There is of course no sense in trying to summarize as eclectic a set of Lectures as this one. The purpose of this note is simply to whet the reader's appetite by describing the range of economic issues discussed over the almost one hundred years the Lectures cover.

Given the interest of Joseph Fisher in fostering higher education in matters commercial, it is not surprising that the first Lecture was on precisely that topic. The Lecturer, who headed a major bank at the time, was evidently very widely traveled and well informed of the embryonic attempts in other affluent countries to introduce economics and commerce courses into universities. The Inaugural Lecture provides fascinating reading for today's graduate economists and accountants unaware that their courses had hardly begun to be established a century ago. Adelaide University can take pride in being at the global forefront in developing a course as early as 1901. Its initial requirements were not as tough as the University of Birmingham's though, where commerce students had to master at least two modern foreign languages in addition to English!

The next few Lectures cover practical commerce/business issues before the topics turn to mainstream economics and finance issues that were important at the time and, in numerous cases, have remained so.

The issue of price stability concerned Copland in 1919 in the aftermath of the Great War, for which he saw a return to the gold standard as an inadequate solution.