Archived publication for 2008 in IPA Review article
Recent publications
How humanity outflanked starvation
Sinclair Davidson reviews A Farewell to Alms: A brief history of the world by Gregory Clark Sometime in the last 200 years there was a fundamental shift in the human condition. Our lives changed from being somewhat ‘nasty, brutish and short'...
How many football teams should there be?
Competition is good for consumers-it leads to lower prices and better quality, with less efficient firms exiting the industry. Sports, apparently, are an exception to that rule. Consumers are better off when teams compete on the playing field, but...
Can we starve the government beast?
‘This reckless spending has got to stop'. With those words Kevin Rudd outflanked John Howard's economic policy from the right. Australia's traditional centre-left party won the 2007 election with smaller government rhetoric than the...
The inconvenient truth of public transport success
Since its privatisation in 1999, Melbourne's public transport system has recorded the largest patronage increases in the country. Sadly, ideological opponents of privatisation will go to any lengths to not only hide this fact, but to actually...
20 years reveals gigantic strides in international trade
The politics of trade policy often obscures what should be an unambiguously positive story about the globalisation of the world economy. Goods which were previously produced on a single site are now produced in a virtual international factory-each...