心理会计、公共福利保障与居民消费

消费需求不足是我国经济快速增长过程中的一个突出问题。考虑到经典理论的局限性,我们提出了基于心理会计的消费行为假说,并对假说的真实性进行了验证。研究发现,居民心理会计账户结构的变化是当前制约我国消费需求增长的根本原因,而改革进程中出现的一些制度结构的失衡是问题的根源。据此我们指出,通过提高公共福利和社会保障水平,降低经济发展过程中的不确定性进而调整居民心理会计账户的结构,与单纯增加居民收入相比能够更加有效地促进消费的增长。     

Economic Relations Between ASEAN and Australia*

Economic relations between the countries of ASEAN and Australia have developed rapidly in the past 25 years. All countries in the region share a powerful interest in the maintenance of a liberal international trading environment. There is also confineable scope for an expanded. mutually beneficial bilateral relationship if a range of barriers to commercial contact are removed. Public policy reforms, on a non-discriminatory basis are the key to such a relationship.     

The Economic Determinants of Private Schooling in Australia*

The demand for private schooling is particularly dependent on the relationship between fees charged and services provided. This relationship in turn depends upon the extent of government funding of private schools, the level of teachers' salaries and the value of contributed services. This paper documents movements in these and other variables and examines the extent to which they explain the shift of enrolments to private schools.     

Fiscal Decentralization and Public Sector Size in Australia*

This paper examines the impact of fiscal decentralization and intergovernmental collusion, and the resulting fiscal dependence, on the size of the public sector in Australia. Contrary to evidence for the United States, fiscal decentralization is found to have no impact on public sector size in Australia. Three possible explanations for this finding were suggested the relatively small number of lower-level governments; the economic insignificance of local governments; and the relative immobility of citizens. Fiscal dependence of State governments on the Commonwealth proves a significant determinant of public sector size, consistent with findings for the United States.     

Are Private Sector Consumption Decisions Affected by Public Sector Consumption?

This paper looks at the interaction between public and private consumption in Australia. The results show that there is a long-run equilibrium relation between private and public consumption. However, the nature of this relation changed during the 1980s from one of complementarity to one of substitutability.     

The Cost of Public Funds in Australia*

A model of labour supply is used to calculate Australia's marginal cost of public funds, which is the appropriate cut-off benefit/ cost ratio for an additional public project. The labour supply model incorporates effective average and marginal tax rates faced by the representative household in each gross income decile. These rates are estimated from the ABS 1988–89 Household Expenditure Survey. A simulation analysis is performed to calculate the effect on labour supply of a 1 per cent increase in marginal tax rates. The estimated changes in tax revenues and deadweight loss in each decile are used to estimate the marginal cost of public funds.     

Interactions Between Government and Private Outlays: Education in Australia, 1949-50 to 1981-82*

This paper recognizes that government and private final expenditures cannot be modelled in isolation from each other when the expenditure relates to a good such as education which is supplied by both sectors. The inter-relationships in education expenditure are particularly direct in Australia where the private price of private schooling has been lowered substantially by government grants. Annual data are used to quantify the inter-relationships.     

Regional Consumption Patterns in Australia: A System-Wide Analysis*

This paper uses consumption data for eight commodity groups to present a system-wide analysis of consumption patterns in the six States of Australia. We test the hypotheses of demand homogeneity, Slutsky symmetry and preference independence using Monte Carlo simulation techniques and find general acceptance of these hypotheses for the six States. The paper also presents demand elasticities for the eight commodity groups in each State. We find, overall, food, clothing and housing commodity groups are necessities while durables, medical care, transport and miscellaneous groups are luxuries. We also find evidence in support of similarity of consumption patterns across the six Australian States.     

The Economic Effects of Public Housing in Australia*

Public housing provides subsidized shelter to approximately 300 000 families in Australia. This paper provides the first estimates of the effects of the program on die consumption pattern of participants, and of the benefits they derive from U. It also examines the distribution of benefits among participants. The effects of the public housing programs are compared with those under an alternative program of equivalent-value, unrestricted cash grants.     

Privatisation in Australia: Understanding the Incentives in Public and Private Firms

Privatisation has been an important tool of government policy in Australia and overseas in the last two decades. We explain recent contributions to research in privatisation, and apply a simple framework to ownership policy in a wide variety of Australian cases, including prisons, airports, Telstra, water and gas distribution, and ambulance services. The framework is not limited to these applications, and is aimed at providing a starting point for policy makers in their assessment of alternative ownership regimes. Our analysis is supportive of other authors, who have cast doubt on the wisdom of prison privatisation, and we extend this conclusion to ambulance services and the disposal of highly toxic waste. Application of our framework also suggests that Australian privatisations may have involved excessive separation of assets. The framework also provides a basis for arguing that a key monopoly component of Telstra—the 'wires' component—be kept in public ownership, and access auctioned to service providers. We consider the possible pitfalls of corporatisation policy, and argue that corporatised entities may operate to improve the appearance of success at the expense of the reality.     

Asset Substitution and Aggregate Liquidity in Australia: 1969–1983*

This paper has two goals. The first goal is to examine the degree of substitutability between various bank and non-bank assets and a reference asset using A ustralian quarterly data for the sample period 1969(4)-1983(2). Particular attention is directed towards quantifying the degree of liquidity of financial innovations introduced recently into the A ustralian financial sector. The second goal is to construct a weighted monetary aggregate series derived. explicitly from microeconomic consumer demand theory. While both the bank innovations and building society deposits are close substitutes for currency, the aggregation restrictions implicit in the Australian monetary aggregates beyond Ml are violated.     

The Nation's Private Wealth -Some New Calculations for Australia*

This paper has two related purposes. The first is to bring together and review a number of earlier studies which have attempted to estimate the value of Australia's privately held wealth stock. The second is to present new estimates covering the 1980s. based partly on these earlier studies, which value all major components of the nation's private wealth at their market value, or a close approximation. The calculations reported here represent the first aggregate Australian wealth series for which comprehensive market valuation can be claimed. Australia's aggregate non-human private wealth was found to be $794 billion at 30 June 1985. The series as a whole suggests that previous estimates have significantly under-valued Australia's wealth. At 30 June 1981 the Helliwell-Boxall (1978) study. updated by the Reserve Bank, reported a value of $294.7 billion, while Williams (1983) gave a value of $360.5 billion. The corresponding estimate for the new series is $532.5 billion. Because the new calculations presented here value wealth by component. it is possible to identify omissions and valuation differences which account for most of the variation between these estimates.     

Intergenerational Mobility under Private vs. Public Education*

Intergenerational earnings mobility is analyzed in a model where human capital is produced using schooling and parental time. In steady states more mobile societies have less inequality, but in the short run higher mobility may result from an increase in inequality. Starting from the same inequality, mobility is higher under public than under private education. A rise in income shocks, for example due to increased returns to ability, or a switch from public to private schooling both increase inequality. However, increased shocks raise mobility in the short run and do not affect it in the long run, whereas an increased role for private schooling reduces mobility in both the short and long run. That these differences may help to identify the source of changes in inequality, and other real‐world implications, are illustrated in a brief discussion of time trends and cross‐country differences.     

Wealth and Consumption in Australia

We revisit the evidence on the effect of changes in household wealth on consumption using a panel of Australian states. We find that a one per cent increase in the value of housing wealth increases consumption by about 0.16 per cent in the long-run, with half of the response occurring within two quarters. The size of this response has been stable over time and largely reflects changes in spending on motor vehicles, durable goods and other discretionary items. We then run counterfactual scenarios using the Reserve Bank of Australia's macroeconometric model, MARTIN, to assess the macroeconomic effects of changes in household wealth. We show that increases in household wealth supported household spending between 2013 and 2017, when growth in disposable income was weak.     

Consumption and Wealth in Australia

This paper examines the relationship between consumption and wealth in Australia. We find a steady-state relationship between non-durables consumption, labour income and aggregate household wealth for the period 1988–1999. We also find that changes in both non-financial and financial assets have significant but different short-run and long-run effects in dynamic consumption models. Finally, we place our results within the broader empirical literature and examine whether they are consistent with standard theories of consumption.