A lucky boy from a golden age of economics
When the financial crisis struck, it was back to the economics Max Corden learned in the 40s and 50s — a golden age of economics in… Read More
Author: Nicholas Gruen
Now is the time for complacency: Bank of England vs Reserve Bank edition
Part two of Nicholas Gruen's exploration of how central banks use their statutory independence. For decades the "people's bank" was only accessible to the banking elite, and profits flowed accordingly, then came digital. Read More
Now is the time for complacency: RBA vs Bank of England edition
Lateral Economics CEO Nicholas Gruen considers the concept of statutory independence, and what government bodies like the Productivity Commission or the Reserve Bank could do with it if they were bolder and less bureaucratic. Read More
Nicholas Gruen: the academy and partners try wellbeing frameworks
Economist Nicholas Gruen looks at problems with various attempts to measure wellbeing and the struggle to get from noble principles to practical outcomes. Read More
Nicholas Gruen: hacking wellbeing for the biggest returns
There are some commonsense 'hacks' government could use to improve Australians' wellbeing, argues economist Nicholas Gruen. Read More
Nicholas Gruen: what have wellbeing frameworks ever done for us?
Government agencies around the world have been discussing wellbeing for a long time, but this has not filtered through to action on the ground, argues economist Nicholas Gruen. The first of a four-part essay series about failures of policy debate to translate into outcomes. Read More
Cutting through waste: taking competitive neutrality seriously
Allowing the Reserve Bank to provide retail services could generate massive savings, argues economist Nicholas Gruen. And why shouldn't all Australians be able to access high-performing public service super funds? Read More
Nicholas Gruen: Information and the structure of institutions, W. H. Hutt edition
William Harold Hutt's ideas about what improves private sector productivity can tell the public sector much about its production of public goods. Nicholas Gruen explores a quirky story from the 1930s with a message for today's data-driven government. Read More
Nicholas Gruen: evaluation knowledge comes not from numbers, but questions
As policymakers look back for answers to what worked — like PM&C's $40m for evaluation of Indigenous programs — the pass/fail approach won't, in itself, help find the answers that government will need as circumstances change. Read More
Leadership without careerism: is it possible?
Is there a better way of selecting leaders than through self-assertion? Nicholas Gruen on his experience with a Citizen Jury and what it means for trust in the public sector if it promotes a culture of selflessness. Read More
Review: The Last Man in Europe
This is a novel about George Orwell and 1984, an unsentimental tribute to the political writer who grasped with greatest penetration the meaning of the European catastrophes of the first half of the twentieth century. Read More
Five ways to tell if you’re REALLY doing strategy
Nicholas Gruen continues his essay on strategy, exploring the preconditions of good strategic thinking for organisations. If the organisation is to sensibly set itself goals, its strategic thinking must comprehend the dialectical relationship between the means and the ends — each influencing the other in an endless search for inspiration, improvement, optimisation and mutual accommodation. Read More
Upmarket agitprop: Clive James on John Howard on Bob Menzies
Nicholas Gruen reviews a book review by Clive James and ponders the decline of serious debate. He says James joined the culture wars and attacked weaker, dumbed-down versions of opposing views, as expressed by ideological fringe-dwellers. Read More
The living and the dead: government’s arteries and capillaries have lost symbiosis
Announceables, rebranding, and the prestige of policy theory over delivery — the 'arteries' of government, driven by status rewards of social and economic importance, have come to dominate the 'capillaries' in a way that threatens the health of both. Read More
Building the public goods of the 21st century
Had Fiona Stanley been constrained by today's data privacy demands we might never have learned how to reduce incidents of spina bifida. Many more digital public goods are languishing amid grand pronouncements. Rather, we need the whole system to start coalescing around common goals. Read More