http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/ The University of Queensland en Fez http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:151369 Aboriginal welfare policy of recent decades has been widely rejected as a failure. Radically different policies are now being trialed, in recognition of the continuing large gap between indigenous and non-indigenous living standards. Some Aboriginal leaders themselves have called for a rejection of the passive welfare policies of the past, in acceptance of a Friedman-style critique of ‘money for nothing’ welfare handouts, while nonetheless calling for a Sen-style capabilities approach to the policy needs of the future. 2008-06-16T16:30:31Z Davidoff, Laura og Duhs, Alan http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:158910 There are numerous statistical techniques designed for the measurement of inequality. Each individual index has a unique set of properties which can make the choice of an appropriate measure difficult. This paper reviews the desirable properties for inequality indices to exhibit and proposes an additional characteristic that an effective measure may satisfy. Existing inequality measures are assessed against these criteria and a new technique that satisfies all desirable properties is proposed. An empirical demonstration of the proposed measure is provided. 2008-10-30T14:31:58Z Rohde, Nicholas C. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:11073 The two Japanese economies, the high growth period economy and the Bubble Economy have common features, but they are different in many respects. Though different models for analysing these two economies appear here, they are basically the same. They are based on the Eichner-Kaleckian type models, and the model for the high growth period economy could be located as a special case of the Bubble Economy model. The reason for not applying the latter model to both periods is that not doing so makes the common features and differences of both periods clearer. In both economies, the predetermined or exogenous variables, bank loan interest rate in the high growth period and financial investment return net of risk play key roles. Finally, these Eichner-Kaleckian models seem to contradict Post Keynesian endogenous money supply. It is proven below that this is not true. 2004-02-05T00:00:00Z Kanao, T. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:139050 We extend the mixed-motives model of transfer derivatives developed by Cox et al (2004) introducing subjectively-assessed recipient need in place of an absolute income threshold at which the donor’s dominant motive switches from altruism to exchange. This refinement provides a theoretically justifiable threshold amenable to empirical measurement. We test the extended model with customized survey data from Tonga and find evidence consistent with Cox et al in support of altruism for households below the threshold, but, we also find a positive, exchange-motivated relationship for those above the threshold. We conclude that either crowding-out or crowding-in of private transfers can occur when the recipient’s welfare improves, depending on the household’s pre-transfer welfare level. This also has implications for the distributional impact of private transfers and could explain why poverty reduction can be accompanied by increased income inequality. JEL classification: D13; D64; F24; H55; I30; O15; 2008-06-02T15:30:46Z Brown, Richard P. C. og Jimenez, Eliana V. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:10924 The paper presents a spreadsheet-based multiple account approach to cost-benefit analysis which incorporates all the usual concerns of cost-benefit analysts such as shadow-pricing to account for market failure, distribution of net benefits, sensitivity and risk analysis, cost of public funds, and environmental effects. The approach offers a number of advantages to both analysts and decision-makers, including transparency, a check on internal consistency and a detailed summary of project net benefits disaggregated by stakeholder group. 2004-02-06T00:00:00Z Campbell, Harry F. og Brown, Richard P. C. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:83964 Authorised trustee status is a legal concept which has economic implications; one of the major implications is that it assists in the direction of investment funds into particular securities and areas of the economy. The concept of authorised trustee status, while attempting to achieve specific outcomes for the beneficiaries of trusts cannot be relied upon to secure these results. Economic analysis of the role of the trustee maintains that this role is one of portfolio manager; a role which is complex but which is explicable in terms of definable procedures and practices. The role of trustee as portfolio manager is one which requires greater financial knowledge than can be assumed is possessed by all trustees. The trustee as portfolio manager is required to maintain a review of decisions make under powers to invest trust assets. A solution to the problem of authorised trustee status is proposed. The solution takes two parts: the first is the adoption of the prudent person approach but with the codification of duties of the trustee and the explicit listing of the factors that a trustee should consider in using the investment powers. The second part of the proposed solution is to link the investment powers of trustees to the best practice features of securities advisers who are now licensed by a regulatory body, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission. 2007-08-14T13:24:07Z Stanford, J. D. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:84017 2007-08-14T13:25:52Z Stanford, J. D. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:11069 The so-called negative fiscal multiplier concept comes from the neo-classical free market economic philosophy and is found useful in arguing that fiscal stabilisation policy may produce results contrary to those expected under Keynesian analysis in which the (positive) fiscal multiplier has traditionally been accepted as the norm. As a result, 'fiscal consolidation' (FC hereafter), that is, the creation and maintenance of the classical balanced budget, ensures that fiscal policy cannot be used for stabilising the economy. Indeed, any attempt to do so will be harmful. This idea has been advanced and research into its possible existence during the last twenty years has produced some encouraging results. This paper examines this research in further detail. 2004-02-05T00:00:00Z Lougheed, Alan L. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:159731 In this paper wee examine a database assembled from an Australian public register of 553 merger decisions taken between March 2004 ad July 2008. Mergers may be accepted without public assessment, accepted in conjunction with publication of a Public Competition Assessment, or rejected. We estimate an ordered probit model,using these three possible outcomes, with the objective of gaining better in major findings are: (i)the existence of entry barriers and the existence of undertakings are highly correlated with the regulator's decision to closely scrutinise a merger proposal; and (ii) if we compare two decisions, one which does not mention entry barriers (or import competition) with a decision that does mention entry barriers (or import competition), then the latter is significantly more likely to be opposed than the former. 2008-12-12T09:33:49Z Breunig, Robert og Menezes, Flavio http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:10466 This paper deals with the time-path of the prices of mineral products, and with the economic viability of individual mining projects. Mineral products may be final demand goods, such as gold, but more commonly they are intermediate goods, such as copper, aluminium and coal, which are used in the production of final demand goods. This means that the demand for these goods is a derived demand. 2004-05-26T00:00:00Z Campbell, H. F. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:155032 The purpose of this article is to investigate the ability of bandpass filters commonly used in economics to extract a known periodicity. The specific bandpass filters investigated include a Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) filter, together with those proposed by Hodrick and Prescott (1997) and Baxter and King (1999). Our focus on the cycle extraction properties of these filters reflects the lack of attention that has been given to this issue in the literature, when compared, for example, to studies of the trend removal properties of some of these filters. The artificial data series we use are designed so that one periodicity deliberately falls within the passband while another falls outside. The objective of a filter is to admit the ‘bandpass’ periodicity while excluding the periodicity that falls outside the passband range. We find that the DFT filter has the best extraction properties. The filtered data series produced by both the Hodrick-Prescott and Baxter-King filters are found to admit low frequency components that should have been excluded. 2008-09-09T15:27:06Z Hinich, M. V. og Foster, J. og Wild, P. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:10419 Laos is an income-poor but resource-rich country heavily dependent upon its natural forest resources. This paper uses an optimal control model to analyse deforestation in Laos. Specifically, this paper analyses illegal logging by a sole commercial logging contractor within a single region in Laos. The commercial contractor aims to maximise discounted profits from commercial contracts to log government quotas and from illegal logging. Policy implications for a government wishing to sustain a target level of forest stock are derived from the model. Results show that it is likely that the steady state level of the forest stock will be lower than the government's target. In order to minimise the difference between the target and actual levels of remnant native forest, the government can consider increasing the value of contracts awarded, the duration of contracts awarded or the level of fines imposed on detected illegal loggers. The model, however, simplified what is an extremely complex problem. Game-theoretic extensions to the modelling framework are suggested as avenues that may help the model better reflect the complexity of illegal logging and deforestation in Laos. 2004-08-13T00:00:00Z McAllister, Ryan og Beard, Rodney og Asafu-Adjaye, John http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:10370 This paper examines the role of disequilibrium conditions in influencing price adjustment processes in developing countries. Measures of real and financial sector disequilibrium are constructed for a sample of 58 developing countries over the period 1973-1998 using structural VAR methodology. Panel data techniques are used to estimate a reduced-form P* model. Overall the results suggest that inflation expectations are relatively forward looking in developing countries. This is consistent with the elevated inflation rates that many of these countries have experienced over long periods of time. The evidence for the role of real or financial sector disequilibrium conditions in the price adjustment process is limited. The output gap is significant for most countries, with the negative sign suggesting that temporary fluctuations in output, and subsequent price adjustment processes, reflect the response of output and prices to temporary supply shocks. The velocity gap does not seem to play an important role, and the external price gap appears only to be significant for the African and Western Hemisphere regions. 2004-07-14T00:00:00Z Morling, Steven http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:84027 2007-08-14T13:26:11Z Morling, S. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:158901 Australian estimates of the doctor-to-population ratios for the cities, regional and remote areas seem to exceed the 0.71:1,000 benchmark ratio of the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing. However, statistics are misleading because they do not account for the time and distance involved to see a doctor in the less densely populated rural and remote areas. This is a qualitative study of the problem of retention and recruitment of rural doctors. In 2006-08, 13 in-depth structured interviews were conducted to target the three main interest groups – Federal and State governments, professional associations and training institutions (medical schools and hospitals). We analyse the results within the framework of the public interest theory and the special interest theory. We found from the interviews that in the future, the provision of better financial and non-financial incentives tailored specifically to GPs working in the rural areas would be crucial to attracting and retaining more doctors in these areas. The conclusion is that the rich information that was analysed in this paper could only have been obtained from face-to-face in-depth interviews, and not from publicly accessible sources. Qualitative research is a useful complement to the traditional quantitative studies of economic issues and should be conducted more often in the future. 2008-10-30T11:33:33Z Kamalakanthan, Abhayaprada og Jackson, Sukhan http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:151341 In this article, we use half hourly spot electricity prices and load data for the National Electricity Market (NEM) of Australia for the period from December 1998 to February 2008 to test for episodic nonlinearity in the dynamics governing daily and weekly cycles in load and spot price time series data. We apply the portmanteau correlation, bicorrelation and tricorrelation tests introduced in Hinich (1996) to the time series of half hourly spot prices and load demand from 7/12/1998 to 29/02/2008 using a FORTRAN 95 program. We find the presence of significant third and fourth order (non-linear) serial dependence in the weekly load and spot price data in particular, but to a much more marginal extent, in the daily data. 2008-06-16T09:51:17Z Wild, Phillip og Hinich, Melvin J. og Foster, John http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:10364 In this paper, we examine the relationships between business cycles in the G7 countries. We focus on whether recessionary periods in one country are independent of the timing of recessions in other countries in the G7, using three different methods for dating recessions. We find that the evidence is mixed on whether phases of the business cycle in North America and in European countries are independent, or whether there is a common phase structure in the business cycle across all the G7 economies. NBER dates suggest that business cycles are synchronised, while other methods for generating business cycle chronologies are consistent with regional, rather than international, cycles. 2004-07-14T00:00:00Z Bodman, Philip M. og Crosby, Mark http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:10930 The Australian superannuation system places trustees in the key role of managing superannuation assets and we subject the role of trustee to close scrutiny while identifying the very substantial principal-and-agent problems that exist in the industry. We consider two policy issues: member choice of fund and portability of accumulated balances in the light of how they would improve the ability of individual members to maximise retirement benefits and the efficiency of the system. We argue that the award superannuation scheme which requires, by conditions in industrial awards, contributions of three per cent of wage or salary of an employee continues along side the SG scheme is due for review. 2004-02-06T00:00:00Z Drew, Michael E. og Stanford, Jon D. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:10373 Since mass poverty in developing countries is still the single most important social and economic problem in the world today, the question of what states should do about poverty remains a key issue for governments and international donor agencies across the world. Throughout the 1990s, the broad thrust of policy in many developing countries was to move away from interventionist and state-controlled policies towards market-oriented approaches. This shift in emphasis had far-reaching implications for policies and operational programs in both developing countries and international donor agencies. The operations of what could be called the "development industry" became more complicated during the 1990s. 2004-07-13T00:00:00Z McCawley, Peter http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:9524 An important assumption underlying non-market valuation is that it is not the environment but the human preferences that is valued. A decades-old question keeps arising: Can individual consumer behavior be influenced by altruistic citizen preferences? The environmental economics literature discerns six conceptual forms of altruism. They are genuine altruism, pure altruism, paternalistic altruism, impure altruism, individualistic altruism and intrinsic altruism. Despite a rich collection of stated preference experiments with respect to altruistic responses, little attention has been paid to pure altruism in empirical terms. This paper tests for the presence of pure altruism, i.e. whether an individual derives utility from other people's utility in the context of non-market valuation. To this end, this paper investigates the attitudes of hikers and skiers towards the hypothetical removal of the Muju ski resort from the Mt Togyu National Park in South Korea (hereafter Korea). Data were collected from samples of hikers and skiers who visited the national park. Each respondent was given a copy of choice modelling questionnaire, in which it was assumed that skiers from the southern region would have to travel for a longer time. Therefore, respondents were forced to consider trade-offs between the recovery of the lost environmental assets in the Muju ski resort area, skiers' additional travel time and willingness-to-pay amounts for the hypothetical environmental improvement. The estimates of the implicit value for the attribute 'skiers' additional travel time' were used to determine whether hikers were motivated by pure altruism in their valuation, given that the time cost was only incurred by people who were willing to travel to new ski fields' additional travel time or did not care about the removal of the ski resort. 2005-10-19T00:00:00Z Suh, Jungho og Harrison, Steve http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:84498 2007-08-14T13:44:08Z Suh, J. og Harrison, S.R. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:11072 In this paper, a simple willingness to pay (WTP) model that shows the theoretical relationships among three valuation approaches that can be used to measure changes in health resulting from pollution is developed. The three valuation approaches considered are the contingent valuation (CV), cost of illness (COI) and the defensive behaviour approaches. After showing the relationships between the three valuation approaches, the model demonstrates that the CV approach exceeds the COI and the defensive behaviour approaches. The theoretical results are supported by field survey data. The pollution referred to in this paper is direct exposure to pesticides by farmers during handling and spraying on their farms. 2004-02-05T00:00:00Z Wilson, C. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:8811 Behavioural economics draws upon fieldwork, experiments and research in disciplines such as psychology for building blocks to construct economic analysis that is more descriptively realistic and both augments and qualifies traditional economics as a tool for designing policy. Though behavioural economics has attracted much attention and respectability in the past decade or so, its roots date back to work undertaken in Europe a century ago and in the US in the middle of the twentieth century. Whereas economists traditionally have seen choice as an optimising activity subject to given preferences and a well-defined budget constraint, behavioural economics sees everyday life as a process in which humans with limited cognitive capacity try to cope with both information overload and the absence of relevant information and knowledge by evolving targets for what seems feasible and systems of rules for trying to find ways of meeting these targets. Some decision rules may be fast and frugal means of arriving at choices that do not result in needlessly poor attainments. However, much of what is known about how people actually behave implies that many people could be doing a lot better for themselves in many situations if only they were aware of the limitations of their ways of coping with the world and were motivated to find and apply improved decision rules. Poor search strategies limit the competitive pressures faced by firms and hence may have longer-term impacts on welfare via reduced productivity growth or innovation. However, in designing policies to promote better search by consumers one must remember that many consumers are also workers: higher productivity and better or cheaper goods may sometimes come at the cost of people having to work harder. To the extent that firms are aware of shortcomings of consumers' decision-making processes, they may be in a position to apply this knowledge to manipulate choices, for example by how they frame information that is presented to consumers. Tendencies for consumers to lack self-control and to fail to reflect on the longer-term implications of their choices can very easily result in poor choices when credit is easily available. Regulatory policies could do more to promote careful reflection by consumer by erecting hurdles to delay choice, as well as by measures to make it easier for consumers to make comparisons and see the financial implications of particular choices. In designing such policies there is scope for integrating them with policies aimed at the promotion of self-funded retirement and environmental wellbeing. The paper ends with detailed case study discussions of problems of choice in the markets for building renovation services and financial services. In the former, problems of finding good value for money are increased by the one-off nature of much of the work and by combination of shortages of trades-people relative to demand and large numbers of potential suppliers to approach for quotations. The environment is also conducive to consumers ending up overcapitalising in their renovations. In the market for financial services, the balance of risk-taking with property speculation and suchlike is stacked in favour of the loan providers, whilst the chances of inexperienced speculators getting into difficulties are enhanced because they are prone to use decision rules they have picked up from others belatedly and in simplified form. The implications of borrowing and superannuation choices should be made much more transparent to consumers, along with the futility of trying to beat the market rather than investing in market index funds. 2005-12-22T00:00:00Z Earl, Peter E. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:10418 Recreational value of an outdoor site is reflected in a visitor's willingness to pay for the visit. This can sometimes be estimated using the Travel Cost Methodology (TCM) as the consumer's surplus under the site demand curve. Based on a case study of in Changbaishan Mountain Biosphere Reserve (CMBR) located in Northeast China, this paper focuses on the recreational values of tourism using the Travel Cost Method and speculates about the extent to which this valuer depends on the biodiversity present in China. 2004-06-17T00:00:00Z Xue, Dayuan og Cook, Averil og Tisdell, Clem http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:9121 Capital account convertibility in China is on the rise. Some see the process as a means of circumventing domestic financial sector inefficiency while others view it as potentially exposing China to financial crises. In considering these different viewpoints, this paper attempts to quantify the impact that opening the capital account will have on the volume of China's international capital flows. It is found that were China to fully open its capital account, gross non-FDI capital flows are predicted to rise by around 4.6 percent of GDP. While an increase of this magnitude would present a prudential challenge for China’s monetary authorities, it does not appear to be large enough to seriously call into question financial sector stability, either in China or abroad. 2005-10-13T00:00:00Z Laurenceson, James og Tang, Kam Ki http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:9127 This paper reviews and critically comments on the policy debate surrounding China's exchange rate regime. There are presently two key issues - firstly, whether the RMB has become significantly undervalued, and secondly, whether China would benefit from adopting a flexible exchange rate regime. We find little rigorous evidence in support of the first proposition. With respect to the second, the consensus view is that a flexible exchange rate is desirable as it would support macroeconomic stability by providing greater monetary independence. Most absent in this position is convincing evidence that exchange rate stability is associated with macroeconomic instability, either in the context of China or broader international experience. The consensus position also appears to understate many of the benefits that accrue to China as a result of having a stable exchange rate, as well as many of the costs associated with moving to greater flexibility. We conclude that while adopting a flexible exchange rate regime may pass the cost/benefit test sometime in the future, for now the focus ought to firmly be on domestic financial reform. 2005-10-13T00:00:00Z Laurenceson, James og Qin, Fengming http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:9452 This paper critically comments on the policy literature surrounding China's exchange rate regime. It first seeks to expose as myths several popularly raised contentions regarding the dollar peg employed by China, including the belief that the RMB is clearly undervalued and that its value is a prominent cause of the US trade deficit. The paper then describes a consensus position that has emerged which argues that in the interests of better promoting its own macroeconomic stability, China should abandon the peg in favor of a more flexible exchange rate regime. We see numerous weaknesses in this position but a few stand out. Available data do not suggest that flexible regimes outperform fixed regimes in terms of inflationary outcomes. Moving to a flexible regime is also far from proximate policy response to the problems that are in evidence in China's economy. Institutional realities that make moving to a flexible regime difficult also appear to have been seriously overlooked. The paper concludes by noting that in the longer term moving to a more flexible regime may be in China's best interests. But for now, the focus needs to be firmly in the area of domestic financial reform. 2005-07-28T00:00:00Z Laurenceson, James og Qin, Fengming http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:119807 We extend the Coase conjecture to the case of a seller with a single object, who faces n potential buyers and holds a sequence of English auctions until the object is sold. In an independent-private-values environment in which buyers and sellers share the same discount factor, we show that the (perfect Bayesian) equilibrium path of reserve prices obeys a Coasian logic. Moreover, the equilibrium reserve path lies below that for the model of repeated sealed-bid, second-price auctions studied by McAfee and Vincent (1997). Nevertheless, the open (English) and sealed-bid formats are shown to be revenue equivalent. 2007-10-22T13:44:30Z Menezes, Flavio M. og Ryan, Matthew J. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:10441 The debate over the quality of modern batsmanship in cricket parallels the debate over the disappearance of the 0.400 hitter in baseball. This paper shows that as bowling and fielding skills have improived over time, the best batting averages in cricket, which are in the right tail of the distribution, have declined. This does not imply poorer batting skills. Both decadal standard deviations and coefficients of variation reveal wider variations in batting averages in previous decades, especially the 1940s. The batting average actually measures batting skill in relation to bowling and fielding skills, the latter of which, it is argued, have improved over time. Therefore, by mistakenly interpreting the batting average as an absolute measure of batsmanship, cricket experts and fans under-appreciate the skill of modern batsmen. The paper attempts to make a meaningful comparison of modern batsmen to non-modern batsmen through use of the Z transformation. 2004-06-08T00:00:00Z Brown, H. Shelton http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:11044 In this paper, we develop an optimal control model of labor allocation in two types of economy - one economy is for innovative workers and the other one for knowledge workers. In both economies, workers allocate time between learning and discovering new knowledge. Both markets consist of a continuum of heterogeneous agents that are distinguished by their learning ability. Workers are rewarded for the knowledge they possess in the knowledge economy, and only for the new knowledge they create in the innovative economy. We show that, at steady state, while human capital accumulation is higher in the knowledge economy, the rate of knowledge creation is not necessarily higher in the innovative economy. Secondly, we prove that when the cost of learning is sufficiently high, the distribution of net wage income in the knowledge economy dominates that in the innovative economy in the first degree. 2004-05-06T00:00:00Z Beard, Rodney og Tang, Kam-Ki http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:84035 2007-08-14T13:26:28Z Beard, R.M. og Tang, K.K. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:155031 The purpose of this article is to investigate the ability of an assortment of frequency domain bandpass filters proposed in the economics literature to extract a known periodicity. The specific bandpass filters investigated include a conventional Discrete Fourier Transform filter, together with the filter recently proposed in Iacobucci-Noullez (2004, 2005). We employ simulation methods whereby the above-mentioned filters are applied to artificial data in order to investigate their cycle extraction properties. We also investigate the implications and complications that may arise from the Gibbs Effect in practical settings that typically confront applied macroeconomists. 2008-09-09T15:05:06Z Hinich, Melvin. J. og Foster, John og Wild, Phillip http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:83970 2007-08-14T13:24:19Z Lasselle, L. og Svizzero, S. og Tisdell, C. A. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:10927 Urban dwellers and farmers in the areas affected by human-elephant conflict in Sri Lanka are often in discord about the conservation of wild elephant in Sri Lanka. The urban dwellers regard this species as a valued resource but farmers in these areas consider it as an agricultural pest that interferes with their farming practices. This dual character of the elephant as both an agricultural pest and an economic asset reflects a difficulty in classifying it as a pest or as a resource. However, it seems that compensating farmers for the damages caused by elephants is essential, if this endangered species is to survive in the long run. This paper uses the results from contingent valuation survey of a sample of urban residents in Colombo in order to examines whether the urban dwellers' willingness to pay for the conservation of elephants is sufficient to compensate farmers for the damage caused by elephants and to raise farmers' tolerance of the present elephants on their farming fields. We find that the annual return for the total extrapolated WTP of urban residents (Rs. 2012.43 million) in Sri Lanka is nearly twice the extent of crop and property damage caused to farmers by elephants (Rs. (Rs.1121.42 million) per annum. This indicates that the policy of compensating farmers by urban dwellers for elephant damage so the farmers will tolerate elephants on their farming fields might be viable. Furthermore, this also suggests that there is a strong economic case for the conservation of the wild elephant population in Sri Lanka, at least at their current population level. 2004-02-06T00:00:00Z Bandara, R. og Tisdell, C. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:10366 This paper examines whether Australian labour market variables, in particular aggregate employment and unemployment, exhibit particular forms of nonlinearity and asymmetry that are of economic interest. the analysis used nonparametric tests - the BDS text and the triples test. The BDS test assess whether general residual unexplained nonlinearity remain since linear modeling has been applied to the data. The triples test is used to test for 'steepness' and 'deepness' asymmetries at the business cycle frequency. Evidence is found of nonlinearities. there is little evidence of deepness in the Australian macroeconomy but there is evidence of asymmetric steepness for both employment and unemployment as well as the CPI. Nominal or real wages exhibit neither forms of asymmetry. The evidence suggests that unemployment (employment) rises (falls) rapidly in recessions and only recovers slowly over time. Unemployment and employment are also found to exhibit asymmetric responses to positive and negative shocks over the cycle. The 'current depth of recession' does not provide a rebounding affect out of recessions - positive shocks do not have a stronger effect than negative shocks in recessions. However, some evidence is found for both aggregate employment and unemployment of an 'overheating' effect in expansions - negative shocks have stronger effects than positive shocks. This evidence suggests that unemployment displays a tendency to ratchet up in recessions and that the Australian labour market appears to exhibit significant 'speed limits' in expansion. The depth of GDP recessions is also found to have significant influence on the labour market. 2004-07-14T00:00:00Z Bodman, Philip M. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:84022 2007-08-14T13:26:02Z Stanford, J. D. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:10923 With the signing in November 2001 of a China-ASEAN free trade agreement due for completion in 2010, the question of the current degree of economic integration between China and ASEAN becomes important. This papers uses international parity conditions to investigate this issue. The results indicate that China is already highly integrated with ASEAN with respect to trade in goods and services. Financial integration however remains significantly incomplete. Given that external bodies such as the WTO will increasingly dictate the pace of China's future financial liberalization, the main implication of these findings is that complimentary reforms, such as the upgrading of prudential frameworks, need to be completed as a matter of urgency in both China and ASEAN. 2004-02-06T00:00:00Z Laurenceson, James http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:10451 For more than a decade, the world has been subjected to the economic philosophy of liberalism and the huge benefits assumed to be derived from economic freedom - both within an economy and without. The great economic goal for companies if the maximisation of profits through free competition, floating exchange rates, free trade and the free movement of capital. The new buzz word is globalisation. Yet there is a growing body of economists who find the new philosophy is not without its faults and who offer arguments that are completely ignored by free market economists. 2004-06-02T00:00:00Z Lougheed, Alan http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:10449 This is the text of the Ninth Colin Clark Memorial Lecture. The author contends that Australia's comparative growth perfomance and resilience to shocks were weakest when currents of economic nationalism were at their peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s. 2004-06-02T00:00:00Z Evans, Ted http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:10412 Theory suggests that students retain more knowledge if they have engaged in deep rather than surface learning. The EC135 Quantitative Analysis course is one that students find challenging, but it is a compulsory as well as a prerequisite subject in the faculty. A survey investigated how well students retained knowledge, and sought relationships between retention of knowledge, methods used for studying, PASS and tutorial attendance, and grades achieved. It was found that regular tutorial attendance was a strong contributor to retention of knowledge and attainment of higher grades. Peer assisted study sessions (PASS) were valuable for those who participated, although the relative contribution of PASS and tutorials was difficult to identify since many students were strong users of both resources. 2004-06-18T00:00:00Z Cook, Averil og Freeman, Brooke http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:10463 This paper is a part of the report Business Development of the Overseas Chinese – The Case of Four East Asian Countries sponsored by the National Science Foundation of China. In past years, research on overseas Chinese business has risen all over the world. The overseas Chinese who amount to less than five per cent of the population of China’s mainland generate an estimated GDP almost equivalent to that of China’s. Although they are fewer than ten per cent of the population of South east Asia, ethnic Chinese make up 86 per cent of its billionaires. They also control much of the region’s economies. The paper enquires into two problems. One is entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs’ spirits. The other attempts to give an institutional explanation to the business experiences of the overseas Chinese. The relationship between economic development and its cultural background again attracts much attention from many scholars. On the one hand, this is partly due to the satisfactory performance and rapid economic growth on newly industrialised areas such as Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan, which are influenced by traditional Chinese culture; on the other hand, it is promoted by the new institutional economics which has recently been in the limelight. The paper first makes a thorough study and investigation of the growth factors of the entrepreneurship from varied perspectives. According to the comparative analysis on the basis of different cultural backgrounds, it argues that there are four general factors in influencing the growth of entrepreneurship. The paper also draws some conclusions from the comparative analysis of the Sino-Western cultures, which may be used for reference in the process of reform of state-owned enterprises in China. 2004-06-16T00:00:00Z Wang, Jun http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:84020 2007-08-14T13:25:58Z Alauddin, M. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:11064 South Asia's pursuit of economic development has entailed considerable damage to and exposed the fragility of the physical environment of the region like elsewhere in the developing world. South Asia is beset with a number of environmental problems. This paper provides an analytical overview of the of the environmental problems that manifest themselves in South Asia in a comparative perspective with East and Southeast Asian countries as well as selected developed market economies. It is argued that to-date, South Asian development process has been environment-intensive and that environmental problems may set serious constraints to sustain growth in production to feed its growing population. The paper underscores the need for environmentalesque-type process innovation to reverse the trend of high environment-intensity in South Asian development. 2004-02-05T00:00:00Z Alauddin, Mohammad http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:9125 China's capital account convertibility is presently not well understood. A relatively closed de jure regime sits in contrast with a de facto regime that exhibits distinct signs of being quite open. This paper seeks to shed light on this issue by using an econometric model to predict the level of capital flows that would be expected if China had a fully open capital account. The results show that over 2001-2003, observed capital flows were around 85 percent of the predicted value, suggesting that China's capital account over a one year time horizon is already quite open. Short run convertibility would expectedly be less than this figure. Thus, the results carry the connotation that the cost of capital controls in terms of allocative inefficiency over the medium and long run is likely to have been modest while some unwarranted short run volatility has been avoided. Nonetheless, the results do not leave room for policy complacency. As China continues to implement its WTO commitments in addition to other arrangements such as the Common Economic Partnership Agreement with Hong Kong, short run convertibility is presently on the rise. This makes implementing policies that are prerequisites for full convertibility a matter of urgency. 2005-10-13T00:00:00Z Laurenceson, James og Tang, Kam Ki http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:11041 This paper describes a study undertaken on the Bremer River catchment in south east Queensland. The study informed members of the community about water quality issues in the catchment through a citizens' jury and then solicited their opinion about whether more resources should be devoted towards improving water quality and how much they thought the community should pay. A choice modelling survey was conducted prior to and at the conclusion of the citizens' jury. The jury accepted that more resources should be devoted to improving water quality in the catchment, making a number of pertinent recommendations about how and where additional resources should be directed. In addition, the jury indicated that, in terms of willingness to pay, riparian vegetation was an important ecosystem attribute. Although the preliminary and final models derived for the choice modelling exercise indicate that the models were not equivalent, there was no statistical difference in the implicit prices between the two models. Nevertheless, the confidence interval of the implicit prices narrowed following the provision of information in the citizens' jury and there was an improvement in the statistical reliability of the model. 2004-02-05T00:00:00Z Robinson, J. og Clouston, B. og Suh, J. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:84040 2007-08-14T13:26:38Z Robinson, J. og Clouston, B. og Suh, J. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:84275 2007-08-14T13:35:52Z Potts, J. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:11070 This paper sketches a framework for the analysis of expectations in an evolutionary microeconomics. The core proposition is that expectations form a network structure, and that the geometry of that network will provide a suitable guide as to the dynamical behaviour of that network. It is a development towards a theory of the computational processes that construct the data set of expectations. The role of probability theory is examined in this context. Two key issues will be explored: (1) on the nature and stability of expectations when they form as a complex network; and (2), the way in which this may be modelled within a multi-agent simulation platform. It is argued that multi-agent simulation (a-life) techniques provide an expedient analytical environment to study the dynamic nature of mass expectations, as generated or produced objects, in a way that bridges micro and macroeconomics. 2004-02-05T00:00:00Z Potts, J. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:10369 Most developing countries that have embarked on structural adjustment have embraced export promotion strategies. In Zimbabwe's case, export promotion is coupled with attempts to increase flows of foreign capital. However, there is no universal agreement on the efficacy of such policies. The shift in policy, though, should not be viewed as a bandwagon effect as shown by results from this paper. The author employs a vector autoregression (VAR) to test for causation between GNP, exports and FDI. While some theoretical justification for adopting this methodology is provided, limitations of this study are also highlighted. It is concluded that causation between the variables cannot be rejected and that significantly strong feedback effects exist. As such, complementary policies need to be clearly designed if the desired economic turnaround is to be realised. 2004-07-14T00:00:00Z Mafusire, Albert http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:84042 2007-08-14T13:26:42Z Mafusire, A.