A life among budgets, bulldust & bastardry
ALLEN & UNWIN
June 2015
ISBN 9781760112875
The honest, robust and intelligent recollections of one of Australia's pre-eminent economic journalists - as insightful and entertaining as the man himself.
For forty years Ross Gittins has had a ringside seat as the Australian economy has gone through radical change. He's covered forty budgets and sixteen elections, he's watched thirteen treasurers and eight prime ministers wrestle with boom and recession, debts and deficits. Few economic journalists have earned such respect for their views from participants and readers alike. His even-handedness and his clarity of vision have left countless readers better informed about how the complexities and contradictions of the modern economy affect our daily lives.
Thrown into the deep end as a cadet journalist, Ross covered his first mini-budget lockup in 1974, and was soon covering the financial roller coaster ridden by the Whitlam government. From then on, no government and no treasurer has escaped analysis - he anoints Keating, Costello, and Swan as his three best - and throughout the book he critiques without fear or favour the ministers and bureaucrats who have shaped our economic wellbeing.
This son of a Salvation Army major and one-time accountant is an old school journo through and through. With four decades of printers' ink in his veins, he dissects the newspaper game, remembers the great editors and journalists who have sharpened our minds and his, and lays down some hard facts about a hard future.
Honest, robust and intelligent, Gittins is as insightful and entertaining as the man himself.
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The economics of just about everything
ALLEN & UNWIN
November 2012
ISBN 9781743313558
Almost everything you need to know about how Australia and the world works. And where it's going.
Can any other economics guru claim to write the column in a daily newspaper that people turn to first?
Or to pack the auditorium at a literary festival?
Be it climate change, productivity, fairness, industrial relations, terrorism, media, the mining boom, the GFC, refugees and even economists themselves, every thorny topic under the sun is covered in sane and rational fashion.
Gittins' Gospel collects the best of Ross's dispatches and explains almost everything you need to know about how Australia and the world works. And where it's going.
Ross Gittins is the Economics Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and an economic columnist for The Age. He is a winner of the Citibank Pan Asia award for excellence in financial journalism and has been a Nuffield Press fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge, and a journalist-in-residence at the Department of Economics at the University of Melbourne. Ross is frequently called upon to comment on the economic issues of the day and has written and contributed to many books and periodicals.
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Happiness for the hard-headed
ALLEN & UNWIN
August 2010
ISBN 9781741756739
A provocative look at an area few economists dare to tread, by Australia's most read economic commentator.
Most economists are obsessed with financial and economic measures, but not Ross Gittins. In The Happy Economist he mounts a provocative and persuasive case for a different approach. He argues that happiness is our most important measure of economic success.
Distilling the practical wisdom from all the recent scientific study of happiness by psychologists and economists, Ross claims that happiness isn't about maintaining a forced smile or a self-centred concern to maximise pleasure and minimise pain, but about living a satisfying life of endeavour, achievement and mutually rewarding relationships. Most of us are happy most of the time, but there is more we could do to increase our satisfaction. And a different approach by governments - with less emphasis on economic growth and efficiency, and more on preserving the planet and the social fabric - could add to 'national happiness'.
The Happy Economist is a bold and insightful look at an area few economists dare to tread. It may even change your life.
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Living the good life without money stress, overwork and joyless consumption
ALLEN & UNWIN
February 2007
ISBN 9781741750928
Ross Gittins is the economics guru of Australia. He has the extremely rare and enviable knack of making economics relevant, accessible and, most importantly of all, interesting. And Ross is a man on a mission. He wants to help us to understand just how the economy around us works, and more importantly, to help us take control of our lives, do less of what doesn't satisfy us and more of what does. Sound simple? Sound appealing? You bet.
While the very word 'economics' strikes fear in the hearts of many, as the great English economist Alfred Marshall puts it, economics is the study of mankind in the ordinary business of life. And it's this ordinary business of life that Ross Gittins wants to explain to us: be it to do with work, leisure and the shortage of time; homes and housework; buying and saving; parents and their kids; kids and their education; not to mention our happiness and the things that may threaten it - crime, taxation, health and ageing. Economics is the stuff of life, our life, and we need to understand it.
Written in his trademark friendly and accessible style, Gittinomics sums up all the things Ross wants to share with us after more than 30 years as an acclaimed economic journalist on The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
Gittinomics is for everyone who's never really understood economics, but was too embarrassed to admit it. Go on, what have you got to lose?
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ALLEN & UNWIN
April 2006
ISBN 9781741147995
A clear, concise and entertaining introduction to the economics of today, written by Sydney Morning Herald/The Age economics guru Ross Gittins.
Drawing on many of Ross's popular columns and the needs of final year high school economics students, Gittins' Guide provides bite-sized, easy-to-follow explanations of the key issues in economics and macroeconomics that shape our world. Featuring Ross's trademark intelligence, clarity and down-to-earth approach, this book is essential reading for senior students and anyone who wants a better understanding of what economics - and economic policies - are all about.
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with Rodney Tiffen, University of Sydney
Cambridge University Press
October 2009
ISBN 9780521712453
How Australia Compares is a handy reference that compares Australia with 17 other developed democracies on a wide range of social, economic and political dimensions. Whenever possible, it gives not only snapshot comparisons from the present, but charts trends over recent decades or even longer.
Its scope is encyclopaedic, offering comparative data on as many aspects of social life as possible, from taxation to traffic accidents, homicide rates to health expenditure, and international trade to internet usage.
It uses a highly accessible format, devoting a double-page spread to each topic, with tables on one page and a clear explanation and analysis on the facing page.
In each discussion the focus is to put the Australian experience into international perspective, drawing out the implications for its performance, policies and prospects.
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