Search

The article discusses the papers of labour journalist Henry Boote which are held in the Australian National Library and the Mitchell Library of New South Wales. A selection of newspaper clippings, photographs, and letters are discussed. It notes that some of the letters touch on political issues including conscription as well as personal correspondence. Drafts of speeches on security, socialism, and war are also discussed. The article includes biographical information concerning Boote's career as a journalist.

The article presents the second part of an exploration into the legal history of the Australian colonies before 1900 regarding evidence of political interest in labor organization and legal protection. In this segment focus is given to the laws of New South Wales. Multiple lists of citations and primary sources are given, including immigration data, formal censuses from 1856 to 1894, and publications of annual statistics concerning railway, public services, and working class conditions. Additional surveys of specific legislative acts are also given.

Analyzes the overseas investment situation in Australian economy. Role of capital inflow in the economy; Relationship of capital inflow with the domestic monetary management; Correlation of capital inflow with the exchange rate.

Presents ways of improving the allocation of land between speculators and users in Australia. Influence of land speculation on the operation of the land market; Efficiency using land resources; Consideration of capital gains as taxable income.

The article presents news briefs concerning the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History. The report of the fourth general meeting of the society, a response by E. W. Peters, president of the Victorian Branch of the Australian Labour Party, to the article "Australian Labour and Foreign Policy," by E. Andrews in an issue of the journal "Labour History," and the preservation of the personal papers of Australian labour figure Doctor H. I. Jensen are discussed.

This paper estimates the incidence of total Australian taxation in 1966-67, the incidence of taxation at the Federal, State and local government levels and of some individual direct and indirect taxes. It constitutes the first of a series of studies concerned with the problems of estimating the incidence of taxes and of government expenditures. The aim of the present paper is to provide estimates of Australian tax incidence together with a brief discussion of the nature and reasonableness of the incidence assumptions necessarily adopted in a study of this nature. Consideration of the more fundamental theoretical incidence problems and the formulation of a tax model for tax incidence will be presented in a later paper. There are five sections. The first deals with the data sources and their limitations. The second outlines the methodology decisions made. This is followed by a discussion of the incidence assumptions adopted and a description of the techniques by which each type of tax was allocated to household income classes. In the fourth section the results are presented, and the final section consists of a brief discussion of some policy implications arising from the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the concept of the ‘age-profile’, which represents the proportions of cohort populations surviving from birth to a given year. Life tables for Australia and three-dimensional diagrams based on these data are used to illustrate the difference between the ‘age-profile’ values for a given year and the transverse survival values for the same year. The last part of the paper describes areas in which the ‘age-profile’ might be used with reference to its value in representing the experience of cohorts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

The balance of payments in an open economy plays an important role in determining changes in the stock of domestic money. International reserve inflows, for example, will increase the domestic stock of money if they are added directly to the money balances of residents, or if they are exchanged for domestic currency at the central bank. In Australia, reserve flows are an important factor, and occasionally a dominant one, in determining changes in the domestic stock of money. This observation raises the question, what are the major determinants of Australian reserve flows and what role, if any, do policy actions play in affecting reserve flows? In this paper the latter, and simpler, approach is taken. Reserve flows are related to factors determining growth in demand for money, and to policy and other domestically determined factors that contribute to growth in the stock of money. This money-market approach to the balance of payments is a slightly modified version of a model developed by H. G. Johnson (1972). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The simplest measure of the mortality experienced by children during the first year of life, for any one calendar year, is obtained by calculating the ratio of the number of infantile deaths in that calendar year to the number of births in the same calendar year. This ratio is called a crude death rate and is published annually for Australia by the Commonwealth Statistician index of infantile mortality. An alternative method for calculation of this index has been put forward by V. G. Valaoras in a paper in Population Studies, December 1950. Dr Valaoras properly points out that the simple method described above is defective, mainly because it fails to refer the infant deaths to the appropriate group of births from which the deaths arose. The first defect is not important when births are being maintained at a fairly constant level. It is, in such circumstances, not unreasonable to assume that births are evenly distributed throughout each calendar year. Recently, however, birth rates have been subject to severe variations and the distribution of births during each calendar year has been very uneven.

The article focuses on an ecological study regarding the coastal zonation of Southern Australian coasts in relation to a generalized scheme of classification put forward by ecologist T. A. Stephenson. It mentions that the generalized scheme is not satisfactorily applicable to Southern Australian coasts and a modified scheme is being proposed. It states that the new scheme is an integration of terms and zones which appear most applicable to Australian conditions. It informs that the general applicability of the new scheme of intertidal zonation to coasts other than Southern Australia must be critically examined on the basis of their topography and habitat conditions.

The article presents a discussion on immigration into Australia after the Second World War. Between 1947 and 1956, over one million immigrants arrived in Australia. This represents an average annual increase of about 1.1 per cent in the total population of the continent. With the exception of Israel, the rate at which these immigrants poured in was the highest of any country. Sustained immigration, plus the equally fast natural growth of about 1.3 per cent annually, should result in a total population of 10 million in about 1960. In 1946, similar to Great Britain's White Paper on full employment, the Commonwealth government of Australia issued its White Paper on Employment. This paper established high and stable employment as the principal objective of economic policy. The original immigration policy has hardly at all been considered in relation to the full employment goal of the Welfare State. In fact, economic motivation became prominent only after humanitarian and national defense reasons of the early post-war Operation Welcome more or less ran out.

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 article focuses on the accounting education in Australia. Upto the year 1954, only the University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, had a well established curriculum of accountancy. A full-time student normally takes four subjects a year. The honors course is a four-year one in which the compulsory subjects are covered in the first two years, after which the student enters the final division, comprising special honors lectures and seminars, with examination at the end of the fourth year of his studies. During this last year he is also required to submit a thesis on a subject within a specialized field of his own choice. The first of these courses is regarded as an introduction to accounting method, with students required to maintain a small set of double-entry records. It covers the theory of accounting and interpretation of transactions, ledger, journal and its subdivisions, trial balance, control accounts and subsidiary ledgers, preparation of reports, balance day adjustments, unsystematized records, non-trading enterprises, partnerships, joint stock companies, closing accounts of vendor, funds statement, departmental accounts, branch accounts, consignments, joint ventures, columnar accounting, analyzed journals and auditing.

The article discusses various papers related to cases of animal and human dermatomycoses in Australia. It says that first recorded paper was appeared 1891with Finch Noyes discussing his experiments of cultivating trichophyton fungus. Moreover, a review of Australian literature published in 1961 reported animal dermatomycoses from isolating Trichophyton equinum from horses and the first survey on mycological research was published in 1956 with awakening interests in animal and human mycology.

A conference paper about the biological control of Chondrilla juncea is presented. It presents the results of the detailed ecological study being made on C. juncea and the organisms attacking it in Mediterranean Europe, as a prelude to biological control introductions into Australia. Using a line transect method at the dense Chondrilla sites between Barcelona, Spain and Nice, France, observations have shown that the plant populations decline to a greater or lesser extent according to conditions.

Annual variations are often more brutal for nuptiality than they are for other demographic phenomena. Short-term economic movements, in particular, seem to have a more direct impact. In the long run, however, nuptiality is generally considered as a much more stable factor than, say, fertility which has undergone profound changes in all industrialized countries over the past hundred years. In this article the social scientists will attempt to study these recent trends in the light of longer-term ones, by comparing nuptiality movements in four countries: Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. In this paper, they study the nuptiality of birth cohorts by calculating the proportion ever-married at age 50, and mean age at first marriage. Data are not always strictly comparable between one census and another, especially in Canada and the United States where geographical coverage has varied through time. However, the numbers involved were small. Moreover, the definition of marital status has not been changed, at least not the basic distinction between single and ever-married. Through a study of nuptiality trends for the single for about a hundred different birth cohorts, they will attempt to determine whether attitudes towards marriage have changed. But first, they must eliminate the structural effects which affect the phenomenon studied. For instance, marriage becomes more difficult for women and female nuptiality decreases when there is a scarcity of potential male partners.

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]

This paper tests for certain benefits of foreign direct investment in the manufacturing sectors of two leading host countries---Canada and Australia. A quest for evidence on the effects of the multinational corporation needs little defense at a time when host and source countries alike incline towards restricting its activities. Economic theory tells us that intramarginal[2] gains from foreign investment take diverse forms. An evident and tangible gain to the host government stems from the corporate income tax collected from subsidiaries (net of the incremental cost of public services supplied to them). Other benefits, conjectural and elusive but possibly large, lie in the effects of direct investment on the value productivity of resources owned by the host economy (Macdougall, 1960; Corden, 1967; Caves, 1971). The host nation's private sector does not benefit directly because the foreign subsidiary is efficient, or brings to its shores skilled entrepreneurship or productive knowledge. Rather its gains depend on spill-overs of productivity that occur when the multinational corporation cannot capture all quasi-rents due to its productive activities, or to the removal of distortions by the subsidiary's competitive pressure. These potential benefits can be divided into three classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Apparent learning disability, as measured by European/American tests and exam/nations, may, in fact, represent a false positive and an artifact of the testing, when the subjects are members of an ethnic culture in which traditions of skills and knowledge do not match those of the culture of those who devised the test. For an authentic estimate of abilities, one must have tests that fit the cultural traditions of the subjects being tested. This principle is extremely relevant to the testing of members of minority cultures in the United States, as well as of Aboriginal Australians who provided the raw data for this paper. In nonminority cultures, the same principle may also be relevant to the testing of a child with a learning disability; for a learning disability may, unsuspectedly, be the specific response of a particular child to his family's inchoate, covert, and paradoxical tradition, directive, or taboo against a specific facet of learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the production functions for Australian manufacturing industries. The production function, being a technical relationship, might well be estimated in terms of technical rather than monetary measures of capital. This paper takes as its point of departure the Arrow, Chenery, Minhas, Solow (ACMS) time series estimation of the side relationship of the CES production function and proposes an energy measure of capital, namely, horsepower. Labour (L) should be a flow of labour services in constant efficiency units. The Secondary Industries Bulletin details number employed, including working proprietors. There are small problems concerning overtime, etc. which should be allowed for on a similar basis as the use of capital. If labour works at night, then so does capital. The series L in this paper is the number employed including working proprietors taken from the Secondary Industries Bulletin. Section II considers the data requirements and assumptions for the ACMS estimation and suggests that the original formulation of the relation may give biased estimates of the elasticity of substitution due to an autocorrelation problem arising from random errors of measurement in capital while section III considers a specification error analysis of a systematic misspecification of capital.

In Australia most manufacturing firms are force to make at least two kinds of location decisions, one involving the merits of the six capital cities, and the other based on variables operating inside the metropolitan areas. This paper is concerned with the behavior of the individual manufacturing firm when making the letter decision; empirical data have been obtained from three case study areas in Sydney. There is purposeful economic behavior by firms in locating, the most important influences being closeness to product market and the cost of land. The spatial effect is an arrangement of manufacturers strongly oriented to the CBD and to centrally located transport terminals. In a theoretical context, the neglect of rent considerations is a serious weakness in traditional manufacturing locating theory. The growing ability of firms to substitute among production factors also has important locational effects.

Over wide areas of the earth the railroad has been a decisive instrument in the creation of many of the most important patterns of human geography. Railroads are clearly phenomena of prime geographical interest, yet if it is true that "each means of transport has its own technological characteristics and its spatial layout, or network," it is equally true that their understanding of the inherent geographical implications of these characteristics and networks is far from satisfactory. The following paper attempts to add a further dimension to this common quest by focusing upon the comparative genetic character of two railroad networks.

This paper deals primarily with Australian aboriginal society and culture, and compares these with the society and culture of white Australia in the special realm of the family. It assumes that white Australia is a complex but fundamentally coherent whole, and that aboriginal Australia can also be viewed as a coherent whole, irrespective of regional variations, for comparative purposes. The major distinction between the aboriginal family and the white family is a significant difference in the relationship between social structure and culture in the context of family. The only differentiations in modes of livelihood in an aboriginal tribe were the obvious ones based on age and sex. The familial cultures of aboriginal Australia exhibited a remarkable uniformity, even from tribe to tribe, compared with the diversity of familial cultures in white Australia, but the reverse is true of family structure. Earlier works on the aborigines had over-stressed "group marriage" to such an extent that the presence of some monogamists in the tribe was ignored. A typical aboriginal family consists of a man aged 50 years old or above, two wives, and children. Each family, whether polygynous or monogamous, constituted a separate camping unit with its own shelter and fire.

This article describes the contraceptive usage of the wives of Melbourne; a portrait of birth control in Sydney would undoubtedly be very similar and indeed the picture is probably a faithful representation of the situation throughout the greater part of Australia. Apart from the evidence it presents on Melbourne, the chief contribution of this paper lies in two methodological innovations. The first is the use of "main" method of family planning for specified time periods; the "main" method being defined as the method used for the greatest proportion of time during the period. The second innovation is the analysis of the contraceptive practice of those women who were not knowingly infecund at the time. By coding separately those women who were not practising birth control but believed themselves to be fecund and those who were using nothing but believed themselves to be infecund, researchers have a reasonable base from which to calculate those at risk of practising contraception. A analysis shows that levels of family planning practice have been largely a function of the period and the technology, and, with the exception of the very young still without children or pregnant at marriage and the older women with increasingly impaired fecundity, the levels of practice have varied little with age. Total practice has increased steadily so that the proportion of fecund women employing some family planning method rose from about two-thirds at the end of the 1940's, to almost three-quarters at the end of the 1950's to nine-tenths in the early 1970's.

This paper focuses on a managerial accounting system for agriculture in Australia. This is the system operated by the Farm Management Service Laboratory at the University of Western Australia as part of its managerial information service. It has been designed specifically to generate managerial information from within the farm-firm for farmers in Australia. The system reflects the distinguishing features of agriculture and aims to be economic, timely, accurate and relevant. The distinguishing features of Australian agriculture are: interdependence of home and business; unity of ownership and management; unspecialized management; numerous independent firms; saleability of assets; joint products and joint costs; production flexibility; and long duration of production processes. The managerial accounting system operated by the Fann Management Service Laboratory has been designed in accordance with the general requirements of economy, timeliness, accuracy and relevance. Several features of the system contribute to low cost. The farmer is encouraged to do his own recording, and instructed how to do it. This avoids the service costs of commercial recorders, and the costs of time and travel to and from the farm.

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 article examines the isolation of dermatophytes in laboratories in Queensland, Australia. The author explains that the organism most frequently isolated was Microsporum canis, which was the chief cause of tinea capitis in children. Additionally, it is explained that Trichophyton mentagrophytes was the most frequently isolated Trichophyton.

The article reports the outbreak of twenty-two cases of ringworm infection due to trichophyton rubrum in South Australia this. Topics discussed include the presence of tinea circinata, and lesions on the regions of buttocks and abdomen. The article concludes that the key to clinical diagnosis is the presence of the chronic brownish pigmented lesion.

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the size distribution of income of Australian families and to evaluate the inequality measures of the distribution. In addition to the estimation of the degree of inequality from the full sample, the families are subdivided into homogeneous groups on the basis of certain socio-demographic characteristics and the distribution of income within each sub-group is examined. As income does not always represent the actual economic position of the family, it is sometimes replaced or supplemented by the total family expenditure. Again, as families differ in size and composition, inter-family comparison of income is difficult. In order to obtain an idea of the relative economic position of a family, the family income distribution is transformed by deflating the incomes for the differences of family composition, and the inequality measures are then computed. The scope and limitations of the study are discussed in the first section of the paper. Some of the shortcomings of the data are also discussed in the same section. In the second section different inequality measures arc examined for their comparative efficiency. The results are presented and considered in the third section. In the final section an international comparison of the inequality of income distribution is attempted and a few concluding remarks are then made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first purpose of the present paper is to examine empirically the importance of intra-industry trade under the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) used by the majority of countries today. In Part II, we examine first Australia's trade, analyzing the magnitude of intra-industry trade as a function of different levels of aggregation from 7-digit to 1-digit SITC classes, and consider whether intra-industry trade is a real phenomenon or an accident of statistical aggregation. Second, we measure the magnitude of intra-industry trade for the major industrial countries of the OECD at the most widely-used 3-digit level of aggregation. The second major objective of this paper is to present some evidence on the causes of the phenomenon of intra-industry trade. This evidence is useful for choosing the level of aggregation for empirical studies and for assessing the significance of intra-industry trade. The phenomenon of intra-industry trade calls for a re-examination of the traditional Heckscher-Ohlin models of international trade. In one way the phenomenon resembles the Leontief paradox, which gave new directions to empirical and theoretical work in international economics without, however, changing the validity of the basic principles of comparative advantage as derived in the Heckscher-Ohlin model. In other papers we have indicated how product differentiation by style, model, and quality can give rise to intra-industry trade [4], [5], [6], but unfortunately the series needed to test these hypotheses are not available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A perusal of the contents of this paper will undoubtedly show up the virtues and shortcomings of this approach. Those searching for ideas for particular reforms of particular taxes will be sorely disappointed. What this paper suggests is that a look across the whole board of taxation at all levels of government is required; that such a survey will disclose unnecessary taxes which have outlived their usefulness and which can therefore be scrapped; and that only in a general reorganization of the taxation structure can a real solution to the problem of financial independence for the various levels of government be found. This generality of the paper precludes a great deal of immediate practical use, but it is hoped that by concentrating on principles some worthwhile purpose may be served. The Australian tax structure can be discussed in various ways. It can be looked at from the point of view of the taxing body and the level of government with which it is associated--that is, Federal, State and local government taxation--or it can be looked at and classified according to the tax base on which it is levied, that is, whether it is tax on income, a tax on property, or a tax on the outlays of individuals or enterprises. Both approaches are useful, highlighting as they do different features of the taxation system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper Australian data are used to test the hypothesis that status inconsistency is linked with political liberalism. Status inconsistency is here defined operationally in two different ways: (1) as a score following Lenski's original procedure and (2) as specified combinations of status categories. Since for behavioral studies status inconsistency is better conceived in terms of interaction between specific status categories rather than as a generalized score, the method of regression analysis with dummy variables is used to assess the explanatory power of alternative statistical models. Although status inconsistency in general has no clear effect on voting behavior, specific types of inconsistency do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the economic effects of the gold discoveries upon South Africa from 1886-1910. South Africa's gold discoveries present a peculiarly happy situation for a study of the changes accompanying these new conditions. Into this simple economy there suddenly burst a vast predominant force, creating a new industry overnight whose product, gold, should exercise its powerful effects upon the whole world. At first glance, it might be supposed that South Africa merely offers on a somewhat larger scale the conditions so ably discussed by a leading economist in his papers concerning the Australian discoveries. Unlike Australia which was soon provided with a domestic refinery and mint, the product of the South African mines, raw bullion, went out of the country in the same manner as any other merchandise export, without reference to exchange rates or specie points. It is, thus, the movement of coined gold and refined gold bars, not crude gold bullion, which must be watched as indicating shifts in South Africa's international trade position.

The article discusses the paper "Chromoblastomycosis in Queensland," by B.B. Barrack. The disease is not uncommon in Queensland. It presents as painless warty cutaneous granulomata with spreading margins and little tendency to ulceration. It differs clinically from blastomycosis in that it runs a much slower course and dissemination is apparently unknown. Diagnosis is confirmed by microscopy and culture. Differentiation from true blastomycosis, which has not yet been reported in Australia, is comparatively simple.

News briefs related to the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History are presented. The Sydney (New South Wales) branch met in March 1966, heard a paper by Edgar Waters, and held elections. The Melbourne (Victoria) branch met in February and heard a paper by Harry Pearce. The Australian Miners' Federation observed its 50th anniversary in July.

The article outlines the first conference on medical journalism in Australia and New Zealand, which took place from October 26th to 28th, 1960 in Sydney, Australia. The conference included six formal papers, three round-table discussions, and a concluding session which consisted of a synthesis and summary of the themes presented.

This paper is an attempt to determine the relationship between the pattern of growth of demand for consumer goods and the market behaviour of the firms selling them, particularly their advertising expenditures. The demand for many consumer goods may not witness a steady growth over time. Firms selling such products will have a market behaviour that differs in character and path from that of those selling in expanding markets. In this article, I intend to analyse the market behaviour of firms producing toilet soap in the Australian economy. [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]

The article discusses the plans and policies of Social Welfare Commission. This Commission, which came into being early in 1973, presented its first Annual Report in July of that year, in which it outlined its background, philosophy and administrative procedures and briefly discussed some of its major projects, the most far-reaching of which seems to be the Australian Assistance Plan. This is an important and interesting programme important because it could well restructure the planning and administration of social welfare in Australia, because it will transfer considerable decision-making power from the present structures to a new sort of political structure, and because it will affect all sectors of welfare from federal authorities to voluntary agencies. It proposes co-operation, harmony and interdependence among structures that have not, in the post, thought of themselves as interdependent. The purpose of the Australian Assistance Plan is to regionalize welfare services. It proposes the establishment of a number of regions across the nation, each of which is to have a Regional Council for Social Development.