Monetary Policy Mistakes and Remedies: An Assessment Following the RBA Review

This article responds to the Review of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), which was released on 20 April 2023. We describe the underperformance of the Australian economy over the past decade, and identify the contribution of RBA mistakes. We suggest remedies that would improve prospects for low inflation and unemployment. Returning to general prosperity requires better coordination of monetary, fiscal and macro-prudential policy and of these with other aspects of economic policy-making. We conclude that while the RBA Review makes some valuable suggestions about structure and process at the RBA, it provides little guidance on the content of policy.     

IMAGINING A DECOLONIZED CITY IN AND FROM AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND

Imagining decolonized cities creates space to explore how urban places could strip away colonial dominance and restore the ability of Indigenous people to live, know and be. In this essay, we describe one attempt to create such space. While working in Porirua in Aotearoa New Zealand, we ran an urban design competition, hosted workshops with young people and held a symposium. Through all three phases we drew on utopian thinking to imagine beyond the current constraints of urban form in Aotearoa New Zealand to consider how cities might reflect the diverse realities of Māori. While this approach is an attempt at generating hopeful geographies, it also sat in tension with (post)colonial realities, such as racist attempts by white people to claim Indigeneity, and the ongoing need for land to be returned to Indigenous people. We argue that envisioning how cities might be decolonized is useful and needs to be rooted in the particular politics of place, but this imagining needs to be paired with action to confront persistent colonialism.     

Gaze behaviour,body image in women and online apparel shopping

Online apparel shopping is popular among women, with possible negative body image consequences, particularly when the website imagery is body-focused. We investigated both correlational and experimental effects of online apparel shopping on women's (N = 113) explicitly and implicitly measured self-worth, appearance attitudes and body gaze behaviour. Self-reported online apparel shopping behaviour positively correlated with self-objectification and a tendency to value and compare one's appearance. Following a simulated online shopping activity, women who browsed a body-focused activewear website felt worse about their looks, when compared with women who browsed a non-body-focused casualwear website. The activewear condition also primed lower subsequent visual attention towards female bodies in a gaze task, when compared with the casualwear condition. Given that women tend to naturally gaze at faces, the deprivation of facial stimuli in the activewear condition presumably led to a compensatory gaze effect, whereby subsequent attention towards bodies was comparably low. Importantly, dollars spent in the activewear condition correlated positively with appearance comparison and body shame attitudes. These results suggest that online apparel imagery exposure may negatively impact women's well-being. We also find evidence suggesting that gaze behaviour plays a role in how apparel marketing influences subsequent attention.     

Did it pay to be a pioneer? Wealth accumulation in a newly settled frontier society

European settler colonies are often thought to have been characterised by a continued expansion of the landed frontier, which impacted the distribution of wealth across their settler populations. Hampered by a lack of data, few studies have been able to study this in depth. How does settlement timing affect wealth and wealth accumulation when frontier expansion is not a smooth, continuous process? Was it the case that pioneers reaped greater economic benefits from locating their farms on superior land, or would they be disadvantaged compared with later arrivals owing to limited infrastructure or greater risk of conflict with indigenous populations? In this paper, we use a unique dataset that allows us to analyse the link between time of arrival and wealth accumulation in a colonial agrarian frontier society: the Graaff-Reinet district in South Africa's Cape Colony between 1786 and 1850. We find that those who arrived early located their farms in the more climatologically suitable areas of the district and utilised their superior lands to accumulate wealth more quickly than latecomers. However, owing to institutional changes that favoured later British arrivals, we also show that the existence of an early-arrival premium did not mean persistence in land ownership.     

China in the Global Response to Climate Change

China has a huge national interest in the success of the international effort to hold human-induced increases in temperature to 1.5 degrees – and therefore in global net emissions falling to net zero by 2050. China is essential to the success of the global effort – as a supplier of competitively priced equipment for the zero emissions world economy and as the world's largest current source of greenhouse gas emissions. Success is more likely for China and the world with international specialization in goods production for the zero emissions economy. This will require open international trade, with China supplying equipment and drawing zero emissions semi-processed goods from abroad. Success is more likely and will be achieved at a lower cost if there is close cooperation across national boundaries.     

The Economic Consequences of Mr Trump and Mr Biden

Max Corden and Ross Garnaut published ‘The Economic Consequences of Mr Trump’ in this journal in 2018. This paper examines what has transpired in the US economy against that article. It notes continuity in budget and trade policy from the Trump Presidency to the Biden Presidency. The continuity in macro-fiscal and trade policies is accompanied by a significant departure in the focus of fiscal expansion: Mr Biden's strong support for decarbonisation. The article applies Max Corden's approach to international economics to the question: should Australia emulate Mr Biden's combination of budget, protection and decarbonisation policies?