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This article reports some of the results from a recent study which, among other things, developed and costed low cost budgets for a range of Australian households. A budget standard rep- resents what is needed, in terms of goods, services and activities, to achieve a particular standard of living and what that costs in a particular place and time. A low cost budget standard is one designed to meet basic needs at a frugal level while still allowing social and economic participation consistent with community expectations. The low cost budget standard estimates for households living in Sydney in February 1997 are somewhat higher than the Henderson poverty line, partly a reflection of the high cost of housing in Sydney, but also a consequence of the low cost standard itself being above a poverty standard. In spite of this, the budget standard relativities for different households provide an estimate of the relative needs of Australian households in the 1990s which could replace the current much-criticised equivalence scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents estimates of the supply elasticity for residential property in metropolitan Sydney over the period 1991-2006. Our results suggest that supply is inelastic-less than unity-for all types of housing, although the supply elasticity is relatively larger for strata properties (apartments and flats) than for non-strata properties (separate and semi-detached houses, terraces and townhouses). We also find evidence of a significant fall in supply elasticity between 1991-1996 and 2001-2006. When the median time taken by a local council to decide on a development application is included in the supply curve, it is found to have a negative effect on the supply of residential property. However, split-sample estimates indicate this effect is largely confined to the 1991-1996 period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the widespread acceptance that work of equal value should be equally remunerated, men, on average, continue to earn noticeably more than women do. One reason often given for the persistence of this earnings gap is that work undertaken in female-dominated occupations and industries is under-valued relative to work undertaken in male-dominated occupations and industries, a claim that has been at the center of the recent Pay Equity Inquiry conducted in the New South Wales (NSW) Industrial Relations Commission. However, the assumptions made in the inquiry were not justified. First, it is assumed that the Industrial Relations Commission of NSW is correct in its supposition that a significant proportion of the gender wage differential is the result of occupation-based job segmentation. Second, it is assumed that industrial tribunals are able to directly influence relative wages through the award review process.

A sample of one hundred and sixty-eight New South Wales local government libraries is used to analyse the efficiency measures derived from the non-parametric technique of data envelopment analysis. Depending upon the assumptions employed, 9.5 per cent of local governments were judged to be overall technically efficient in the provision of library services, 47.6 per cent as pure technically efficient, and 10.1 per cent as scale efficient. The study also analyses the posited linkages between comparative performance indicators, productive performance and non-discretionary environmental factors under these different model formulations. The results indicate that the presence of exogenous factors and scale effects account for a major portion of the differences in observed efficiency between different groups of local governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]