Stay tuned for exciting announcements on the Australian Conference of Economists 2021 program!

From the work of Adam Smith onward, the relationship between wealth and welfare has been a frequent element of economic thinking. In 1920, A. C. Pigou presented one of the most, if not the most, important systematic investigations into the economic relationship between wealth and welfare in his book The Economics of Welfare. Since then, the economic treatment of wealth and welfare has developed from the ‘old’ welfare economics of Pigou to the ‘new’ welfare economics of Sir John Hicks, to the formulation of the ‘social welfare function’ by Abram Bergson and Paul Samuelson, to the social choice theory of Kenneth Arrow and to the ‘new new’ welfare economics of Joseph Stiglitz. More recently, the economic notion of welfare has been a reference point from which economic wellbeing and happiness have been investigated.

ACE 2021 celebrates the centenary of Pigou’s great work by warmly inviting economists to present their research and/or policy papers that deal with any aspect of the economics of ‘wealth’ or the economics of ‘wellbeing’. Of course, as ACE 2021 is the annual conference of the Economic Society of Australia, the conference proceeding will also extend to other fields of economic research and policy. Indeed, the members of the Organising Committee and the Economics Committee are united by their desire for ACE 2021 to mark the centenary of The Economics of Welfare by providing an effective forum for the presentation of high quality work from any field of economics.

The conference program will feature keynote and oral presentations and will focus on the following themes:

Wealth, including (but not limited to):

• Development economics
• Economic growth and prosperity
• Financial economics
• Inequality in the distribution of wealth and income
• Macroeconomics
• Monetary economics
• Public policy in relation to wealth creation
• Trade and international economics

Wellbeing, including (but not limited to):

• Economics of health and/or disability
• Economics of welfare
• Happiness
• Measurement issues
• Public policy in relation to inequality, welfare, happiness, etc.
• Social policy

Other issues in economics, including (but not limited to):

• Applied economics
• Behavioural economics
• Business economics
• Debt, taxation and/or public spending
• Econometrics
• Economic history
• Economics of gender
• Education
• Energy economics
• Environmental economics
• History of economic thought
• Immigration
• Industry economics
• Natural resource economics
• Transport economics