Introducing a History of Australasian Economic Thought (original) (raw)

2018, History of Economics Review

One point is certain: no one knows more about Australian economics than Alex Millmow. His book is a scholar's work, the culmination of the decades spent in researching his topic. One consequence is that his text bears a kind of infinite density; rather in the style of a Mandelbrot zoom, reading the page closer and closer only yields more and more detail. And the garnered particulars are no dry ballast; his prose, by means of the mining of personal letters, leaves the impression of the memoirs of a fabulously long-lived participant of the events he records. But is this the effect he should have sought? What might a history of economics in Australia and New Zealand achieve? Such a history could be an account of contributions to academic economics made by economists resident in Australasia. But a work on such a plan would have been almanacal in character rather than a history, so I am content Millmow does not attempt this task. Instead, a history could have provided an account of public existence of economics in Australasia. In other words, a History of the Australasian Economist in Public Life. And that boils down to a History of Australasian Economic Policy Thought. It is that task that, in large measure, Millmow undertakes. Alternatively, a history could have offered up a History of Australian Economics, as distinct from a History of Economics in Australia. But what is Australian Economics as distinct from Economics in Australia? It is not some sort of indigenous intellectual growth that has yielded an alternative paradigm; a fanciful notion. If Australian Economics is something real, apart from a myth, it is the perception or sensibility that the Australian economy is not an 'ordinary case', but constitutes a special case of the general theory. The particular reference of these special cases could be Australia's well-known peculiar institutions: the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration (in various incarnations); the Commonwealth Grants Commission and the unparalleled degree of fiscal imbalance in Australia's federation; 'Medicare'; compulsory 'Superannuation'. In fact, these things have rarely received any serious analytical appraisal from Australia's economists. The most promising reference of an Australian Economics is macroeconomic rather than microeconomic. It comes down to the tradition that takes the Australian CONTACT William Coleman

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