THE ECONOMIC RECORD, VOL. 88, SPECIAL ISSUE, JUNE, 2012, 1

Introduction by this Special Issue’s Editors

WILLIAM COLEMAN

Australian National University

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� 2012 The Economic Society of Australiadoi: 10.1111/j.1475-4932.2012.00811.x

PAUL OSLINGTON

Australian Catholic University

This special Conference issue of EconomicRecord contains a selection of papers from theEconomic Society of Australia’s 40th Conferenceof Economists at the Australian National Uni-versity in Canberra held from 11 to 13 July 2011.

Befitting a 40th anniversary, our openingreception featured a presentation on the historyof the conference by Alex Millmow. MaxCorden (a Distinguished Fellow of the Societyand a veteran of many Conferences of Econo-mists) opened the proceedings proper with somereflections on the current state and future pros-pects of economics in Australia.

Our distinguished keynote speakers wereCharles Bean (Bank of England), Jenny Corbett(Australian National University), Glenn Hub-bard (Columbia University), Laurence Iannac-cone (Chapman University), Pete Klenow(Stanford University), David Throsby (Macqua-rie University), Hal Varian (Google and theUniversity of California) and Stephen William-son (University of Iowa).

Special sessions included academiconomics,economics education and pedagogy, social jus-tice, economic journalism in Australia, climatechange adaptation, economics of mental illnessand suicide, micro-simulation modelling, eco-nomics of the Fair Work Act, meta-analysis,Australian economic history, childcare, the eco-nomics of religion, Japan, fertility and transporteconomics. Following the main conference, a

highly successful public policy symposium wasorganised by Henry Ergas.

Of the 46 contributed papers submitted for thespecial issue, 14 were accepted, some afterextensive revisions. All were subject to the nor-mal Economic Record refereeing processes. Wehad some difficult decisions to make as editorsand had to turn down many good papers.

We would like to thank those who served withus on the Conference committee: Vicky Pullen,Timo Henckel, Phil Lewis, Franco Papandrea,Hom Pant, Michael Potter, Martin Richardson,Prem Thapa, Mandy Yap and Marcia Keegan.

We acknowledge the support of our lendingsponsors — the Australian National University,the Australian Treasury, the Reserve Bank ofAustralia, the Department of Foreign Affairsand Trade and the Australian Bureau of Agricul-tural and Resource Economics.

We are grateful to Jeff Sheen, editor of theEconomic Record, for his wise guidance as weput together the special issue, and to the review-ers who assisted us in making decisions aboutsubmissions.

Editing may not be the most glamorous activ-ity in the profession, but we are pleased to pres-ent a collection of papers which testifies to thecontinuing health of the Economic Society ofAustralia’s Conference of Economists: a mixtureof innovative papers of wide interest and paperson Australian policy significance.