Director's Spotlight: 
CEPAR report reveals risks posed for budgets by Australia's ageing population
In a public lecture at the Australian National University (ANU) last week, CEPAR Deputy Director Peter McDonald warned that Australia’s public and private economy-wide deficit could blow out to more than $400 billion by 2050 due to the nation’s ageing population.
 
The lecture was delivered at the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy's launch of a new report which provides the first National Transfer Accounts (NTA) measure for Australia, based on figures from 2009-10. NTA measures how each age group produces, consumes, shares, and saves resources in the economy, and gives an insight into how a country’s demographics will affect its economy and finances.

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Pension experts gather for 22nd Annual Colloquium of Superannuation Researchers
Pension reform is front and centre throughout the world, as both developed and emerging economies grapple with the challenges of financing retirement in the face of demographic change.
 
The opening plenary session of the CEPAR Superannuation Colloquium heard from three experts, from Australia (Chris Cuffe, ), the US (Olivia Mitchell, Director of the Pension Research Council at the Wharton School), and China (Cai Fang, Director of the Institute of Population and Labor Economics at CASS), on challenges and opportunities in their respective countries.
 
Other presentations and papers ranged from reverse mortgage pricing to social security claims behaviour and family status. Some 100 participants took part in the Colloquium, which featured 42 presentations from Australia and abroad. A feature of this year's Colloquium was an integrated public lecture by Joe Stiglitz, recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, who spoke on the GFC and its fall-out.

Nobel prize-winning economist visits CEPAR
CEPAR was delighted to co-host a public lecture by Joseph Stiglitz, 2001 Economics Nobel Laureate, earlier this month. Some 800 people attended his presentation, focused on the GFC, examining where we are now, its impact on the future of the world economy, and what can be done about it.
 
Stiglitz was critical of governments everywhere for not doing enough to draw the global economy out of its lacklustre growth performance since the GFC. He focused especially on the US and Europe, suggesting that the GFC was really a trans-Atlantic FC. Australia, he said, had largely escaped the impacts of the GFC, in part because of what he regarded as the world's best-designed fiscal stimulus package.
 
Watch the video of the lecture HERE