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Geoff Harcourt and Economic Policy: Horses for Courses?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2023

Roy Green ,
Tim Harcourt  and
PN (Raja) Junankar
Roy Green
Affiliation:
UTS, Sydney, Australia
Tim Harcourt*
Affiliation:
Industry Professor and Chief Economist, IPPG, UTS (and Geoff’s son), Sydney, Australia
PN (Raja) Junankar
Affiliation:
Western Sydney University and Adjunct Professor, UNSW, Canberra Institut zur Zukunft der Arbeit (IZA), Bonn, Germany
*
*Corresponding author. Email: Tim.Harcourt@uts.edu.au
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Abstract

Geoff Harcourt was a renowned economist and political activist who made a significant contribution to public policy, particularly in his home country of Australia. As a leading contributor to post-Keynesian theory, he believed a capitalist economy would not create full employment without significant policy intervention. On the labour market, he devised an approach to wage bargaining that integrated fairness with productivity growth in the context of Australia’s unique institutions of conciliation and arbitration. On tariff protection, he was agnostic, preferring a more proactive industry policy grounded in post-Keynesian principles and drawing on his early work on accounting theory and practice. His economic advice to the Australian Labor Party (ALP) Committee of Inquiry in 1979 refocused policy debate around the role of incomes policy, which became the centrepiece of the Hawke-Keating Government’s Accord with the trade union movement.

Keywords

Cambridge controversiesHarcourtinflation policylabour markets industry policypolitical economypost-KeynesianB31B51B52
Type
Invited Article
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , March 2023 , pp. 15 - 25
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of UNSW Canberra

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