Outgoing Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens says the gains of prosperity ought to be shared to help the needy.
Following his final public speech as governor, Mr Stevens agreed that wealth distribution and its political implications are looming large, especially in the US and Europe.
"It ought to be the case that economic efficiency gains, gains from trade, gains from productivity, should enable us to compensate the losers to be better off," Mr Stevens said in response to a question at the Anika Foundation and Australian Business Economist's lunch in Sydney on Wednesday.
"And it may be ... that we (economists) needed to, as a profession, pay more attention to that in the past than we did. It's probably not too late: we should do it now."
The governor, who has been in the job for a decade, twice refused to comment the big four banks' decision last week not to pass on the RBA's full 0.25 percentage point interest rate cut to mortgage borrowers.
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"I could give you a different answer, but it probably wouldn't be helpful," he joked.
Looking to the future, Mr Stevens warned that, if the domestic economy needed a big boost, it may have to come from government spending rather than interest rates.
All the major developed economies have interest rates set close to zero in an attempt to lift economic growth but with only modest results.
Mr Stevens said the most powerful expansionary push from low interest rates comes when "someone, somewhere" has the capacity and willingness to take on more debt and to spend.
"So for policymakers looking to use low interest rates to boost growth, the question is: which entities, if any, in the economy can accept higher leverage (borrowing) safely?"
But he clarified that he was not advocating government borrowing to fund routine spending on pensions, welfare and the like.
Mr Stevens also used the speech to attest to the RBA's performance over his term.
He said Australia over time "has achieved the inflation target, avoided a major economic downturn, seen remarkably little variability in real economic activity in the face of enormous shocks, experienced a fairly low average rate of unemployment, and had a stable financial system as well".
Mr Stevens' official duties end in September, when he will be succeeded as governor by current deputy governor Dr Philip Lowe.
