Scholarly Comments on Academic Economics

The Curtailment of Critical Commentary in Australian Economics

by , ,

*Brian Dollery* is Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for Local Government at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales, Australia. His main research focus falls in local public finance and the economics of Australian local
*Dr Joel Byrnes* is a research consultant at KPMG in Melbourne and former Deputy Director of the Centre for Local Government at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales, Australia. His main research interests reside in the economics of u
*Galia Akimova* is a research assistant at the School of Business, Economics and Public Policy and a member of the Centre for Local Government at the University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales, Australia. Her email is gakimova@une.edu.au.

Abstract

Coelho, De Worken-Eley and McClure (2005) showed that, 1963 through 2004, critical commentary declined significantly in the American Economic Review, Economic Journal, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Review of Economics and Statistics. Using the same method, we investigated the same question for all of the economic journals produced in Australia, and then published the results in Australian Economic Papers (Dollery, Byrnes and Akimova 2007). We found the same trend in Australia for the period 1962 to 2005. This suggests that the downward trend may apply across economics journals generally. This short note simply relates the basic finding of our Australian Economic Papers article.