Issue 1 (2009) pp. 47-52 - Going gangbusters? / Ben Hillier

Abstract

The Journal of Australian Political Economy special issue on the long Australian economic boom is timely for two reasons. First, because its release comes at the end of the boom, allowing for a comprehensive overview of and a vantage point from which to appraise the long period of expansion which began back in 1992. Secondly, the contributors are generally critical of the neo-liberal orthodoxy, whose bankruptcy is now apparent. The most obvious question to ask is: ‘how were 16 years of expansion sustained?’ Michael Howard and John King, while citing ma ny factors, evoke ‘long wave theory’ to explain the period. This theory, put forward by Russian economist Nicolai Kondratiev in the 1920s, postulates that in addition to short-run boom-bust cycles, the capitalist economy undergoes long-term upswings and downswings in price movements, accumulation and economic growth. Howard and King suggest that the period from 1992 represented the first half of a new global long wave upswing.