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This paper makes use of a half-yearly series for planned and actual new capital expenditures in the Australian manufacturing sector to examine two investment relationships. Section I of the paper tests a modified form of the acceleration principle in which unfulfilled investment plans of the previous period enter as an explanatory variable. Section II examines reasons for the non-fulfilment of plans, introducing a new hypothesis involving capacity constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents some revisions to estimates made initially by Wilson and more recently revised by Butlin of the balance of payments and capital imports for the period of the First World War and five subsequent years. The acceptance of the existing residual estimate of net private capital inflow for the post First World War period 1919-20 to 1923-24, based on the Wilson-Butlin balance of payments statistics, would immediately raise a paradox, for it suggests that negligible foreign investment took place in Australia during a boom period of rapid industrial development and at a time when British and American investors were once again looking for profitable investment opportunities. This paradox can be resolved only if it is realized that the impression of negligible private capital inflow in the post-war period is a statistical illusion due to the failure of the previously available estimates to take into account the fact that payments for Australia's major exported commodities were made a number of years prior to their ultimate shipment overseas. The revised estimates suggest that private foreign investment in Australia during the nineteen twenties is more important than has previously been thought—the new estimate of its magnitude being fifty percent higher than the previous estimate. Sections II and III respectively place wool and wheat exports for the period, on a "payments basis" rather than the existing "shipments basis". Payments for many millions of pounds worth of these two commodities were made a number of years prior to actual shipment. Export data in the Overseas Trade Bulletins are based on the time of shipment rather than the time of payments for exports. For most purposes, including analysis of the balance of payments, capital imports, the banking system and the level of economic activity within Australia, the actual value at the time of payment rather than the "declared value" of an export commodity at the time of shipment is the... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The object of this paper is to examine some issues relating to foreign exchange market arrangements and policies which may be significant for the future of trade and other economic relations between Australia and Japan. The issues, for the most part, are not of crucial importance. But some of them have been the subject of rather ill-informed discussion, while others have hardly been considered at all. Such an examination may therefore be informative for both Australians and Japanese concerned with the bilateral economic relationship. The paper will concentrate on the Australian side, but it is hoped that it will stimulate the preparation of a Japanese counterpart, if such is not already on the way. The paper will deal with five main aspects: 1. Foreign exchange market arrangements. 2. Foreign exchange controls. 3. Forward exchange facilities. 4. Transaction currency. 5. International reserves. We will not discuss questions of exchange rate policy which would demand a paper to themselves. We shall merely assume that exchange rates will vary a good deal more frequently than they did before 1971 and that greater uncertainty about exchange rates will be a fact of life from now on. Nor shall we discuss the pros and cons of the new Australian policies on foreign (including Japanese) investment in Australia, though something will need to be said about the nature and consequences of the new system of exchange controls on capital inflow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present an empirical loan supply function for Australian trading banks. The work described here is part of a wider study of the Australian monetary sector, but it is worth describing in detail because it takes greater account of the unique characteristics of the Australian institutional structure than previous empirical studies, and because, in the course of the study, we were able to test certain hypotheses about trading bank lending. We were able to examine the possibility that bank lending is affected by general business conditions and the pressure of demand by borrowers. Also, the approach adopted in this paper allowed us to evaluate more thoroughly than previous studies the effect of Central Bank "moral suasion" on trading bank behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this paper is to examine these conflicting points of view. This will involve a comparison of the growth of local government tax bases and revenue collections with those of other bases; consideration of local government taxing policy; and an examination of the incidence of the local government tax. Factors affecting the popularity of the local government tax will be considered. And then the policy implications with respect to local government revenue policy that arise from this discussion will be spelt out. This paper has two important limitations. First, it is concerned only with local governments in urban areas. The problems facing local governments in rural areas and country towns are a different story. Secondly, no consideration is given to the possibility of local governments alleviating any revenue-raising difficulties they may have by relinquishing some of their functions to the State Governments or the Federal Government. This limitation was imposed in order to keep the paper of manageable length. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of government measures on the market for crude oil in Australia. Section I of the paper analyses the market under various positions of the long-run home supply curve. Estimates of the future costs of local crude are made in section II in an attempt to test the need for the high level of protection given to the industry. The final section considers a number of alternative future policy measures open to the Government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

William Edward Hearn, first Professor of Economics in the University of Melbourne, and author of Plutology or the Theory of the Efforts to Satisfy Human Wants (1863), is a figure familiar to those who have even a casual acquaintance with the development of economic thought in Australia. His work has been the object of studies by a number of distinguished scholars, most notably Professor J. A. La Nauze in his Political Economy in Australia, and earlier, Sir Douglas Copland in the Macrossan Lectures of 1935. More recently, Professor Craufurd Goodwin has dealt with some of the aspects of Hearn's contribution. The purpose of this article is not to retrace the ground covered by these writers, but to draw attention to a short, but interesting, item by Hearn which seems so far to have escaped notice. This item, which sheds new light on the genesis and contents of the Plutology, is a discourse On Cottier Rents read before the Dublin Statistical Society in 1851. The address was given during Hearn's tenure as Professor of Greek at Queen's College, Galway, and in the year which saw the publication of his Cassell Prize Essay on the Condition of Ireland. In contrast with the latter, the Statistical Society paper embodies economic analysis of some merit, although both works are concerned with the need for legal reform in Ireland. The paper examines the bases of social and economic stagnation in Ireland through a consideration of the influence of certain pervasive market forces. In the course of this consideration, Hearn displays an analytical facility which warrants the attention of the historian of economic ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of the relationship between companies' inventories and their turnover, investigating the extent to which there are realized economies of scale in inventory holding. It also uses aggregate data in an endeavour to examine the extent to which firms increase their holdings of individual stock items in proportion to the square root of sales, in conformity with recent theoretical findings about optimal inventory behaviour. The study is a cross-section one and compares the inventory/turnover ratios of firms of different size. The data used are for Australian companies for the financial years 1962-63 and 1983-61. As companies do not have to disclose turnover in their annual accounts, the size of the sample is limited to those that voluntarily provide the information. Section I below describes the data used. Section II examines the extent to which there are realized economies of scale. Section III introduces the square-root hypothesis and considers some problems involved in testing it. Section IV involves the specification of the square-root model in testable form, and the tests on this model arc reported in Section V. The paper's conclusions are given in Section VI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to apply to Australian statistics certain techniques of the National Bureau of Economic Research for detecting stages of the trade cycle. A major objective of this type of analysis is to reduce the time between a turning point and its identification. The results do not provide a mechanical procedure for interpreting movements in statistical series. This is true not only for current analysis but also when the techniques are applied in historical studies; they do not, for example, eliminate the difficulties of interpreting the period 1956-58. However, the task of subjective judgement is facilitated by the appropriate processing and classification of the statistics. The most highly developed of the National Bureau's techniques is the distinction between "leading", "coincident" and "lagging" series, according to the usual relationship between the cycles of specific series and the general business cycle. Another device is the diffusion index, a summary measure pertaining either to groups of economic series or to components of significant aggregates. Examples of both types of diffusion indexes, which show the percentage of components rising in any particular month, are given in this paper. Their logical justification is that they tend to move in advance of the general business cycle and therefore give advance warning of turning points. Other techniques devised by the National Bureau are not considered in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent widespread emergence of wage and price inflation seemingly associated with a slowdown in real activity and rise in unemployment makes an analysis of the determinants of average earnings an important matter. This paper examines the determinants of average weekly earnings in Australia, basing the analysis on the extensive overseas literature and previous Australian work in this area. We present quantitative estimates of the influence of imported inflation and award wage changes, as well as of more traditional variables such as demand pressure and productivity changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present some empirical equations explaining the Australian nonbank public's demand for very liquid assets. Very liquid assets are financial assets which can be converted into cash on demand. Four assets fell into this category in the period we are studying: notes and coin, current deposits, savings deposits, and loans to the authorised dealers in the Short-term money market. We also present an equation explaining the public's demand for fixed deposits because this variable plays an important role in the equations for very liquid assets. This group of financial assets merits special attention because economists usually attribute a crucial role in the determination of economic activity to these assets; the study embraces all the assets included in the Reserve Bank's definition of "money". The assets are described in the following section, and in subsequent sections we discuss the specification of the equations, the estimation procedure used, and the empirical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines alternative methods of financing educational activities; it is therefore concerned with sources of finance rather than with expenditure decisions involving the allocation of resources to different educational purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does Australia have a long run trade-off between inflation and unemployment? In other words, if demand management policies were able to select and maintain a steady rate of inflation, would the level of unemployment that emerged be lower, the higher the chosen inflation rate ? If such a trade-off exists, what are its most likely quantitative characteristics? Alternatively, is the Phelps-Friedman accelerationist hypothesis a better characterisation of Australia's long run inflation-unemployment options. That is, is there some rate of unemployment, (usually termed the natural rate), not necessarily a constant rate over time but unrelated to the inflation rate, at which any steady rate of inflation is possible but below which inflation will persistently accelerate? If this accelerationist model better describes the Australian economy, what is (and has been) the natural unemployment rate? These are the main questions dealt with in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the spectra and cross-spectra of Australian share prices and share price indices to observe the trend, business cycle, seasonal and irregular components of our series in the frequency domain. In particular, the spectra provide a non-parametric test of the random walk hypothesis. We observe a seasonal pattern in all the indices, which is contrary to current beliefs about share prices. This appears to be the first authenticated seasonal movement in any share market in the world. Finally, using cross-spectral methods, we observe certain lead-tag relationships and their strengths between pairs of indices at the business cycle frequencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the third in the series of studies entitled "Household Consumption and Income in Australia" undertaken by the author. It shows how an equivalent income scale may be estimated for Australian families of varying composition. An examination of previous work in this field suggested that no existing method should be adopted and used without qualification—thus some of the methodological and theoretical problems are discussed at length. The data used to derive the scale are taken from the Australian Survey of Consumer Finances—the first time appropriate data have been available. An exposition of the problem and the approaches adopted in deriving the scale are given in the first section. In the second section the methods of estimation are developed, and the results and conclusions are presented in the final section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prime purpose of this paper is to identify the main trends in the unit cost of electricity during the period and in particular to indicate the principal reasons for the fails in the real price charged to consumers. Most of the analysis is based on accounting reports published by the supply authorities, and the usual deficiences of historical accounting data as indicators of real costs need to be borne in mind. In this regard, it has been assumed that current expenditure gives a reasonable picture of the cost of inputs in each accounting period. As far as capital charges are concerned, there seem to be good reasons to have serious doubts about the adequacy of the accounting data as indicators of the real cost of capital used in the industry. These deficiencies are discussed in Parts V and VI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has two purposes. First, the concept of directly additive preferences, introduced by Houthakker and exploited by Powell, and Powell et al., is used to compute demand elasticities for Australia as a whole and also for the six States in order to explore consumer demand patterns during the postwar years. Secondly, a number of tests either on interregional or money flexibility criteria is employed to examine aggregation bias of demand elasticities for a number of combinations of total market and market sections. The rationale of these tests by means of the analysis of covariance is given in the Appendix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ever since the publication of the Brigden Report [1929], income distribution has always been an important element in the arguments for protection put forward by academic economists in Australia. It is noteworthy that, although the theoretical developments necessary to begin to unravel the income redistributive effects of protection have been well-known for nearly 30 years, there have been few attempts to estimate empirically such income redistributive effects of a tariff structure for any country. Perhaps the best known studies of protection which attempt, amongst other things, to say something about direction of change in factor prices induced by the tariff structure are by Vaccara [1961], Travis [1964] and Basevi [1966]. However, I know of no attempts to assign orders of magnitude to such effects. Part of the reason for the lack of attention to problems of income distribution and the tariff stems from the difficulties in building theoretical models which give a priori predictions about factor price changes when more than two factors are included and the empirical problems involved in implementing such models. Another reason may be that economists today tend to be more concerned with growth which increases everyone's income, rather than worrying about redistributing what is already available. Be that as it may, there is in Australia a long history of concern with both static and dynamic effects of tariffs on wages, employment, and income distribution, and economic welfare in general, and it is to these questions that this paper is addressed. In section II, a brief history of the empirical and theoretical aspects of the income redistribution argument for protection in Australia is outlined. A two sector version of a multi-sectoral growth model, which can be used to estimate empirically the effects of tariffs on factor prices, is described in section III. The empirical implementation of the multi-sectoral version of that model is described in section IV, and... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a case study of investment in an inland (or "country") silo. These silos are used as local "collecting centres" for the on-movement of bulk grain (by rail) to a port terminal. Though specifically oriented to South Australian conditions, the general issues are common to those in any state where bulk grain must be moved to the coast from inland areas. To be economically justifiable the saving in bulk rail and farmers' time must outweigh the cost of resources used in country silo construction. At some point the double handling of grain through the country silo and the proximity of a port terminal will make such investment expenditure uneconomical. In this study an estimate has been made of the present value of the pay-off yielded by the construction of a silo at Crystal Brook (S.A.), 19 miles from a terminal at Port Pirie. Crystal Brook is on a major railway line and at the time of the survey did not have a silo, nor the prospect of one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper our primary aim is to present an estimation procedure for an evolving, or changing, seasonal pattern and in particular to discuss general problems of seasonal estimation where such a pattern is assumed. As a preliminary step we sketch the theoretical background which is fundamental to our approach, omitting any detailed investigation of proposed models, estimation methods and the many formulae employed. The suggested estimation procedures have been applied to a number of Australian economic time series and some of the problems encountered in this implementation are discussed with reference to the series in which these difficulties appeared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pricing, capital raising and investment practices of ports have been studied in some official reports mainly to provide a guide to the optimal allocation of resources by port authorities. These studies have naturally considered the domestic social costs and benefits of changes in the policies of ports, since their operations are part of the economy's infrastructure. The literature is smaller on the private aspect of port costs to users—the direct and indirect costs to shipowners and shippers or consignees. This may be because the direct costs involved, which are fairly easily calculated, are frequently a small component of the total operating costs of shipping and o the selling prices of goods. On the other hand, the indirect costs involved, which include both monetary and imputed costs, may be a large cost component and are not easily calculable. The building up of sound generalisations rests ultimately on the evidence of actual situations. This paper makes some analysis of data on user costs in Australian ports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As has often been observed, the Australian economy, especially its secondary and tertiary sectors, has grown rapidly since World War II. This growth, however, was not continuous, but took place in a rhythmic "stop-go" pattern; and it is with such "growth cycles" rather than the overall average growth itself that we will be concerned. Recently there has been an interest in approaching this subject by an application to Australian statistics of some well-known methods devised by the National Bureau of Economic Research (N.B.E.R.) for analyzing the U.S. business cycle. Specifically, peaks and troughs are found for individual economic time series showing the business cycle either in the raw data or in short moving averages of it. From the conspectus of these, the peaks and troughs of a "general reference cycle" are determined. Finally a distinction is made between "leading", "roughly coincident", and "lagging" series according to the typical relationship between cycles of individual series and "the general reference cycle". The aim of this paper is to re-examine this whole area, but beginning from the standpoint of the methods of spectral and cross-spectral analysis in an attempt to achieve a better characterization and estimation of the properties of the business cycle in different areas of the Australian economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Econometric models of the Australian economy have not yet reached the levels of completeness and complexity that are necessary for reliable forecasts and tenable assessments of economic policy. It is generally believed that this stage is more effectively reached by gradually extending comparatively simple aggregative systems to more complicated ones. The model presented in this paper serves primarily to fill an important gap remaining from the two previously published studies. It develops, in relatively simple terms, a monetary sector that is complementary to the investment and consumption relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main principles of fiscal stabilisation is the regulation of taxation (and, to a lesser extent, expenditure) in a manner which will dampen fluctuations in national income and so avoid unemployment and inflation. A change in taxation or expenditure can be made by a change in legislation. Such changes are referred to as discretionary fiscal policy. Tax revenues and expenditures may also change automatically. These changes are generally referred to as built-in or automatic fiscal policy. The aims of this paper are to examine, in what is essentially a static framework, the built-in changes in some of the components of the Australian budget and to evaluate their stabilisation performance during the period 1948-64. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classical and modern demand theory provide parametric linear and nonlinear hypotheses which may be used as prior information in the estimation of systems of demand equations. Restricted estimation using this prior information enables the optimal demand parameters obeying the conditions of consumer maximisation theory to be established and also provides a test of the consistency of the sample and the prior information. Price and income elasticities are estimated subject to the classical restrictions of demand theory—the Slutsky condition, the Engel aggregation condition and the homogeneity conditions—using Australian data. Tests of significance are made on the individual restrictions and the equivalence of three overall tests of significance is examined. The consumer utility function is then postulated as separable, two commodity groupings are suggested, and the demand elasticities are estimated subject to various assumptions about additive and separable utility functions. Again, the null hypothesis on the prior information is tested. Finally, there is a brief comparison of the methods and results in this paper with the methods and results of A. A. Powell on the same data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In searching for possible causes of inflation one is led to consider a wide range of fields encompassing, among others, monetary and fiscal problems, labour economies and international trade theory. In all these areas contributions have been made towards understanding the generation of inflation and there has been some progress towards a synthesis of various approaches. Of considerable interest is the question of how far each of the various possible sources of inflation have contributed towards explaining overall price movements. This paper attempts to develop and apply a method which will, for the period under consideration, allow this question to be asked. Judging from the amount of discussion of the subject, it would seem that in Australia the wage-fixing machinery of the arbitration system must be considered as a possible source of inflationary pressure. Indeed a number of authors have proposed rules which they argue should be followed in order to prevent inflation arising from this source. The divergence of the minimum hourly wage rate from the value prescribed for it by each rule would seem then to indicate the degree of inflationary (or deflationary) pressure originating from the system of wage fixation in the opinion of each author. Variables so constructed will be used to test these opinions. Part I is devoted to a theoretical discussion of the variables which may be important in explaining inflation, and to the way in which the impact of these variables may be measured. In part II the results are presented, whilst part III is devoted to a discussion of their possible economic interpretation. The sources of data are mentioned in the Appendix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This note has two purposes: first, to provide the balance-of-payments argument missing in the analyses of the wage policy advocates and of Professor Russell—not in terms of fundamental balance-of-payments disequilibrium as suggested by Russell, but in terms of the growth aspect of the Australian balance of payments; second, to point out that, contrary to Russell's belief, his own recommendation, as compared with that of wage policy advocates, may result in a lower rate of growth of real wages in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The object of this paper is to examine the way in which mechanisms for transferring hospital costs have been modified by the development of the voluntary insurance system. There are three distinct stages in the analysis. Section II consists of an outline of the changing structure of public hospital incomes, in which patients' fees and voluntary insurance payments have tended to displace government subsidies as sources of finance. Sections III and IV deal with the transfer effects of this trend and with the effects of changes in fee structures and the composition of voluntary insurance payments. Finally, in Section V an attempt is made to measure the consumer response to the pricing pattern of voluntary insurance. The broad conclusion is that the incidence of hospital costs with respect to income has become increasingly regressive. The consequences include increased individual hardship and exacerbation of the chronic problem of public hospital finances. The evidence presented here is limited in two respects. First, the available data are largely confined to the public hospital systems. This is not a serious limitation, since these systems operate five-sixths of all beds, including all the public ward accommodation, and also provide all the facilities for medical education, casualty, emergency, super-specialist and outpatient treatment. Private hospitals, whose function is limited to the in-patient care of private patients, may be regarded as external supplements to the intermediate and private wards of public hospitals. Fee discrimination on the basis of income is practised only in public hospitals: the fee structure of private hospitals is related to public hospital charges for private and intermediate beds. The second limitation is that the statistics used are largely Victorian, with some comparable New South Wales data shown where the layout of tables permits. However, the observations should be broadly true of all the state systems except those of Queensland... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been several attempts in the last few years to identify the Peaks and Troughs of the post-war Australian business cycle. The latest and most detailed study, that of J. S. Mallyon, supports the generally accepted view. Peaks occurred somewhere about July 1951 and September 1960, with corresponding Troughs at October 1952 and August 1961. In between there were one or two less well-marked fluctuations. The object of this paper is neither to contradict nor confirm these opinions, but to examine in more detail the precise chronology of each episode. In addition to the conventional maxima and minima, therefore, six other business cycle reference points have been defined. The timing of any "cycle" may thus be described in terms not only of its "Peaks" and "Troughs", but also of the peaks and troughs of the growth rate curve, the dates at which activity rises above or falls below its trend value, and the dates at which it stands at a maximum above or minimum below trend value. The method used to establish these other dates yields estimates of Peaks and Troughs as a by-product. In this respect there is an overlap with Mallyon's research, the advantage of which lies in the cheek it provides on the dating of the other reference points not previously established for Australia. If the estimates of Peaks and Troughs made by this method agree in general with those of Mallyon (which they do) and if the other reference points are as well authenticated as the Peaks and Troughs (which they are) then there is some ground for regarding the other dates as a useful addition to existing knowledge. The conceptual framework of this study is outlined briefly in the next section. The method of research is described in Section III and the results reported in Section IV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been several periods during the last fifteen years when the Australian central bank has sought and achieved a reduction in outstanding advances. The most recent was in 1960-61. This article will consider what sectors of the community were most affected by the contraction in the supply of trading bank finance during this year. A number of writers have discussed the overall effectiveness of government policies and the usefulness of monetary policy during this period, and these questions will not be considered in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore, in an Australian context, some of the implications of adjusting money wages for productivity. The analysis may offer a rationale for the past reluctance of the Commission to take the advice of the economists; it will point to some of the difficulties that the 1965 policy might be expected to meet. Section II examines the mechanism by which productivity-geared wages are said to ensure price stability. There are two essential linkages, one between award wages and average earnings and a second between average direct costs and the general level of prices. Section III notes some possible implications for the structure of earnings of operating on award wages in order to control the rate of increase of average earnings. Section IV examines the implications of the productivity rule when there is a general change in world prices. It is argued that, in this case, important consequences follow either for the distribution of income between exporters and wage-earners or for exchange rate policy. Section V notes briefly the implications of the productivity rule for balanceof-payments policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses issues raised by the Australian policy on patenting and licensing of government inventions. Government pressure for increased royalty revenues; Argument that royalty revenue is an entirely misleading index of the value of government research; Powers of a patentee; Major research bodies in Australia.

Several countries in the 1960s underwent what many observers regard as a manpower revolution. Styles varied, particularly between America's remedial approach and a more preventative orientation in Europe. Still, common to all— Sweden, England, Canada, the United States, Germany and the Netherlands—was a sharpened awareness that only through government intervention could acceptable standards of labour market performance be achieved. Australia, on the otherhand, has lagged behind. Even with a sustained effort to catch up, it will be without an active manpower policy well into the 1970s, although employers, trade unions, governments and other labour market interest groups all articulate support. This consensus, however, is superficial and potentially misleading. It rests on the fact that none of these groups has publicly, or perhaps even privately, interpreted what manpower policy entails. So long as the standards by which it is operated or evaluated remain underspecified, all can and do agree that a more active manpower policy is desirable. Similarly underspecified, for example, is the consensus supporting the need for good industrial relations. From an economics orientation, manpower policy can be viewed as an integrated set of conscious acts to raise labour productivity through the rational development and deployment of human resources. Clearly, the process of skill acquisition through training/retraining will be crucial. Since manpower policy is a means rather than an end, certain constraints, particularly on the training function, will exist. In some cases, as with adult apprenticeships and the issue of female employment opportunities, these derive from entrenched attitudes of the various labour market interest groups. In other cases, which are more frequent than is generally recognized, the constraints are rooted in the unique institutions, standards and conventions governing the Australian labour market itself. These, more so than the former,... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, numerous references have been made to the cost-price squeeze on farm income in Australia and the decline in farm income, relative to non-farm income. The increase in annual rates and taxes on farm property has contributed to this squeeze on income. In fact, the Bureau of Agricultural Economics index of farm costs indicates that rates and taxes have increased more rapidly than any other item in farm production and marketing expenses, increasing by 53 per cent over the period 1960-63 to 1968. This article looks at local government financing in rural areas of South Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is commonly believed that short-run fluctuations in dwelling construction expenditures are attributable to fluctuations in the availability and/or terms of credit. For example, Lawrence Smith has argued that in Canada "deficiencies in the availability of mortgage financing were responsible for temporary declines in the rate of growth of residential construction, and virtually all recent fluctuations in this sector may be attributed to fluctuations in the availability of this credit." Also, Norton has found a positive relationship between gross private fixed capital expenditure on dwellings in Australia and new mortgage approvals lagged three quarters. Thus the model developed in the following pages to explain the supply of mortgages from financial institutions has obvious macro-economic uses in explaining fluctuations in Australian dwelling construction expenditures. On the other hand, the model has potential micro-economic uses as with minor modifications a model of this type could form the basis of a sophisticated flow of funds forecasting technique of banks, building societies or life insurance offices active in the home mortgage market. This potential application will become somewhat more apparent as the model is developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the characteristics of the convertible note issues of the 'fifties will be examined; a valuation model will be derived and tested and the implications for the model of the conditions imposed on the 'new' convertible notes will be studied and the likely impact of the 'new' convertible notes will be discussed. the following characteristics: (i) the majority of the issues (84 per cent of those sampled) specified that each note would convert to shares with an identical par value, for example a $100 note would convert to 50. shares with a par value of $2; (ii) the interest rate on these convertible notes ranged from 5 per cent to 8 per cent per annum with 7 per cent as the most common; (iii) the term of these notes ranged from 20 months to ten years, with the majority having a life of either five or six years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the political economy in Australia during the 1920s. Concept of tariff as a device for taxing rural income to support the real wage; Effect of tariff on real wages; Different factor intensities of rural and manufacturing production; Comparative advantage in certain forms of land-intensive production to yield a per capita income and real wage.

A study of changes currently occurring in the structure of the Western Australian economy has recently been concluded at the Institute of Agriculture within the University of Western Australia. These changes were estimated using an input-output table constructed by Parker for 1958-59 as a basis. Subsequent changes in structure have been estimated indirectly on the basis of known values of production and components of final demand for the ten-year period 1956-57 to 1965-66. The 54-industry classification of the economy used by Parker has been retained in this analysis. This article outlines the technique used and assesses the results obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argues that the principle of equity in the institutionalized determination of inter-industry wage differentials and the economic pressures in an efficient labor market do not necessarily reinforce one another. Incompatibility of attempts by wage-fixing authorities in Australia to maintain wage justice with the operation of market forces; Criticism of Turner and Jackson's theory of wage and price determination.

1971 will go on record as the year in which the general public in Australia began to worry about cost inflation or income inflation as I prefer to describe it. This concern was expressed clearly in the Commonwealth Treasurer's budget speech; unfortunately the action taken in the budget did not correspond, for it was aimed at further restraint of demand which was already sagging below the level of full employment. In public discussion it is now understood that the 1971 variety of inflation is significantly different from previous bouts, in that this time the general level ot5 demand, profits, and activity are not very high as they have been on previous occasions pulling prices up. Indeed the use of the term "stagflation" to describe the 1971 situation is becoming common to indicate the combination of a stagnant level of activity combined with a rapid rise of prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the employment status of aborigines in Australia. General employment profile; Early position of Aborigines in relation to the pastoral industry; Importance of missions and settlements.

Discusses how economist W.E. Hearn expressed his theoretical notions in terms of the political and economic controversies of his day in Australia. Opposition to government interference; Taxation and political policies; Education reform; Disposal of waste lands.

In Australia, as in many other countries which have limited markets, decreasing cost industries pose awkward policy problems. The optimal number of producers does not automatically occur, at least in the short run, which may, indeed, be very long, and producers do not always share the market in an optimal fashion. This essay elaborates on this problem and deals with the related matter of possible governmental intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the association between prosperity and strike activity in Australia from 1952-68. Nature of a cyclical influence of strike activity; Factors expected to be positively related to strike frequency; Fluctuations in economic activity.

Australian studies of industrial, labour and economic history in the second half of the 19th century have long relied on manufacturing statistics published annually in the colonial Statistical Registers. This reliance could become even more pronounced through the influence of Professor N. G. Butlin, who drew heavily upon these sources. This article suggests, however, that these Statistic Registers are unreliable and indeed—for certain purposes—misleading. If this is so, some popular historical interpretations will have to be reviewed. We shall have to reconsider why Victoria adopted a protective tariff in the 1860s and also reconsider the subsequent effects of the tariff. We shall have to re-examine the effects of the gold-rushes on the growth of manufacturing. We shall have to reject much of Butlin's pioneering work on the rise of manufacturing in Victoria and Australia between 1861 and 1901, and we shall have to reconsider the role of manufacturing in the boom of the 1880s and the recovery from the depression of the 1890s. The statistics and the estimates based on them are also relevant to such questions as how manufacturing influenced the growth of cities, how urban living standards moved, and how the economic and social climate affected the growth of unionism and welfare legislation. Moreover, unless the manufacturing statistics are handled with a new discretion, the infection of error may spread to problems in local history, industrial history, colonial and national history; for these statistics are as basic to industrial history as detailed voting returns are to political history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents indexes of average prices of Australian imports from Great Britain from 1919-20 to 1927-28. Food, drink and tobacco; Living animals; Raw materials and articles mainly unmanufactured.

Explores the extent to which domestic income adjustment can help balance external payments in Australia. Relevance to economic policy; Alignment of expectations; System of incentives in market economy.

Focuses on the variations in loans to and rates paid by authorized short-term money market dealers in Australia. Size of the authorized market; Dealer capital; Sources of funds to dealers; Daily averages and variation in loans to dealers.

The connections between international trade and domestic economic growth and welfare have for long been of central interest to both economists and economic historians. This theme has special relevance for the analysis of Australia's growth performance because of the relatively high ratio of trade to national income and the concomitant pursuit of policies favouring rapid industrialisation and population expansion. Clearly, improved balance-ofpayments estimates will establish more precisely the magnitude and character of Australia's international economic relationships during the process of economic development. Ideally, a complete quantitative picture of these international transactions would be obtained by compiling a set of accounts covering not onlyu merchandise exports and imports but also invisible trade and capital movements. The aim of the present note is to provide estimates of the current account only (merchandise trade and invisible items) over the period since Federation. While private and official attempts have been made to estimate either portions of the current account or the full account for a limited period of time, there has not previously existed a continuousu series for the entire period set out in the relatively comprehensive form which the present estimates take. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early in 1967 the University of Cambridge Department of Applied Economics published an interim report on an investigation into some of the effects of Britain's direct overseas investment. This publication has been widely referred to as the "Reddaway Report". This term is used in the present article, but it should be remembered that a final report, bearing a similar appellation, will probably be available about March 1968. This article does not summarize the Report. Bather it considers certain aspects of it, mainly from an Australian viewpoint, and supplements the Report by presenting certain data for Australia from the Cambridge survey, analysed by industry groups, which were not published in the Beddaway Report. Interpretations to be placed on the data are subject to all the qualifications that are emphasized in the Report. These will not be repeated here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]