Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Great new reading from the Treasury

I spent a terribly enjoyable hour in the sun in the Parliament House courtyard reading these, really.

The macroeconomic implications of financial deleveraging by Will Devlin and Huw McKay:

How does it happen, and why does it always seem so much more severe than it needs to be?

Household saving in Australia, by Susie Thorne and Jill Cropp:

Why did it fall, and (more interestingly) why has it been climbing these last few years?

Harnessing the demand side: Australian consumer policy, by Stephen Hally-Burton, Siddharth Shirodkar, Simon Winckler and Simon Writer:

A terribly useful guide through the development of consumer policy in Australia.

Did you know that four thousand years ago the Babylonian ruler Hammurabi decreed that, "If the mistress of a beer-shop has not received corn as the price of beer or has demanded silver on an excessive scale, and has made the measure of beer less than the measure of corn, that beer-seller shall be prosecuted and drowned."

So began consumer law.

These are in the Treasury's Quarterly Economic Roundup - a most excellent publication.