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This paper examines the evolution of Australian fiscal policy and the fiscal policy framework over the past quarter-century. Following the early 1980s recession, a sustained fiscal consolidation saw the general government budget balance (for all levels of government) move from a deficit of 3 1/2 per cent of GDP in 1983/4 to a surplus of 1 3/4 per cent 5 years later in 1988/9. A severe recession in the early 1990s interrupted this process, and the budget returned to sizeable deficits which peaked at 4 3/4 per cent of GDP in 1992/3. The second half of the 1990s saw a repeat of the experience a decade earlier, with the budget returning to surplus in 1997/8. In contrast to the 1980s experience, however, the general government sector (for all levels of government) has recorded surpluses for the subsequent 8 years to the present. The paper outlines Australia's macroeconomic experience over this time and argues that there have been two significant medium-term factors motivating the extended periods of fiscal consolidation. The first factor, relevant since the mid-1980s. has been the large Australian current-account deficits since that time, and the associated build-up of net foreign liabilities. The second factor, which entered the public debate more recently, is a desire to provide fiscal policy flexibility to respond to the ageing of the population and the projected rising public cost of health services--both influences that are likely to be of increasing importance over the next generation or so. The paper discusses the introduction and evolution of Australia's medium-term fiscal framework which has been put in place to respond to these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 1990s, many developed states and customs territories have been seeking out preferential trade deals. This article examines this trend, which has been especially evident in the Asia-Pacific, and focuses specifically on Australia as a leading exponent of preferentialism in the region. The article has two distinct aims. First, to shed light on the thinking behind Australia's foreign economic policy and, specifically, to examine the motivations for moving away from multilateral and non-discriminatory means of advancing its free trade agenda in the region. Second, it aims to examine the developing dynamics of regional economic co-operation in the Asia-Pacific given the stasis of existing institutional efforts. This paper begins with a brief examination of the regional context and Australia's approach to trade policy. It then considers the nature of Australia's preferential bilateralism and its aims and motivations. The article shows that Australian policy-makers believe that preferential agreements can provide trade creation through market access, as well as broader benefits which derive from market expansion. Australia is motivated to pursue preferentialism by concern about existing institutions, by the technical appeal of bilateral agreements, and by the broader trend toward preferentialism in the international system, as well as shifts in its own domestic politics. The paper concludes with a short examination of the character of regionalism in the Asia-Pacific in the light of burgeoning regional bilateralism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents data from 40 in-depth interviews that were conducted as part of a study of social capital and health in relation to people's perceptions of the influence of 'place' on their participation levels and health. These data were used to examine features of the western suburbs of Adelaide that were perceived as health damaging and health promoting. The paper demonstrates that our Australian suburban respondents expressed a considerable concern about these features and the impact they have on their perception of community and their ability to participate in it. Safety, connectedness to the area, the reputation of an area and the extent and nature of community facilities are all seen as important to a healthy community. The research found that in the more deprived socioeconomic areas within the study are, there was a significant degree of dissatisfaction with features of the urban environment, such as availability of amenities, provision of public transport, and proximity of industry to private dwellings. The paper concludes by considering certain features of urban environments that might make them more supportive of health through encouraging contact between people. We conclude that these environments could be improved using the following measures: a subsidy scheme to support the viability of local shops and cafés (thereby providing meeting places and employment): parks with facilitators (who could play a role in increasing safety in the park but also encouraging community development): attractive places to walk: and a general environmental improvement program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural and regional parts of Australia have consistently faced the interplay of three distinct challenges: the viability of small-scale agriculture as a basis for farm family and settlement livelihoods, climate variability and an increasingly globalising economic environment. In response to these changes, three key shifts in social policy have been observed since World War II: a shift in economic policy from protectionism to market-based approaches, a shift in natural resource management encompassing a recognition of scarcity and degradation and the need to better manage natural resources (such as land and water) and, in the face of rural decline, a shift in policy moving away from government as provider to a position promoting the economic self-sufficiency of communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the background to the collapse of price stabilisation under the Australian Wool Reserve Price Scheme in 1991/2, and draws out implications for the feasibility of Government backed price stabilisation schemes. Optimal control techniques are applied to the problem of valuing stabilisation stockpiles. Option pricing techniques are used to elucidate the incentives facing the industry, and to explain why the industry adopted policies that drove the scheme to its collapse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water markets are promoted as a demand-management strategy for addressing water scarcity. Although there is an increasing literature on the institutional preconditions required for successful formal water markets, there has been less focus on understanding what drives participation after establishment of the basic enabling conditions. Participation can be measured in terms of either trading activity (conducting either a permanent or temporary water trade) and/or trade volumes across time and market products. Australia's water markets in the Southern and Northern Basins of the Murray-Darling Basin provide a notable example of a 'tale of two water markets', offering insights about the economic policy levers that can drive participation across different hydrological, irrigation, and socioeconomic contexts. Key lessons include: distribution of initial property rights in resource allocation; the need to prepare for and seize opportunities to strengthen property rights; and robust monitoring and compliance requirements—all of which will reduce transaction costs and increase participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has revealed considerable non-take-up rates of benefits in western welfare states, which has raised concern that benefits fail to reach their objectives. Most research has focused on means-tested benefits, partly because they are believed to be subject to high stigma deterring people from take-up. I study the take-up of such benefits in Australia, where virtually all cash benefits are means-tested. Using data from the first two waves of the Household, Income arid Labour Dynamics Australia (HILDA) survey, I estimate the general take-up rate of benefits among people with low assets and incomes and carry out a detailed analysis of take-up of one particular benefit, Parenting Payment. Contrary to the traditional conception of selective welfare states as highly stigmatizing, I find no evidence of a particularly low degree of take-up, and I suggest that stigma of means-tested benefits in Australia may on average be low because they target a relatively large proportion of the population. However, non-take-up appears to be considerable in some population categories where stigma is likely to be relatively high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There was no macroeconomic policy in the classical system of economic thought. Monetary policy was determined without discretion within the Gold Standard. and budget outcomes were guided by a 'balanced budget rule'. Intellectual and policy support for the classical rules evaporated when large shocks upset the classical adjustment mechanisms and led to high and persistent unemployment. For a number of decades after Keynes's general theory, discretionary adjustment of fiscal and monetary policy to maintain balance between supply capacity of the economy and demand replaced the classical rules. This has now, in turn, been replaced by a variation on the classical theme. A 'goods and services standard', designed to keep inflation steady and low, a freely floating exchange rate, and a 'small, steady budget surplus' are the elements of the new system in Australia. This has worked well enough in the particular circumstances of the past one and a half decades, but would be vulnerable to a reversal of recent Australian good fortune in its terms of trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on economic policy and social democracy in Australia. Strategy to overcome the period of stagflation; Assignment of expansionary fiscal and monetary policy; Stabilization of effective demand and employment.

The article explores the essential features of the national wage policy in Australia. The determination of wage rates in the country is in the hands of a large number of tribunals, constituted under state and federal law. The centralization of decision-making in wage-fixing has been encouraged by the centralized structure of unions representing nearly 60 per cent of all wage and salary earners, and employers' organizations. However, the present constitutional provisions, the federal government has no powers to fix wages and prices.

The article focuses on issues related to economic effects of the Australian tariff. There is analysis of the Australian Tariff Committee's report on tariff and free trade theory. Professor Jacob Viner states that free trade theory had not attempted to face certain questions relevant to the application of protection to a country with resources like those of Australia. Economist Alfred Marshall's analysis of the laws of increasing and decreasing returns upon the fiscal policy is of special interest to Australia. It is viewed that the export industries have to bear most of the tariff burden. It is observed that the greatest expansion of employment in the primary industries is in dairying and sugar which have benefited substantially from the tariff. An analysis of the relation of the increase in employment to tariff assistance for manufacturing sustains the conclusion that those industries which have received the greatest protection are those in which the expansion has been most pronounced.

The article discusses the economic growth of New South Wales and Victoria. It focuses on the implementation of tariffs in these regions for the protection of domestic industries. While Victoria had adopted the protective system earlier, New South Wales strictly sticks to a tariff for revenue only. The growth of population has been more rapid in New South Wales than in Victoria. It discusses the tariff systems in both the areas and concludes that a protective tariff will not work in all cases and may be beneficial for only some industries.