Global Economy
Australia should build its green infrastructure presence
A group of former diplomats are among the many parties making a persuasive case for Australia to adopt a more climate-conscious foreign policy. One particularly beneficial…
History lessons from “The Great Crash”?
In J.K. Galbraith’s entertaining 1954 account of the stock-market collapse of 1929 The Great Crash (re-released by Penguin in paperback last year), the celebrated economist took…
Kip-to-currency?
A rare spate of headlines out of Laos last month trilled about a new bullet train that runs from the capital Vientiane to China, with the government heavily in debt after the…
Economic diplomacy: Retro shopping beats the supply chain crisis
These Birks were made for walkin’
In the end it seems, like politics, all trade is local. It has been a big year for reshoring, diversification, logistics log jams and, as Joe…
Common prosperity meets the Belt and Road
China’s President Xi Jinping’s concept of “common prosperity” is slowly being internationalised. The most obvious manifestation of this came last month when Xi framed the Belt and…
Twenty years of BRICS
It is 20 years since Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill invented the BRIC economic grouping – Brazil, Russia, India and China – with South Africa added later to make up the…
Economic diplomacy: Free trade vs economic resilience
Santa clauses
The value of global goods trade during the biggest pandemic in a century last year dropped about a third less than it did during the biggest financial crisis in a…
Time to step up on global kleptocracy
When the Pandora Papers were published last month, few registered their significance for Australian statecraft. Spanning 11.9 million leaked documents, and exposing the property…
Podcasts
COP26 and beyond: fault lines in global climate policy
In this episode, Lowy Institute lead economist Roland Rajah is joined by Dr Vijaya Ramachandran and Dr Sam Geall to discuss the outcomes from the COP26 Glasgow Climate Change…