two committees. While there was some interest in the names put forward, it was D.B Copland who rather unselfishly solved the problem by suggested a local enigmatic figure who had been initially overlooked. The subsequent appointment proved a wise one and reflected well upon the man who initially suggested it.C

Niemeyer, Scullin and the Australian economists

This article revisits the Niemeyer mission to Australia in 1930 and shows how it facilitated the entry of local economists into the art of policy making. Until then the Scullin government had little regard for the worth of academic economists, a view shared by bankers and central bankers alike. With Niemeyer’s dogmatic advice considered too draconian by a vacillating government, Australian economists, led by L. F. Giblin and D. B. Copland, were galvanised into providing a more palatable alternative. This advice eventually transformed into the Premiers’ Plan which complemented the devaluation and wage cut, both of which had been implemented in January 1931. While the Plan in its entirety was deflationary it was a more equitable and imaginative blueprint than Niemeyer’s.C

The power of economic ideas : Australian economists in the thirties

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D.B. Copland and the aftershocks of the Premiers' plan 1931-1939

Since Roland Wilson’s (1951) tribute to L. F. Giblin as ‘the grand old man’ or father figure of modern Australian economics there has been a tendency to underestimate the achievements and legacy of Douglas Berry Copland. It became fashionable, moreover, with the post-war generation of economists to belittle his contribution to interwar Australian economic thought especially that relating to stabilisation policy. Copland was quite aware of the chiselling away at his reputation. Commenting to a friend while reading Harrod’s biography of Keynes he wrote ‘Still reading Keynes and I remember most of the controversy and the discussion he was involved from the 1920’s onwards. A few of us had been working on similar lines and I have somewhere a set of memorandums to the government of NSW from 1932 to 1936 urging with all the persuasion I could muster an expansionist policy, but we could not get pass the Commonwealth Treasury. It would be fun to dig them out now and circulate for the younger brethren who still think we are past praying for. I’m sure he (Keynes) would disown Coombs and his school if he was with us now’. By that reflection Copland revealed not just his close dealings with Keynes but his fear that a hydraulic Keynesianism was taking hold within the Australian economics fraternity. It also showed Copland’s pride of the policy advocacy and controversies he had actively participated in during the 1930’s

Australian economics in the twentieth century

In this, the eightieth year of the formalisation of the Australian economics profession, a survey of it seems appropriate. While the profession's beginnings were marked by an idiosyncratic, heterodox tradition, the paper finds that those attributes have by now been largely dissolved by internationalisation. To demonstrate this, two periods in Australian economic history, and the role of economic opinion within each, are examined. One concerns the mobilisation of native economics expertise in developing policies to deal with the Great Depression, while the latter episode covers the rise of neo-liberal policy or economic rationalism in Australia. Unlike the interwar period and the post-war era, contemporary Australian economics, despite its policy success in reforming the economy has problems in attracting young minds to its fold.C