Years of schooling: the Australian experience in comparative perspective

This paper examines why secondary school participation rates have been persistently lower in Australia than in Canada or the United States. The contributions of immigration and apprenticeship have not raised the stock of skills in the adult population to North American levels. Until recently Australians believed, for a variety of reasons, that secondary schooling was needed by only a minority of students. Supply constraints have also been important, as Australians experienced lower growth rates of income, and larger and more sustained increases in the school–age population.     

The Development of the Institutional Investor: The Case of Australian Life Insurers 1945–85

This paper considers the post‐war development of asset management practices among Australian life insurers, which have historically been among the largest institutional investors in Australia. A complex process of adaptation and organisational restructuring allowed life insurers to transform from basic investors of policy‐holders’ funds to large multifaceted institutional investors in just three decades. Three stages in the development of investment practices are identified. These phases trace the process of expanding existing knowledge bases; diversification; and the acquisition of new skills; consolidation and the integration of these skills into institutional structures; thus completing one cycle of organisational learning and setting the stage for the next.     

Managers,specific human capital,and firm productivity in major league baseball

Recent research on the role of managers in firms concentrates on the relationship between compensation and individual performance, which links managerial skills and firm production only indirectly. In this paper, two related analyses test this link directly by examining how the experience of major league baseball managers affects both team and individual player performance. Grouped-data probit estimates indicate that, with team skills held constant, the probability of winning depends on the baseball-specific human capital of the manager. Further estimates, using the first-stage managerial attributes, also indicate that individual player performance improves when traded to "better-trained" managers.     

Too Far Away, Too High and Too Stable: The EEC and Trade with Australia During the 1960s

The EEC of the 1960s had little reason to prioritize trade with Australia: trade flows were too small and political ties between Australia and continental Europe too weak. That trade with Australia did become an issue of concern is thus largely due to Britain's 1961 EEC application. The shape of the deal that looked like emerging in 1961–3 was, however, highly ungenerous – a fact which reflected both the nature of Australian exports and a strong European belief that Australia was less 'deserving' than other Commonwealth countries. Australian relief at de Gaulle's veto may, however, have been premature, since early British membership of the Community might well have been in Australia's medium-term commercial interest.     

Risk and seasonal effects: international evidence

Various explanations have been advanced for the January effect in the existing literature, but no consensus has been arrived at to distinguish one particular explanation from any others. In this paper, a time-series GARCH-M model with conditional variance as a proxy for market systematic risk is applied to investigate the seasonal effects in four countries with different tax system and tax year end: the USA, the UK, China and Australia. Empirical evidence showed a January effect in the USA, a January and an April effect in the UK, a July effect in Australia and no significant seasonal effect in China. This pattern consistently links to tax year end and the tax system in the sample countries; however, no clear evidence has been found to support the proposition that market risk is higher or priced highly only in calendar months with a seasonal effect. However, to reflect the seasonal effect, an interactive dummy variable is added into the time-series GARCH-M model, and the seasonal effects are explained away. The results of the sampled countries support the proposition that market volatility increases when it is close to the date of financial statement performance due to the uncertainty of the financial information.     

Australia's Bankrupt Chinese Furniture Manufacturers, 1880–1930

The proprietors of almost 100 Chinese furniture factories in Australia went bankrupt during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With a substantial stake in furniture production for decades following the gold rushes of the 1850s and 1860s, Chinese furniture factory operators were vilified and legislated against in a push for ‘White‐Australian’ industrial advancement. Historians have consistently concentrated on such campaigns when explaining Chinese‐Australian business failures of this period. Yet informed principally by their bankruptcy court testimony, this paper contends that Chinese furniture manufacturers went bankrupt largely because of economic difficulties and, thus, failures are not sufficiently explained by ‘White Australia’.     

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.     

Measuring and assessing the impact of basic skills on labour market outcomes

Although there has been a considerable amount of research relatingmeasures of schooling years, qualifications, or training spellsto workers' labour market success, there has been very littleassessment of the role of more basic literacy and numeracy skills,largely due to problems with measurement and data availability.Yet it is obviously crucial, in an era of apparently risingdemand for skills, that we have evidence on the labour marketvalue of the full range of worker skills, including basic literacyand numeracy. This paper therefore uses data from the NationalChild Development Study and the International Adult LiteracySurvey to fill this gap. Specifically, we use test scores achievedby respondents in both surveys to measure their basic literacyand numeracy skills. We then evaluate the impact of these skillson workers' labour market outcomes, and find clear evidenceof a substantial wage return to such basic skills.     

体系转型背景下的威胁认知与澳大利亚对华政策变化

2000年以来,中澳关系在一个比较长的时期中保持了良好发展态势。但自2016—2018年,中澳关系出现较大幅度恶化,这主要是澳大利亚主动采取消极行为的结果。在中国不构成对澳大利亚的安全威胁、双方的经济合作为澳大利亚带来很大经济利益、中方具有推动中澳关系发展意愿的情况下,澳大利亚在2016年和2017年的对华态度却发生了转折性变化,这令人困惑。作者认为,澳大利亚对华态度转变的主要原因不是美国对澳大利亚施加的战略压力,而是澳大利亚在不确定性增强的国际体系中高度重视国际秩序的稳定,并把中国视为可能冲击现有国际秩序稳定性的主要国家。随着2018年美国特朗普政府采取了一系列冲击国际秩序特别是国际经贸秩序稳定性的做法,澳大利亚在一定程度上改变了对冲击国际秩序的主要国家的认识,其对华政策也相应做出调整。这使得中澳关系出现新的发展契机。这一分析有助于更好地认知一些安全、经济环境较好的中等强国的国际行为,为中澳关系的改善提供一种思考路径。     

The assessment: knowledge, skills, and competitiveness

The autumn 1988 issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policyconsidered the UK's deficiencies in vocational education andtraining (VET). It was there that Finegold and Soskice firstpopularized the notion of the 'low skills/low quality' equilibrium.This Assessment introduces a range of articles which discussdevelopments in the decade that has passed since then. It arguesthat, despite massive policy initiatives, there has been onlylimited improvement in the UK's relative VET performance. Considerableprogress has been made in analysis of market failures affectingthe supply of skills, and in analysis of the possible causesand consequences of low employer demand for skills (systemsfailure). The recent Competitiveness White Paper reflects thisimproved understanding. However, there is still an imperfectappreciation of the nature of skills and of their contributionto the development of a more competitive, higher value-addedeconomy. The article ends by suggesting how progress might bemade on this front.     

The Market Gardens of Dark Dragon Ridge,New South Wales,Australia, 1876–1930

Long neglected within Eurocentric histories of Australian agriculture, a clearer view of Chinese market gardening in Australia has been emerging over recent decades. As a contribution to this ongoing work, this paper explores Chinese market gardens in Wollongong (known as Dark Dragon Ridge in Chinese), 70 km south of Sydney, between 1876 and 1930. Using a microhistorical framework with an emphasis on business and labour, and guided chiefly by gardeners' own accounts of their activities, I offer new insights into Chinese market gardening. This approach can, I conclude, markedly enhance understanding of this aspect of Australia's past.     

Chinese leadership of macroeconomic policymaking in a multipolar world

This paper discusses the kind of leadership in global macroeconomic policymaking that China might provide. The paper describes a form of leadership, which I call ‘concerted unilateralism’, that enables countries to pursue their own objectives, in a way which they would not have been able to do if they were acting on their own, and enables them to achieve a higher level of welfare. I contrast such leadership this with a form of authoritarian leadership in which the leader imposes obligations on other countries which are to the disadvantage of those countries. I argue that China could provide leadership of the first kind, by making use of the G20 Mutual Assessment Process, or G20MAP. In the short term, China might do this by consolidating the ‘2-in-5’ action plan, which Australia instituted within the G20MAP when it was Australia was President of the G20. In the longer term, China might do this by ensuring that there is convergence between the G20MAP and China's own One-Belt-One-Road strategy for international engagement in trade and finance.     

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。     

旅游英语教学中“焦虑”对学生口语的影响及对策

语言焦虑作为一种影响学习结果的情感变量,成为第二语言习得领域的研究热点,而在语言的四项技能中,焦虑对于口语的影响则是最显著的。本文以旅游英语课程为例,分析了焦虑对于旅游英语专业学生口语能力的影响并为营造低焦虑外语课堂环境提供了相关策略。     

The Industrial Tribunals and Wage Determination in the Australian Iron and Steel Industry, 1921–38

It is believed in some quarters that the system of federal and state industrial tribunals in Australia has exercised a considerable impact on the determination of wages in Australia, making the average level of nominal wages more inflexible and wage differentials more equal in the interwar period. The purpose of this paper is to identify, through cross-country comparisons, the impact that the industrial tribunals had on the iron and steel industry labour market, an industry that played a crucial role in Australia's industrial development during the 1920s and 1930s.     

Estimating the determinants of supply of computing, problem-solving, communication, social, and teamworking skills

We investigate the sources of supply of several core skills,using an innovative approach to skills measurement that involvesadapting a job analysis methodology and applying it in a surveycontext. We then estimate the determinants of skills supplyusing a production function model. The main findings are: (i)prior education and work experience have generally positivebut diminishing marginal impacts on skills, consistent withthe earnings function literature; (ii) off-the-job trainingis productive of most types of skill, while on-the-job trainingis effective for the generation of problem-solving and team-workingskills. Both types of training are transferable from previousemployers; (iii) more education enhances the development ofcomputing skills at work, but with respect to other core skills,less educated workers make up for their lower education throughmore work-based learning; (iv) there is a strong associationbetween the presence of some new or flexible organisation characteristicsand both the level and growth of all types of skills. We argueoverall that the contribution of work-based learning to skillsdevelopment is more important than normally allowed for in theskills policy discourse.     

试论外语教学中的内容依托式教学法(CBI)

内容依托式教学法作为一种较新的外语教学法在国外已经取得了很大的成功,而在国内还没有得到很好的利用。传统的外语教学只重视语言技能的训练,缺乏与专业知识等语言内容方面的融合,本文正是基于此点,对内容依托式教学法的教学理念、理论依据、教学原则以及教学模式进行了比较详细的阐述。     

Death of linkages in host countries? A firm‐level study on the channels of productivity spillovers in the Malaysian manufacturing sector

Productivity spillovers from multinational corporations (MNCs) to local firms have been an area of keen research interest in developing economics. Claims of positive spillovers in the form of technology transfers have been questionable, in part because of the many ambiguous conclusions obtained. The paper argues that the lack of focus in the mechanisms underpinning spillovers may be one of the reasons for the ambiguity. Using local input–output linkages as the mechanism for technology transfer, this study examines the presence and the enabling conditions for spillovers. Accounting for the variations in firms' characteristics, the findings show that skills‐oriented MNCs participating in international production networks transmit horizontal spillovers to local establishments. Vertical spillovers from MNCs are mostly relevant only to lower‐skilled establishments. For skilled and export‐oriented local establishments, technologies learned from producing for international production networks are more significant than forming linkages with MNCs in the domestic market.     

Technology, wages, and skill shortages: evidence from UK micro data

Why have skill shortages continue to persist despite increasesin training and the skill levels of the workforce? We arguethat technical progress has raised the demand for skilled labourto match the observed increase in supply. We provide econometricevidence in support of this hypothesis, showing that skill shortagesare higher for establishments that use advanced technology inthe production process. We also provide econometric evidencethat hiring difficulties are inversely related to the relativewage, as theory would suggest. Our results have clear implicationsfor policy. If technological progress continues to be skillbiased, policies that address skills deficiencies will onlybe successful if they produce a continual, rather than a temporary,increase in levels of skills among the workforce.     

Bilateral Trade in the Asia-Pacific: A Case Study for Australia, USA, Japan and Singapore

This analysis of bilateral trade involves four Asia-Pacific nations (USA, Japan, Singapore and Australia) on a quarterly data set 1977 to 1994. The reduced-form model applied here derives from a structure which accommodates income, real exchange rate and real-balance effects. We find that bilateral balances between these countries are not cointegrated with some potential determinants, in particular real exchange rates. In the short run, appropriately defined, we find that Singapore’s trade with the USA and Japan is influenced by real exchange rates; Australian-Japanese and Australian-US trade is influenced by real income and real-cash-balance effects but not real exchange rates while USA-Japanese bilateral trade is influenced only by real-cash-balance effects. The general conclusion is that real exchange rates have only limited effects on these selected Asia-Pacific bilateral trading patterns, while real-balance and income effects have a greater impact over the short run.