Cross-posted from The Conversation: Few things are more annoying than spending a large sum of money on a purchase, only to discover that someone else got the same thing for a lower price. This often happens with airfares. You go the same website, search the same airline, choose the same seat row and fare conditions,
Cross-posted from The Conversation: The NSW government has confirmed it will sell 51% of WestConnex — the nation’s biggest road infrastructure project — to a consortium led by Transurban, the nation’s biggest toll road corporation. NSW treasurer Dominic Perrottet described the A$9.3 billion sale to one of his party’s more generous donors as a “very
Cross-posted from The Conversation: When it comes to the gender gap in retirement incomes, symbolism appears to matter more than actually achieving something. Labor’s plan to add super contributions to government-funded parental leave was heralded by Opposition Leader Bill Shorten this week as having a “big impact down the track”. Our analysis shows it would
By Gareth Aird, Senior Economist at CBA Key Points: Australian residential property prices have fallen over the past nine months. Further declines appear likely over the next year due to softer credit growth, a continued lift in apartment supply, less foreign demand and more rational price expectations from would-be buyers. We retain our view, however,
Cross-posted from The Conversation: The Productivity Commission – the Australian government’s highly influential economic advisory body – released a report titled Rising Inequality? last week. The question mark indicates its scepticism about other research findings on rising inequality in Australia. The commission responded to its own question in the report’s very first heading: “Over nearly
Cross-posted from The Conversation: If you were going to reduce a 150-page Productivity Commission examination of trends in Australian inequality to a few words, it would be nice if they weren’t “ALP inequality claims sunk”, or “Progressive article of faith blown up” or “Labor inequality myths busted by commission”. The editorial in the Australian Financial
Tues September 4th Presenter: Dr Cameron Murray Venue: Brunswick Mess Hall Tickets Everyone needs somewhere to live. It is a simple fact. Australia’s economy keeps growing every year. As a nation, we are richer than any other time in our history. We also have some of the most expensive housing in the world. We step over
By William Bourke, President of the Sustainable Australia party Australia has a rich history of migration, with around 7 million permanent migrants calling Australia home in the 20th century alone. That’s 70,000 migrants per year – or a bumper ANZ Stadium crowd. By the turn of the century, our population had reached 19 million and
By Ross Elliott, cross-posted from The Pulse We’ve been here before – concerns about our capacity to house a large population are not new. But lately, hostility to rapid rates of population growth is gaining traction. There have been calls for a population enquiry and former PM Abbott has called for immigration (and hence population
By Elliot Clarke, Senior Economist at Westpac Overview: The significant increase in short-term wholesale interest rates and associated volatility has been a key topic of debate in markets throughout 2018. Initially linked to higher borrowing costs in the US, a further spike in only Australian rates as the June quarter drew to a close saw
By Martin North, Principal Analyst at Digital Finance Analytics: One of my clients asked me to share my thoughts on the trajectory of future home loan growth, in the light of the current market dynamics. We run a series on this in our Core Market Model, and it is updated each time we get data
Cross-posted from Independent Australia: PRIME MINISTER MALCOLM TURNBULL has a sustained and unremarkable record of achievement in office, not least of all in the top job. But let’s start with the Great Barrier Reef. First, the Turnbull Government wanted to give away a billion dollars to the Indian-owned mining company, Adani, whose Carmichael coal mine
By Gareth Aird, Senior Economist at CBA: Key Points: Stronger growth in export receipts has taken Australia’s trade balance into the black. But the current account remains in deficit because the net income deficit has widened. We expect Australia’s current account deficit to average 2½% of GDP over the next two years – lower than
Elliot Clarke, CFA Senior Economist Frances Cheung, CFA Head of Macro Strategy, Asia At the beginning of 2018, we outlined a growth view for China that would underwhelm the expectations of both the market and Chinese authorities. Against the official 2018 benchmark of 6.5% growth, we forecast 6.3% for 2018 then 6.1% in 2019. Given
Cross-posted from The Conversation: The final design document for the National Energy Guarantee (NEG), released this week, contains a range of claims about the policy’s ability to drive down both greenhouse emissions and electricity prices. But still there is precious little detail on how exactly these assertions are backed up. Specifically, two claims in the
From Bill Evans, chief economist at Westpac: The Reserve Bank Board meets next week on August 7. It is certain to keep the overnight cash rate unchanged at 1.5%. While the decision will be accompanied by the usual statement from the Governor the more interesting development for the RBA will be the release of the
Cross posted from The Conversation: by Richard Holden Professor of Economics and PLuS Alliance Fellow, UNSW The US economy grew at a startling 4.1% in the second quarter, the first time in four years it has hit the 4% mark. It was not surprising that President Donald Trump was both delighted and vocal about the figures. “Once again,
Cross-posted from Independent Australia: AUSTRALIA IS ON THE CUSP of a major demographic milestone. Our population will reach 25 million by mid-August this year. We were never expected to reach this “milestone” so soon. In 1999, then Minister for Immigration Philip Ruddock said that there was no need for a population policy as the nation was on
By Cameron Kusher, senior research analyst at CoreLogic: The Reserve Bank (RBA) has kept official interest rates sitting at 1.5% ever since August 2016 which represents the longest period of cash rate stability on record. Although official interest rates haven’t moved over this period, investors who have been an increasing source of mortgage demand over recent
By LF Economics The US sociologist and criminologist Edwin Hardin Sutherland is widely considered the founder of white-collar criminology, and was mentored by a protégé of the well-known economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen. Although there was considerable effort on the part of journalists dedicated to investigating the crimes of the rich and powerful during the
By Dr Vino Veritas Despite an overwhelming majority of Australians opposing mass immigration we continue to engorge our nation’s population like a force-fed goose. Mass immigration is a bi-partisan strategy; both our major parties are in lock-step frog-marching the electorate down the road to Big Australia. It is the centrepiece of Australian economic dogma that
By Peter Cook, cross-posted from Peak Decisions Dr Liz Allen is a demographer at ANU and a regular commentator on population issues for the ABC. The ABC recently announced Dr Allen as one of their ‘top 5 humanities researchers‘, which apparently means she gets to work at the ABC for a few weeks and presumably
By Martin North, Principal Analyst at Digital Finance Analytics: Today we look at the current home price dynamics, as we are still seeing the property sprukiers saying that, first now that prices have fallen, it’s a great buying time and second, that prices will stay high because of the lack of supply. Neither of these
By John Adams, Chief Economist at As Good As Gold Australia Australia has truly entered the uncharted twilight zone. Last week, Chairman of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), Wayne Byres delivered a speech entitled ‘preparing for a rainy day’ . The Chairman, as part of this speech, outlined a range of policy initiatives that APRA
Cross-posted from The Conversation: One of the biggest transformations we have seen in advanced economies is the increased participation of women in the paid workforce. In recent Australian labour force trends, female participation is growing at nine times the rate of men’s. Women are dominating both full and part-time employment growth in Australia. Why do
By Philip Soos, an independent economist and PhD candidate investigating bank crime and mortgage control fraud. ONE OF THE MOST important economic issues in recent times has been low wage growth. Barely a day goes by without the mass media, politicians, unions, economists, industry associations and workers discussing the topic. Industry and the Coalition are
By Gareth Aird, Senior Economist at CBA Key Points: A solid lift in consumer sentiment as well as a pick-up in retail sales, job vacancies and total employee earnings suggests there are some green shoots to the outlook for consumer spending. Falling dwelling prices, however, pose a risk to the outlook but so far Australian
By Gerard Minack from Minack Advisors Australian house prices are gently falling. They are likely to fall further as credit conditions tighten. The big unknown, however, is how the fall in house prices will affect consumer saving. Recession is a risk, but not yet the investment base case. Several factors are now tightening credit conditions
By Gareth Aird, Senior Economist at CBA: Key Points: Employment growth has been much stronger for females than for males over the past year. Strong growth in the services sector, particularly health, is behind the big lift in female employment. The rise in female employment has been accompanied by a lift in participation. There are
By Nathan Lynch, Asia-Pacific bureau chief, financial crime and risk, Thomson Reuters When the HBOS Group collapsed in 2008, UK taxpayers were left to fund a £17 billion bank bail-out. It was a prudential disaster that contributed to the break-up of the FSA. In Australia, meanwhile, the bank’s “appalling lending record” was even worse than
