A Survey on Australian Economists

It's interesting to look at the 2011 Australian Economic Society Survey just to get a feel of what economists in Australia think.

The scaling is a five point one; Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree and Strongly Agree. A few points caught my eye as I went through the results.

1.  There is support for a mining tax in Australia with a strong 37.1% which I'm sure the leading Labour party will want to stick up the public's faces.
2. The sentencing of price-fixing executives received 51.4% in a just agree which reflects well the current economic times.
3. A price-based mechanism (taxes, subsidies or emission trading scheme) is deemed appropriate in the fight against greenhouse gas emissions. 44.4% strongly agree to one which is again food for the Labour politicians.
4. A requirement for women to be designated a minimum amount of seats as directors does not do well with the economists with a dismal 35% disagreeing to such an arrangement. Would this have been informed by the fact that only 18.8% of the respondents were women?
5. Not so surprisingly still, there is strong support for the appropriateness of monetary easing tendencies of governments in times of severe recession. 50% agree while a strong 25.9% strongly agree. I wonder how this would have changed were this to be the USA. Does monetary easing check out as strongly as economists believe it does? Are there other options?
6. Interesting to note a 42.7% agreement on congestion pricing for Australian cities. I wonder which political side is bold enough to even mention such a thing. I'd probably bet on Labour quite confidently though.
7. There is a 45.8% support for skilled migrant intake showing a real worry in Australia regarding labour shortages. How much longer will the Liberal coalition see this light?
8. And as I would have expected the disastrous first-home buyers grant received a 40.4% strong disagreement and just to stress that, another neat 30.5% just disagreeing. Clearly Labour executed this one awe-fully.
9. The economists maintain a favour for a rebate on private healthcare funds in Australia though. We see 32.6% disagreeing on abolishing the rebate.

In general, my feeling is that economists have done a lot of learning from the economic situation globally and this is reflected well with monetary and regulatory responses that seem far more definite and well calculated. The responses here do send a message that there is a wind of change a-blowing, the only real question is how fast does this translate to the lawmakers who, unfortunately, we have vested all powers to do something about government. We can only hope for the gradual achievement of a sustainable economically apt compromise.