The Australian Conference of Economists has listed a number of areas of interest for special examination at this year’s meeting in Perth. Notice anything missing?

Researchers are invited to submit original papers that examine factors that influence ‘Beyond the Frontiers: New Directions in Economics’. We welcome the submission of papers that further develop this theme. We believe the theme offers considerable flexibility and could be used to report research findings or discuss issues related to areas such as:

• GFC / Euro / Banking Crisis
• Resources Boom (Energy Crisis)
• Federal / State Financial Relations
• Chinese Economy and Impact on WA / Australia
• Experimental and Behavioural Economics
• Climate Change / Environment
• Monetary Policy / World Bank

Of interest to me, but to few others apparently, is the dismal policy failure of Keynesian economic theory. And as long as the belief remains that the world’s economies are suffering from the after effects of the financial crisis rather than the Keynesian stimulus that followed, the longer it will be before we start dealing with the actual nature of the problems we have.