The Productivity Commission’s sixth interim report in its 5-year Productivity Inquiry investigates how workers can boost the nation’s productivity. It explores how Australia might make our business environment more adaptable and flexible, no matter what the future of work looks like.

This edition of the Treasury Round Up looks at a range of issues that affect productivity in the Australian economy.

As part of its 5-year Productivity Inquiry, the Productivity Commission has released this interim report outlining potential opportunities to improve Australia’s school and tertiary education systems.

The Productivity Inquiry focuses on the enablers of productivity growth in a modern, market-based, service-oriented world. This fourth interim report investigates how policy can address key challenges and opportunities facing the business environment.

The Productivity Inquiry focuses on the enablers of productivity growth in a modern, market-based and service-oriented world. This third interim report explores how encouraging innovation across the vast majority of Australian businesses and in the government sector can improve Australia's productivity.

The COVID-19 pandemic has critically tested OECD economies, with major differences in economic repercussions at the subnational level. This paper reviews the empirical evidence for effective policies from across the OECD to strengthen local economic resilience through support for people, firms and places.

The Jobs and Skills Summit brought Australians together to work constructively on the challenges and opportunities facing the Australian labour market and economy. A major objective emerging from the summit was the promotion of full employment and growing productivity for the benefit of all Australians.

In this keynote address to the 2022 Skills and Jobs Summit, Grattan Institute CEO, Danielle Wood, urges Australia’s leaders to forge a plan for full employment and higher productivity.

The Business Council of Australia has prepared this discussion paper ahead of the upcoming Jobs and Skills Summit.

The Productivity Inquiry focuses on the enablers of productivity growth in a modern, market-based, service-oriented world. The second interim report explores how digital technology and data can be used to improve Australia’s productivity.

In the face of slowing productivity growth, a number of OECD countries have set up pro-productivity institutions to produce objective evidence and data on productivity trends and growth drivers and help inform pro-productivity policies and interventions. This paper presents a new analytical framework to analyse...

A defining aspect of the digital age is data and its business use. This paper puts data and data investments in a framework amenable to measurement and policy analysis aimed at sharpening our understanding of modern economies.

This case study looks at government procurement practices and strategies, assesses their impacts on the effectiveness of the procurement system and their influence on the economy at large.

Improving Australia’s productivity performance requires overcoming specific challenges. This document sets out areas of policy focus which, in the Commission's judgment, best reflect the balance of challenges and opportunities that Australia faces.

This paper discusses some of the fundamental issues related to the future growth of productivity under net zero climate change policies. The aim of the paper is to discuss just how challenging it will be for an advanced economy with a net zero target to...

Climate change is all bad for the economy, but climate change policies are not. This report classifies 14 areas of green economic policy, including action on energy, buildings and transport, assessing what the direct impact of each will be on productivity.

This paper investigates the question of how urbanisation and localisation economies interact over the 30 largest Australian Significant Urban Areas.

The quantity and quality of digital technologies available to farmers have advanced considerably since the 1990s. This paper argues that policy-makers need to address the removal of specific barriers to farmers’ adoption of digital technologies, while ensuring both enabling infrastructure and appropriate incentives exist upstream...

This inquiry into procurement practices for government-funded infrastructure examines the context of the 'infrastructure pipeline' and industry’s capacity to deliver, while focusing on the role for federal government procurement in the planning, coordination and delivery of infrastructure projects.

In this submission, Primary Focus argues that primary school efficacy is the best policy lever that Australian state and federal governments have to improve Australia’s productivity performance.

The Australian Federal Budget is a major annual event. It’s an opportunity for the government of the day to set out its vision for Australia’s future. This paper outlines the Blueprint Institute's assessment of the fiscal position Australia finds itself in.

The authors of this report argue that China will likely experience a substantial long-term growth slowdown, owing to demographic decline, the limits of capital-intensive growth and a gradual deceleration in productivity growth.

This document provides some examples of how New Zealand can reduce carbon emissions, while simultaneously improving economic productivity.

This response to the South Australian Productivity Commission's inquiry into modern regulation is focused on those areas recommended as in need of greatest improvement, notably the regulatory policy development process, and post implementation reviews, as well as doing business through digital initiatives, and in supporting...

This report makes recommendations to modernise South Australia’s regulatory framework to better support investment, employment and productivity growth as well as to ensure regulation making and regulator behaviour is more efficient, effective and future oriented.