Ozonomics book by Andrew Charlton

We're living through the second longest boom in Australian history. You can't move for talk of the budget surplus. The Liberals proclaim their impeccable economic record; Labor counterclaim that they sowed the seeds during their time in government. 

So who's right? Does it matter? And what does it all mean anyway? In this entertaining and incisive book, Australian economist Andrew Charlton looks behind the political smokescreen to reveal just how much of the rhetoric we should believe. 

He argues that while much of the economic headlines we read and see on TV are misleading and irrelevant, workers' rights, immigration, protectionism and investment in technology and education are all vital, in different ways, for the future of the nation -- and often have a direct impact on the world in which we live, from the size of our pay-packets to the range of produce in our local stores. 

See more at: http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/andrew-charlton/ozonomics-9781741667387.aspx

Andrew Charlton: Making the System Fairer

Andrew Charlton is the co-author of Fair Trade For All, a look at the economy of the twenty-first century and how the world’s developing nations can be helped through free and fair trade.

In Fair Trade for All, Charlton and his co-author, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz, examine the innate unfairness of the global trading market. Its basic premise is that trade is good for development, and the two authors outline a carefully managed trade liberalization agenda. 

Historically, developed countries used trade policies so unfair that compared to modern standards; they would “make their WTO ambassadors blush.” And they argue that fairness must be central to today’s trade negotiations.

Fairness, or Fair Trade, is an idea that seems to be taking hold among the masses. It is defined by the World Fair Trade Organization as “a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency and respect, that seeks greater equity in international trade.” 

This philosophy is slowly becoming policy, as can be seen on the Fair Trade certification labels on a growing number of consumer products on store shelves in many developed nations.

Advocates of Fair Trade say that it proves that greater justice in world trading is possible, and is a tangible contribution to the fight to end world poverty, climate change, and economic imbalance.

In Fair Trade For All, Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton “provide a workable and reasonable...way to make the current system fairer.”

Dr. Andrew Charlton is an Oxford-educated economist who served as a senior advisor to former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. He is currently a director at AlphaBeta, a strategy and economics firm.

Sources:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/fair-trade-for-all-by-joseph-stiglitz-amp-andrew-charlton-520420.html

http://wfto.com/fair-trade/definition-fair-trade 

Andrew Charlton: Cleaning Up the Mess

Andrew Charlton attended the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference as a Senior Advisor to then-Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, and recalls his surprise that even with the eyes of the world steadfastly on it, nothing of substance at this “summit to save the world” was accomplished.

Prime Minister Rudd – one of the many world leaders present for the conference in 2009 – admitted to being disappointed with the way things turned out, he recalls. Afterward, there was a lot of finger-pointing. “Through the haze of the fatigue and crushed expectations there was one outstanding question: how could this have happened?”

There were no easy answers. President Barack Obama acknowledged afterward that the conference did not achieve enough, while environmental activists derided some of the participants as “guilty men and women fleeing to the airport,” in the aftermath of the failed talks. And journalists characterized the Copenhagen talks as “a historic failure that will live in infamy.”

But the fundamental problem, Andrew Charlton later reflected, was not with any particular nation or alliance. What really happened was that the conference in Copenhagen exposed “the central dilemma of our century,” which boils down to a choice between progress and the planet.

“Our planet is home to seven billion people,” he wrote. “Of these, roughly one billion live in rich countries...[whose leaders] arrived in Copenhagen persuaded of the urgency of the environmental challenges facing” the earth.” The remaining six billion of Earth’s inhabitants live in developing countries. A third of them are so poor that they barely have enough food. The chief concern in these countries is poverty, while leaders of developing countries came to Copenhagen “with their own priorities.”

The point was made bluntly, Andrew Charlton recounted, by a Chinese official who said: “You cannot tell people who are struggling to earn enough to eat that they need to reduce their emission.” And a negotiator for a Latin American country frankly told him: “Your countries have prospered by exploiting the world’s resources...how can I tell the slum dwellers they must stay poor to help clean up your mess?”

For some two decades, Andrew Charlton wrote, wealthy nations have tried to force poor ones to accept their solutions to climate change. But these poor countries, as a group, are having none of it. “The lesson of Copenhagen is that rich countries can no longer impose solutions to global problems that ignore poor countries or assume their acquiescence in the rich countries’ agenda.”

Andrew Charlton earned a doctorate in Economics from Oxford University, and at present is the director of AlphaBeta.

Visit https://www.quarterlyessay.com/author/andrew-charlton for more information. 

Andrew Charlton: A Popular Misconception

Andrew Charlton is an economist and served as a senior advisor to Kevin Rudd, the former Prime Minister of Australia. He is also the author of two books: Fair Trade for All, which he co-authored with Joseph Stiglitz, and Ozonomics. “The most popular misconception in economics and politics is that if the economy is humming along, the government must be doing a good job,” he has written. “It must be a capable economic manager and its policies must be working.”

This is not necessarily so, he wrote in a summary of Ozonomics published in Centrepiece. Rather, this is an assumption that politicians promote during good economic times. “The idea that they hold the fortune of the nation in the palm of their hands appeals to them, and they want the public to take the strong economy as evidence of their skill and omnipotence.”

The media is part of the equation, he says, because of its tendency to simplify with heroes to give credit to when all is well, and villains to blame when it isn’t.

In reality, he argues, politicians have much less control over the economy than they let on. “Certainly, there can be policy successes and policy failures, but more often than not the condition of the economy is determined by factors outside the control of politicians.”

Claims about the state of the economy made by any government, he says, should be thoroughly scrutinized, because what the public believes about its wealth influences decisions made about the future.

Dr. Andrew Charlton holds a doctorate in economics from Oxford University, and has worked for the London School of Economics and the United Nations.

Visit https://andrewcharltonau.wordpress.com/  to know more about Andrew Charlton.

Andrew Charlton Author

Andrew Charlton is former economic adviser to Australian Prime minister Kevin Rudd. He is also the co-founder of AlphaBeta, a strategy advisory business, where he currently serves as its director. During his prolific career, Andrew Charlton has written many acclaimed books on Australian and Chinese economy. 

Two of his most popular works are – ‘Ozonomics’ and ‘Fair Trade for All’ (co-written with Joseph Stiglitz). Below are some online resources where you learn more about Andrew Charlton’s books, as well as purchase them.

Here is the list of best sources of Author Andrew Charlton:

https://itunes.apple.com/au/author/andrew-charlton/id480088748

https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Ozonomics.html?id=NRAdyGc_rF8C&redir_esc=y

http://www.randomhouse.com.au/authors/andrew-charlton.aspx

https://andrewcharltonau.wordpress.com/

https://www.quarterlyessay.com/author/andrew-charlton

http://www.wheelercentre.com/people/andrew-charlton

https://www.themonthly.com.au/author/andrew-charlton

http://www.melbourneeconomicforum.com.au/panelists/andrew-charlton

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/planning/profile-andrew-charlton/2007/07/16/1184559700282.html

http://www.crikey.com.au/blog/topic/andrew-charlton/

Visit our blog regularly for more updates. 

Andrew Charlton: New Opportunities

Andrew Charlton is a co-founder and Director at AlphaBeta, a strategy advising business that serves clients across Australia and Asia.

He and some of his colleagues have traveled to China in September 2015 to find out how the changes in its economy will affect Australia, China’s biggest trade partner. They met with dozens of business leaders and government officials and soon determined they were asking the wrong question. What they really need to find out, he said, is how Australia can adapt to make sure it continues to profit, even as China’s economy changes.

“We continue to believe that China’s economy will slow further,” he wrote in a report prepared after the China trip. “But, for Australian businesses, more important than how fast China grows, is the question of where it grows?” China’s economy, he said, is not just slowing down. “It’s changing lanes. To make the most of new circumstances, Australia will have to change as well.”

The trip confirmed what he and his AlphaBeta colleagues had already determined. The present economic situation in China presents growth problems for Australia that could last as long as ten years. The good news is that Australia can act to take advantage of new opportunities that come with the changes.

Andrew Charlton was a Senior Economic Advisor to former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. He is an Oxford-educated economist who received his doctorate as a Rhodes Scholar. He is one of the few Australian economists to anticipate the slowing in China’s economy and its impact on commodity prices, questioning as early as 2011 whether China would be able to sustain its double-digit economic growth rates.

Recommended Read:- Andrew Charlton: Economics Career

Andrew Charlton: Eight Opportunities

Andrew Charlton is a former Senior Economic Advisor to the Australian Prime Minister who is currently a Director at AlphaBeta, a strategy advisory business that serves clients throughout Australia and Asia. Andrew Charlton and his AlphaBeta team have closely monitored the faltering China economy, on which Australia relies so heavily. And he says that Australia can take advantage of new sources of Chinese growth.

“This won’t be easy,” he wrote in a report, shortly after he and his AlphaBeta colleagues went to China to research the matter first-hand. “For the last ten years, we rode the China minerals wave by luck. We had bountiful supplies of what China crucially needed.” 

The next growth phase won’t be as easy as the first, he continued, and they’ll need to work harder to position the Australian economy so it complements the future Chinese economy. But he and his AlphaBeta team have identified eight opportunities for business and investors outside of minerals and mining.

There is no doubt that China’s economy is slowing. Even Chinese government officials have acknowledge it. During their September 2015 visit, the AlphaBeta team heard repeatedly that China’s future growth will be “slower but safer,” and one government official conceded its economy has been flowing down for at least five years. “China’s economy,” Andrew Charlton wrote in the AlphaBeta report, “is now growing its slowest annual rate in twenty-five years, and there are now signs that we’ve reached the bottom.”

But Australia enjoys many comparative advantages in sectors other than mining that could go well with China’s future growth. “We have identified eight opportunities for business and investors outside mining,” he said, noting that the Mandarin word for “eight” sounds like the word that means prosper or wealth. “Hopefully these eight sectors will lead to prosperity for Australia too.” They are:

Retail:

• There are more than two hundred million “consuming class” households in China, and this is expected to rise by more than one-third in the next fifteen years. There are, in short, more people with disposable income than ever before. “This could represent a significant opportunity for Australian retailers.”

 Agriculture:

• The rising consuming class will fuel the demand for food. Meat consumption alone could increase by forty percent in the coming fifteen years.

Tourism:

• Travel is increasingly attractive and important to the new consuming class; this is being fueled by more annual leave for workers, visa relaxation, and other factors.

Financial services: 

• The Chinese government is putting liberalised capital markets at the top of its reform agenda.

Clean energy and environmental services:

• China has sustained much environmental damage and is going “green.”

Healthcare:

• China’s aging population will promote new growth in the healthcare industry.

Advanced manufacturing:

• China’s 2025 manufacturing strategy identifies sectors in which Australian firms can benefit, such as railroads.

Education:

• More than ninety thousand Chinese students currently study in Australia, a service export that could grow by another thirteen billion dollars in the next five years.

Andrew Charlton received his doctorate in economics from Oxford University.

Visit http://www.smh.com.au/news/planning/profile-andrew-charlton/2007/07/16/1184559700282.html for more information about him.

Andrew Charlton-Many Roles

Andrew Charlton has assumed many roles during his career, both in the field of politics and the field of economics. Not only was Charlton once the senior economic advisor the former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd between 2008 and 2010, he has also been recognized as an academic and author, particularly as the writer of such books as Ozonomics, which was published by Random House Australia in 2007, and Fair Trade for All, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2005. His collaborated with noted economist Joseph Stiglitz to produce Ozonomics.

Andrew Charlton has provided service to the London School of Economics in the past, and has also conducted research that has been published in numerous leading international journals, including the World Economy, the World Trade Review and the American Economic Review. His research has covered such topics as international trade, economics and development.

Andrew Charlton has also been the recipient of numerous academic awards, both during his student tenure at the University of Oxford and at the University of Sydney, respectively. During his time at the University of Sydney, Charlton was proud to have won both First Class Honours in Economics, and the University medal in Economics, during the year 2000. As a student at the University of Oxford, He received the John Hicks Prize for outstanding doctoral student in 2004 and the Edge worth Prize for the best doctoral thesis in economics in 2005.

Charlton is also proud to have been named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, an honor he received in 2010. He now works for Wesfarmers.

Andrew Charlton's Experience with Coles

Coles Liquor is benefiting from more focus on the problem division, says Wesfarmers CEO Richard Goyder.

Wesfarmers stated that Coles’ same store food and liquor revenuewas up 3.5 per cent in the third quarter, after correcting for the inclusion of New Year’s Eve in the prior period and the timing of the Easter holiday.

Online trade paper, The Shout, reported that with the liquor business stripped out, Coles’ food increased a stronger 3.9 per cent for the period, but Goydersaid he was not troubled by this discrepancy.

“I’m not too worried about the drag on sales growth, because some of the sales we’ve been having in liquor haven’t been particularly profitable sales,” Goyder said.

“I’m not as concerned with that as I am improving fundamentally the profit of the liquor business.”

Overall sales for the third quarter were $6.7 billion, up 3.9 per cent on the last year. Food and liquor revenue were up 4.7 % to $21.7 bn for the year to date.

“[The Liquor business is] about 10 % of Coles’ sales and half of that in terms of profit,” Goyder said.

“Ultimately we’d want it to be carrying its weight so the profitability’s got to be improved, that’s through stronger stores, improved mix, better pricing.”

“It’s getting more attention at the moment... and we’re making some steady progress, I think Andrew Charlton and the team are doing some very good work on it.”