the economy. i can recall assiduously reading those assessments during my undergrad days in the eric russell room in the adelaide university economics department. at that time, there was little in the way of such assessments emanating from the official sector, this being in the days before quarterly statements on monetary policy. there was also little available from the private sector, as economic research in the banking sector was only in its infancy. so the institute ’ s assessment was an important contribution to the policy discussion in australia, as well as an important part of the education of a generation of budding macroeconomists. surveys it is in the area of surveys that i think the melbourne institute has made its most significant and enduring contribution to the state of australian macroeconomics. its name is synonymous with some of the highest profile and longest running surveys in australia. much of that contribution can be attributed to the foresight and work of duncan ironmonger. the first of these were the surveys of consumers, which were based on the surveys conducted at the university of michigan. the survey of consumer sentiment has a longrunning history back to 1974. i am pleased to note that the reserve bank of australia provided some of the funding for the survey at its inception. the length of that data series means that for consumers, we have a time series that spans a number of business cycles, something that cannot be said of quite a few other time series, including most business surveys. in addition to the time series information, there is also invaluable cross - sectional information that has proven useful in informing macro policy setting. out of the survey of consumers also comes the series on inflation expectations. the behaviour of this time series has long befuddled many macroeconomists, and complicated the life of those inclined to estimate phillips curves, as i have been known to do in an earlier existence. as you can see from the time series ( graph 1 ), for a fairly long period of time, one could broadly describe the series as a horizontal line with a structural shift downwards in the early 1990s. bis central bankers ’ speeches graph 1 my colleague at the reserve bank, jacqui dwyer, spent a lot of time working with don harding in the mid - 1990s to try to understand the behaviour of this inflation expectations series. from the bank ’ s point of view, we were in the infancy of inflation targeting, and we were after a clean read on the public ’ s assessment of the credibility of the

others will talk about it more over the course of the day, but it is to the institute ’ s great credit that it took on the coordination of this important component of understanding the australian economy. the bank funded a wealth module in the hilda survey in its first round, which has subsequently been incorporated into the survey every four years. many of my colleagues, particularly in the financial stability area, have made extensive use of the hilda data in gaining a better understanding of the distribution of household debt in the australian economy, as well as households ’ saving patterns. this in turned has enhanced the bank ’ s understanding of the transmission of monetary policy to the household sector. quite a sizeable share of the recent research paper output of the bank ’ s research department has involved analysis of the hilda data. finally, one noteworthy contribution to the macro policy debate that doesn ’ t completely fit within my taxonomy is that of peter dawkins in injecting the melbourne institute squarely into the debate around unemployment with his critical role in the five economists letter in 1998. peter ’ s very prominent advocacy on this topic built on the foundations laid by dick blandy in refocusing the institute on the labour market. conclusion the melbourne institute has reached its half century. while these days the institute is most associated with its work in the areas of the labour market and social policy, over its 50 - year history, the institute has made a substantial contribution to australian macroeconomics. in particular, as i have described today, i think its most significant and lasting contribution has been in instituting a number of important surveys, most prominently the consumer sentiment series, the inflation expectations series and, more recently, the hilda panel data series. these surveys have facilitated a better quality of macroeconomic analysis, through the wealth of data contained in them. in doing so, they have undoubtedly improved the quality of macro policymaking and outcomes, which was one of the founding goals of the melbourne institute. so, on behalf of the macro policymaking community of australia over the past 50 years, i would like to thank the melbourne institute, and particularly the staff, for their contribution. i trust the institute will be able to convert this half century into a ton! bis central bankers ’ speeches