This week, we will drill down deeper into the heart of the Australian economy to explore monetary policy and the role of the central bank (the Reserve Bank of Australia, RBA) in stabilising and influencing the economy. First, we'll look at the transmission channels of monetary policy to see how the RBA can influence inflation and the level of activity in the economy. Next, we'll examine a simple but powerful framework to explain the RBA's stabilisation policies.

This week we will have a brief overview of fiscal policy in Australia. Fiscal policy is an important topic and is widely used by policymakers to influence economic fluctuations, both in the short and medium run. In this module we will discuss the primary objectives and functions of fiscal policy in our nation. We will then apply a (familiar) economic framework in order to analyse fiscal policy and its impact on the economy. Using this framework, we’ll analyse several actual past, past policy episodes in the Australian economy.

This week, we will investigate a momentous economic event: the 2007 Global Financial Crisis, or GFC. Here we’ll have a crash course on the crisis – its main causes and consequences, the subsequent policy responses by policymakers and regulators, as well as its particular impact on the Australian economy.