Great Expectations: Microeconomic Reform and Australia [Paperback]

John Quiggin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1997 | ISBN-10: 1864482362 | ISBN-13: 978-1864482362

The 1980s and '90s have been a period of unprecedented microeconomic reform in Australia, in a bid to make the nation s enterprise environment more competitive. With the full implementation of the National Competition Policy, the pace of that reform is set to explode. In this timely work, John Quiggin critically examines the assumptions, the practice and the future of microeconomic reform and its place in the Australian economy. Is it unambiguously true that competition within the infrastructure benefits business and consumers as well as the infrastructure industry concerned? What are the assumptions upon which such great expectations have been placed, and have they held true in the experience of reform? Great Expectations places the prospect of microeconomic reform in its theoretical and historical context. It examines and evaluates: - transport deregulation - government business enterprises - financial deregulation - contracting out - tariffs and industry policy - privatisation - communications deregulation - private infrastructure At a time when Australia s economic basis and future conti

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: Allen & Unwin (March 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1864482362
• ISBN-13: 978-1864482362
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,956,618 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars John Quiggin's appraisal of reform is unsurpassed, November 30, 1999

By 

Paul Burton - See all my reviews

This review is from: Great Expectations: Microeconomic Reform and Australia (Paperback)

Microeconomic Reform in Australia, as in most Western economies, has now been more often than not the main focus in the policy agenda of governments. In Australia, the process of microeconomic reform has progressed substantially since the 25 percent across-the-board reduction in tariffs by the Whitlam government in 1973. This process has intensified further in recent years since the adoption by governments of both political persuasions of the Hilmer Report into Competition Policy in 1992. Quiggin argues that there has been in Australia a distortion of economic priorities due to the overstated claims about the benefits of microeconomic reform. This, he argues, has encouraged an uncritical acceptance of "economically unsound policies proposed in the name of competition". Quiggin's analysis of microeconomic reform in Australia includes a much welcomed rigorous adoption of welfare economics principles as well as an indepth explanation of the public and private interest approaches to government policy. In particular, Quiggin critically analyses the deregulation of the financial sector, airlines and telecommunications, as well as tariff reform, privatisation and competitive tendering and contracting. John Quiggin's book is a timely reminder that policies aimed at improving economic efficiency and overall welfare must necessarily include an evaluation of economic fact rather than fiction. This book, while highly technical for undergraduates, is an essential read for all would-be economists or those with an interest in the economic debate in Australia. "Great Expecatations" cements John Quiggin's place as one of Australia's foremost economists. Simply put, this is a book of substance.