Australian Economic Review最新文献

These notes reflect a panel discussion on the job markets for Australian PhDs on the occasion of the 2024 PhD Conference in Economics and Business. The author is grateful for the comments by Professor Ken Clements, moderator of the panel and cofounder of the PhD Conference start with a personal reflection on the job market for PhDs in Economics and Finance. We take a closer look at today's academic job market conditions and draw comparisons with the job market conditions in the corporate, public and not-for-profit sectors. We then consider the selection criteria adopted by the recruiters. Followed by advice on how to successfully navigate the academic job market, how to avoid common mistakes, and how to find the perfect match between a candidate and a recruiting school.

Reported news events frequently influence the pricing dynamics of oil-based commodities. We analyse almost 900 oil-related events from 1987 to 2022, categorising them based on recurring characteristics. We quantify dynamic connectedness among energy commodities and apply a novel bootstrap-after-bootstrap testing procedure to identify 21 statistically significant historical events that triggered abrupt and enduring increases in volatility connectedness. Geopolitical events are more consistently associated with elevated connectedness than economic events, while natural events do not exhibit a similar impact. Events share prevailing characteristics: their negativity, unexpected nature and the introduction of concerns about oil supply shortages.

Current trade patterns reflect the low cost of transporting carbon-intensive fossil fuels. But renewable energy is expensive to transport. In a world moving to net-zero emissions, Australia can capitalise on its abundant renewable energy resource to process and export green minerals and fuels. With the right policy settings, Australia could not only meet its own international commitments to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, but it could make a significant contribution to the global reduction in emissions, and prosper in the process.

Australia is not on track to meet its obligations under the Paris Accord. How can action to achieve net zero be accelerated? Here, we apply the concept of ‘sensitive intervention points’ and consider six potential interventions that could have a disproportionate impact on Australia's progress: (i) a national plan to clarify direction; (ii) a national net-zero authority to coordinate efforts; (iii) support for a set of nationally significant projects in particular places; (iv) an industrial policy response akin to the US IRA; (v) a standard for the construction industry; and (vi) a requirement that companies develop net-zero plans. Individually and collectively, we argue that they could plausibly accelerate Australia's trajectory to net-zero emissions.

As a country with an abundance of renewable resources, Australia has an opportunity to emerge as a global leader in the production of green iron rather than simply extracting and exporting iron ore around the world. While it makes sense to do so in the changing geopolitical environment, and to assist in achieving our commitments to dramatically reduce our carbon emissions, this paper sheds light on the complex technical and economic arguments for the creation of a green iron industry here in Australia. We argue that targeted government intervention coupled with industry commitment to transforming the sector could realistically result in the emergence of a nascent green iron industry in the medium term.

For most of the last 15 years, Australia policy on climate change has been decidedly underwhelming, leaving us behind where we need to be to fulfil our obligations under the Paris Accord. But there are encouraging signs at present that there is an emerging consensus—amongst captains of industry, different levels of government, policy-makers and everyday Australians—that we can achieve our ambitions to live in a world that is far less reliant on carbon.

The decarbonisation of the Australian economy relies on the transition of the electricity grid from fossil fuel to renewable sources. In this paper, we briefly summarise the logic behind the design of the National Electricity Market, the market servicing 88% of the Australian population. We then explore the challenges facing the National Electricity Market during its transition and emphasise key proposals aimed at reforming the consumer, or demand-side, of the market. We highlight four challenges - whether consumers will be active, whether retail markets can deliver contracts that facilitate efficient transition, whether the wholesale market will operate effectively and whether regulatory barriers can be quickly addressed.