RECOVERY FROM DEPRESSION: AUSTRALIA IN AN ARGENTINE MIRROR 1895–1913

The recovery from the 1890s depression in Australia was prolonged, and economic growth from 1895 to 1913 was below that in the comparable settler economies of Argentina and Canada. Why? Australia’s hesitant initial recovery is typically attributed to the imbalances in the economy resulting from the preceding boom, and its further delay to severe drought. Drawing on Argentine experience, it is suggested that additional factors need to be considered. Unlike Argentina, the unwillingness or inability of Australian governments to reschedule foreign debt or devalue the exchange rate exacerbated the slump. And the era of low‐cost pioneer farming ended earlier than in Argentina (or Canada).     

The Savings Rate Debate: Does the Dependency Hypothesis Hold for Australia and Canada?

Australia and Canada have both experienced a long-run increase in aggregate savings rates over the past century from below 10 per cent to rates exceeding 20 per cent. Two recent studies have concluded that demographic change played the predominant role in driving this long-run trend for both nations, one of which implies that a declining child dependency burden caused savings rates to increase over time. New results obtained by using a cointegration approach show that savings rates were driven by increases in real income in the long run. In the short run, increases in the working-age population in Canada increased the savings rate. In Australia, baby booms and busts occurred simultaneously with savings booms and busts. Contrary to recent work, there is no significant evidence to support a child dependency burden on savings for Australia or Canada over the last century.     

Non‐Residential Capital Stock in Latin America, 1875–2008: New Estimates and International Comparisons

We use a homogeneous method to estimate non‐residential capital stock for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. Our estimates extend back to the late‐nineteenth century, 50 years earlier than the present available estimates. Our estimates use the gross fixed capital formation data base (1850–1950). These data are linked with existing standardised national accounts for the region, such as those of Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Finally, we compare investment in Latin American countries to that of advanced economies, particularly focussing on the performance of two settler countries, Argentina and Australia.     

Real Wages in Australia and Canada, 1870–1913: Globalization versus Productivity

Australia's and Canada's real wage experiences between 1870 and 1913 were distinctive. Faster productivity growth underpinned Canada's overtaking of Australia's wage levels. The globalization forces of migration and trade also shaped their comparative wages, principally by reducing wage growth in Canada. Immigration increased slightly Australia's real wages, but reduced wage levels in Canada, and tempered there the beneficial effects of rising productivity and improving terms of trade. In contrast, wage earners' share of national income rose after 1890 in Australia, with the productivity slowdown hitting chiefly rents and profits. Distributional shifts favouring wage earners in Australia, and the depressing effects of mass immigration on wages in Canada, limited Canada's wage lead before 1914, despite her faster productivity growth.     

A Tale of Two Armies: Comparative Growth in the Mirror of the First World War

Soldiers born during the late nineteenth century were taller in Australia than in Canada. A widening of the gap for those born in the 1890s supports the more optimistic interpretation of Australia's 1890s depression and is consistent with the ‘hazardous growth’ hypothesis of an inverse relationship between economic change and public health. The rural–urban stature gradient was steeper in Australia although Canada had greater stature inequality in all other dimensions. Native-born soldiers were taller than the British-born in both countries. We see no evidence of selective migration effects that would imply feedback from stature to growth.     

Inflation Dynamics and Monetary Strategies: Evidence from Six Industrialized Countries

In this paper we address the issue whether a switch to inflation targeting can help build monetary policy credibility and can substitute for a track record of low inflation. To this end, we empirically evaluate the success of inflation targeting in Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom and investigate to what extent the joint dynamic processes of inflation and nominal interest rates in these three countries have experienced a structural break at the time of the regime switch to inflation targeting. The experience of Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom is matched with the United States, Australia and Germany. We find that the effectiveness of the direct inflation targeting approach to quickly increase low-inflation credibility so far is ambiguous and that this strategy is not clearly superior to intermediate monetary strategies.     

The Old Commonwealth and Britain's First Application to Join the EEC, 1961–3

New Zealand, Canada, and Australia reacted in different ways to Britain's decision in 1961 to seek membership of the EEC. We show that the umbrage taken by the members of the old Commonwealth was in inverse proportion to the economic interests at stake. Canada, whose trade with Britain was relatively small, adopted a position of violent opposition to British policy. New Zealand, which was still heavily dependent on the UK as a market for staple commodities, was careful to avoid acting in a manner likely to alienate the British government. Australia, which was in an intermediate position as regards the importance of its trade with Britain, mounted a sturdy defence of its commercial interests, but did not indulge in the histrionics of the Canadians. All three of the old dominions were disappointed with the arrangements for Commonwealth trade towards which the UK and the Six were moving when de Gaulle vetoed British membership in January 1963, but at least New Zealand had obtained some special concessions. Whilst it is unlikely that a less combative attitude by Canada and Australia would have resulted in a better outcome for these countries, a more belligerent approach on the part of New Zealand would have put its economic future in even greater jeopardy.     

The Quantitative Importance of the Expenditure-Switching Effect

This paper investigates the quantitative importance of the expenditure-switching effect in three small open economies: Australia, Canada and the UK, by developing and estimating a structural sticky-price model nesting both producer currency pricing (PCP) and local currency pricing (LCP) settings. The size of the expenditure-switching effect is determined by the degree of price stickiness, the fraction of firms employing PCP versus LCP, the distribution margin, and the elasticity of substitution between domestic and foreign goods. Our estimation results suggest that the expenditure switching role of the nominal exchange rate is larger for Australia and Canada than for the UK, mainly due to the relatively smaller distribution margins in those two countries.     

Estimating Long-Run Incarceration Rates for Australia,Canada, England and Wales,New Zealand,and the United States

Compiling data from dozens of archival sources, I assemble the most extensive series to date of the long-run imprisonment rate for five English-speaking nations: Australia, Canada, England and Wales, New Zealand, and the United States. These series are constructed as a share of adults rather than the entire population, and I discuss why the latter can be misleading. In the late-nineteenth century, Australia had the highest incarceration rate of these nations. Today, the United States has the highest rate. With the exception of Canada, incarceration rates have risen markedly since the mid-1980s. These new series are made available in full, to allow other researchers to explore the consequences and causes of incarceration.     

Optimal Monetary Policy Rules and Inflation Targets: Are Australia,Canada, and New Zealand Different from the U.S.?

Outwardly, the central banks of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the U.S. follow somewhat different approaches to controlling inflation. The U.S. does not explicitly target inflation while the other countries do. Canada and New Zealand have target bands for inflation while Australia has a point target. Results in this paper nevertheless find broad similarities in the monetary policies of these countries. Each can be described as having pursued optimal inflation targeting (explicit or implicit), with heavy interest rate smoothing, but perhaps placing little weight on output variability. We argue that interest rate smoothing is used to introduce gradualism into the response of monetary policy to inflation. We show that given heavy interest rate smoothing, a concern for output variability is redundant.     

Emigration from the United Kingdom to the United States,Canada and Australia/New Zealand, 1870–1913: Quantity and quality

This paper revisits the determinants of emigration from the United Kingdom to the United States, Canada and Australia/New Zealand from 1870 to 1913. In the absence of restrictive immigration policies, the flow of emigration to these destinations responded to economic shocks and trends. Emigrants to Australia and New Zealand were more skilled on average than those heading across the Atlantic, a feature that does not correspond well with skill differentials in the manner predicted by the Roy model. While assisted passages (subsidised fares) increased the volume of emigration to Australia and New Zealand they cannot account for its higher skill content.     

The fisher hypothesis: Evidence from three high inflation economies

Conclusions In this paper, we have found strong evidence for a long-run unit proportional relationship between nominal interest rates and anticipated inflation for three high inflation economies (Argentina, Brazil and Mexico). These results contrast with the mixed evidence found for low inflation economies. We also found that for those three countries, as well as for the United States and Australia, the speed of adjustment of interest rates to inflationary shocks does not appear to depend directly on the absolute level of the inflation rate or any measure of inflation rate volatility.     

Trade Policy in Canada and Australia in the Twentieth Century

The paper provides an analytical comparison of the evolution of trade policy in Canada and Australia and of the two countries' roles in international trade diplomacy. Despite similarities in history and resource endowment, these roles have differed substantially, especially during the third quarter of the twentieth century. The focus is on the reasons why Canadian and Australian attitudes and policies differed so markedly. The importance of the USA as a trading partner, differing economic experiences during the decade of the 1920s, and the more concentrated composition of Australian exports all played a part. Once in train, the position that Australia was different and need not participate in GATT tariff cuts as long as agriculture was excluded became the inertial position, while Canada played an active role in GATT's early development. After 1973 Australia's position as an outlier among high-income countries' trade policies was reversed, and Australian and Canadian trade policies again became similar in the 1980s.     

The economic impact of the Russian import ban: a CGE analysis

The aim of this paper is to assess the economic impact of the Russian embargo from 7 August 2014 on certain agricultural food products from the EU, the USA, Norway, Canada and Australia. The effects of this economic sanction are analysed in the framework of a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model with a particular focus on bilateral and total exports, production and welfare. The detailed, based on real trade data, calibration of the model allows for an exact identification of the sectoral shares and prohibitive tariffs aggregated to match the CGE model’s sectoral level of aggregation. In addition, the paper carries on a validation exercise to compare the model’s predictions with real trade data developments. The modelling simulation results show that the impact of the ban on total exports of the EU, the USA, Norway, Canada and Australia is limited. Nevertheless at a disaggregate level there are sectors – ‘vegetables and fruits’, ‘other meat’ and ‘dairy products’ – which experience two digit percentage change declines.     

What Does “Privatization” Do for Efficiency? Evidence from Argentina’s and Brazil’s Railways

Railway restructuring and privatization have now become a mainstream policy option in many developing countries. This paper provides the first analysis of the efficiency payoffs of railway reform for two developing countries, Argentina and Brazil. We track down the evolution of the performance of the private operators in both countries since reform, compare with the pre-reform performance when possible, distinguishing between the output and input sources of efficiency changes. This is done by computing the total factor productivity of each business unit since the regulators started collecting enough data.     

Why is the forecast error of quarterly GDP in Japan so large? – From an international comparison of quarterly GDP forecast situation

We examined the accuracy of prediction of Canada, Japan, United Kingdom, and United States from the viewpoint of forecast errors. Compared with the forecast error of each country at the around same time, the forecast error of Japan is about 2 times larger. In case of Japan, even immediately before release of quarterly GDP, the forecast error is over 1 %, which is the same level of forecast error as 94 days before in the United States and 135 days before in Canada.Evaluating the characteristics of forecast errors, it can be pointed out that Japan's forecasts are as efficient as those of other countries, and the addition of major economic statistics is unlikely to improve forecast errors. The reason for Japan's large forecast errors is the fluctuations in the GDP growth rate. These results provide evidence that volatile GDP may make the outlook worse.Large fluctuations in Japan's quarterly GDP have already been pointed out. It is necessary to examine the factors behind the large fluctuations in the rate of change in Japan's quarterly GDP.     

低碳经济对江苏的挑战和机遇

碳排放问题已被国际社会和我国政府高度重视,江苏碳排放不容乐观。低碳经济的研究和试验在国内一些地方已开始启动,江苏应该先行。从江苏推进碳交易的实践来看,江苏在国内已经取得一定优势。江苏可以采取多种措施,积极引导、促进江苏碳交易的发展。     

我国粮食物流：主要问题、国际借鉴与对策探究

我国粮食物流存在着仓库设施陈旧、布局不均、运输方式落后、资源分散等问题。关国、加拿大、澳大利亚等国实行粮食散运，物流标准化和自动化程度高。我们应认识粮食物流的重要性，明确战略重点，建设物流节点，改进粮食物流的技术装备，推广散粮运输，以此建立我国现代粮食物流体系。     

中国早期现代化进程中的政府作用审视

在近代史上,中国早期的现代化是在外力作用下被迫启动的自上而下的变革过程。当时的清政府作为应对挑战的主体,理应认清形势,制定长远的发展战略,采取正确的模式和措施,整合各种有利的社会资源,促进中国的现代化进程。然而当政的清政府一错再错,贻误了多次追赶世界潮流的发展机遇。使本来有希望迎头赶上的东方大国迅速落后于西方世界。反思这段历史,对于我们今天的现代化建设仍有不可忽视的借鉴意义。     

水足迹视角下世界主要经济体的水资源利用效率研究

本文利用EORA数据库中水足迹相关数据,测算了2006-2015年46个世界主要经济体的水资源利用效率,研究结果发现:(1)在2006-2015年始终位于前沿面(水资源利用效率值等于1)的国家有阿尔及利亚、埃及、法国、伊拉克、荷兰、尼日利亚、沙特阿拉伯、新加坡、阿联酋、委内瑞拉.(2)澳大利亚、加拿大、捷克、丹麦、芬兰、德国、意大利、波兰、韩国等国家在2006-2015年水资源利用效率相对较低,绿水和蓝水的投入以及非期望产出灰水的无效率值均在0.9以上.因此,水资源利用效率较低的国家需要向水资源利用效率较高的国家学习先进的节水技术和污水治理经验,并因地制宜制定水资源政策.