Publications
Here you can find articles or essays which I have written and which have been published elsewhere
How Victoria became one of Australia’s ‘poor states’
Economic Policies, News, Publications, The Australian Economy | 25th November 2024Over the past two-and-a-half decades Victoria has gone from being one of Australia’s most prosperous states to being one of its three poorest, on most indicators, and its most heavily indebted. This article, published by the Australian Financial Review on 25th November 2024, explains how and why.
A new dawn over stormy seas
Australian Society and Politics, Economic Policies, Publications, The Australian Economy | 23rd May 2022Article commissioned by The Conversation suggesting (at the risk of ‘jumping the gun’) a way in which the new Labor Government might be able to secure a mandate for more ambitious economic reform next time around.
Who are the ‘better managers’ of Australia’s economy?
Australian Society and Politics, Economic Policies, Publications, The Australian Economy | 21st April 2022Article originally published on John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations site on 21st April 2022, asking whether either of Australia’s major political parties can credibly claim to be “better economic managers” than the other.
The costs and consequences of ‘small business fetishism’
Australian Society and Politics, Economic Policies, Publications, Taxation, The Australian Economy | 10th December 2021Article published in the December 2021 edition of Agenda, the journal of the Australian National University’s School of Economics.
A chat with Alan Kohler
Economic Video, Publications | 19th October 2021Saul talks with the Eureka Report and ABC News’ Alan Kohler about inflation, interest rates and housing affordability on his The Money Café podcast on 19th October 2021 Hello, I’m Alan Kohler, Editor in Chief of Eureka Report and welcome to The Money Café. Joining me today is Saul Eslake, independent economist, used to be […]
Old wine in new bottles: more ‘rent-seeking’ from South Australian manufacturing interests
Economic Policies, Publications, The Australian Economy | 17th September 2021There’s a new lobby group pleading for preferential treatment for manufacturing in the name of ensuring ‘sovereignty’, a word of which the present Federal Government is especially fond. But it boils down to the same old rent-seeking that has been a feature of Australian manufacturing policy for most of the past 120 years. (Full text […]
This is a recession – we’re just not calling it one
Economic Policies, Publications, The Australian Economy | 9th September 2021Op-ed published in the Australian Financial Review of 9th August 2021 – arguing (1) that we are in a recession now, irrespective of whether we have two consecutive quarterly contractions in real GDP, and (2) that although it shares some of the ‘responsibility’ for this second recession, the federal government’s fiscal policy response to it […]
Spoiler alert: we’re in a recession, even if it’s not ‘official’
Publications, The Australian Economy | 31st August 2021Jessica Irvine, senior economics columnist with the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age newspapers, discusses Saul’s views on the meaning of the term ‘recession’ and whether Australia is once again in one now