Nineteenth Colin Clark Lecture: November 2009 What Have We Learnt? The Great Depression in Australia from the Perspective of Today

This lecture examines the lessons learnt from Australia's experience in the 1930s, and how these lessons have informed more recent economic policy decisions including the policy responses to the current global financial crisis. The lecture argues that the lessons learnt from the Great Depression have informed the macroeconomic frameworks of today. While Australia's policy frameworks of the 1930s were tragically ill equipped to cope with anything other than small, inconsequential macroeconomic or financial market shocks, the policy frameworks put in place in the modern era have rendered the economy much more resilient to such shocks.