Bio

Andrew Leigh is an economist in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University.

Andrew Leigh's contributions:

Bring Back the Inheritance Tax

Macgregor Duncan, Andrew Leigh and David Madden call for the reintroduction of an inheritance tax. They argue that an inheritance tax on the super-wealthy would be consistent with the Australian values of ‘egalitarianism’ and a ‘fair go’ and would represent a more efficient way of raising revenue than income or sales tax. In addition to the modest revenue raised from the proposal, the tax would establish incentives for wealthy Australians to increase their currently-low charitable giving

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• Real world economics

• tax

'Social laboratory of the world' or 'reform sclerosis' - the choice is ours: Part 2

Last week Leigh and Withers questioned why Australia had stopped investing in its future and identified four reasons: short-termism, divided responsibility, risk-aversion and a lack of trust in politicians. This week they consider risk-aversion and the distrust in politicians and propose some responses. They propose that the government mitigate risk through extending the use of HECS-like income-contingent loans into other areas such as business start-up, community development and drought assistance and they argue for reform of party preselection and question time to increase trust in politicians

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• Democratic Renewal

'Social laboratory of the world' or 'reform sclerosis' - the choice is ours

Andrew Leigh and Glenn Withers question why Australia has stopped investing in its future. They identify four reasons and propose policy solutions. This week they look at short-termism and the divided responsibility. Short-termism afflicts both the public and private sector and must be countered by our approach to policy development as well as specific policies relating to superannuation, R&D, investment and Reconciliation. Divided responsibility refers to the interminable buck-passing between federal and state governments which will only be resolved by a back to basics rethink of our system.

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• Democratic Renewal

• Federalism