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Watch Stephen Walters speak about all things rate cuts, tax, productivity, inflation and more...

Stephen Walters features in AFR article talking about recent challenges driving inflation

Stephen Walters features in AFR, written by Economics Editor, John Kehoe

Stephen Walters features in the Oz, written by Matthew Cranston: The economy could find itself ‘boxed in’ by capacity constraints, bringing higher inflation and subdued growth, Reserve Bank deputy governor Andrew Hauser tells investors.

Stephen Walters features in the AFR, written by Luke Kinsella.  

"It did strike me that [Bullock] didn't discuss one of the major reasons that inflation had popped up again," said Walters, director of Optimal Economics. "She managed to step around that quite adroitly, but I was a bit surprised she was that determined not to talk about fiscal policy."

Stephen Walters features in Briana Shepherds' ABC article after being comissioned by Animals Australia to compile a cost-benefit analysis on the WA greyhound industry - which concluded the industry is to lose more than $36 million in economic value this year due to greyhound racing. 

Stephen Walters from Optimal Economics outlines a deteriorating backdrop for the Reserve Bank of Australia, with both consumer and business confidence sliding to what he regards as recession‑like levels. Walters highlights a 12% monthly drop in consumer sentiment and a sharp fall in the NAB business survey to -29, pointing to the petrol price spike and the March rate hike as key headwinds. He stresses that households are already feeling the impact, even before second‑round effects from higher oil prices flow through to construction materials, housing, plastics, fertilisers and food.

Stephen Walters writes for the Canberra Times, 11 June 2026, in his capacity as senior research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS).

He discusses our current malaise, as demonstrated by last week's sobering National Accounts - falling productivity and living standards, weak GDP growth and worse to come in Q2, thanks to the fallout from the war in Iran.

A landmark report warns that school disengagement among more than 26,000 Victorian year 8 students will cost the state economy $33 billion over their working lives.

Economist Stephen Walters told 3AW Breakfast hosts Ross Stevenson and Russel Howcroft around one-quarter of the disengaged students would never end up in formal employment.

“There is a big loss of income for them, there’s a really big loss of productivity for the state … there’s really big costs you can add up over their lifetime,” he said.

Stephen Walters, former NSW Treasury chief economist and Principal of Optimal Economics, is cited in Jackson Graham's Age article on the multibillion-dollar cost of student disengagement. Walters calculated that 26,457 disengaged Victorian year 8 students will cost the state economy $33 billion over the course of their lives, finding that the social costs of disengagement outweigh direct fiscal costs by a factor of five to one.

Writing in The Canberra Times, Stephen Walters argues that Australia's new Office of Artificial Intelligence risks smothering one of the few remaining catalysts for the nation's productivity turnaround. Walters warns that piling further regulation onto the fastest-growing sector of the economy sends the wrong signal to global capital at precisely the moment other countries are opening their doors to AI investment.