The Most Beautiful Variations on Fair Wages and the Phillips Curve

This paper explores the connection between inflation and unemployment in two different models with fair wages in both the short and the long runs. Under customary assumptions regarding the sign of the parameters of the effort function, more inflation lowers the unemployment rate, albeit to a declining extent. This is because firms respond to inflation—which spurs effort by decreasing the reference wage—by increasing employment, thus maintaining the effort level constant as implied by the Solow condition. A stronger short‐run effect of inflation on unemployment is produced under varying as opposed to fixed capital, given that in the former case the boom produced by a monetary expansion is reinforced by an increase in investment. Therefore, I provide a new theoretical foundation for recent empirical contributions that find negative long‐ and short‐run effects of inflation on unemployment.     

Brokers and Order Flow Leakage: Evidence from Fire Sales

Using trade‐level data, we study whether brokers play a role in spreading order flow information in the stock market. We focus on large portfolio liquidations that result in temporary price drops, and identify the brokers who intermediate these trades. These brokers’ clients are more likely to predate on the liquidating funds than to provide liquidity. Predation leads to profits of about 25 basis points over 10 days and increases the liquidation costs of the distressed fund by 40%. This evidence suggests a role of information leakage in exacerbating fire sales.     

Women's views of women's roles: a survey of South Australian women

Four hundred and eighteen randomly selected South Australian women answered 18 opinion statements about women's roles, as part of a general postal survey. The results showed that most women supported equality between the sexes, the importance of parenting and mother roles, and physical appearance. However, there were many statistically significant differences between members of demographic groups; generally younger and more-educated women favoured equality more, and valued motherhood less for personal fulfilment than older, less-educated women. Women in paid employment placed less value on traditional domestic roles and more on equal pay than those not so employed. The relationships of these findings to recent changes in women's roles within and outside the family are discussed.     

A Dialectic Analysis of the Whistleblowing Phenomenon

Although whistleblowers are often portrayed as courageous individuals deserving of respect, the act of whistleblowing can be viewed as a disloyal act which may bring much harm to the whistleblower's colleagues. We argue that although some whistleblowers have provided a great service to society, the world would be best served if the need for external whistleblowing were obviated by appropriate management practices .     

OPPORTUNITY OR CHALLENGE? AUSTRALIA AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION, 1950–57

This paper examines Australia's approach to Western European integration in the 1950s. While superficially supportive of steps towards greater Western European cooperation, the Menzies government had an ambivalent attitude towards the integration process. Ministers and officials in Canberra recognised the importance of a strong and prosperous Western Europe, but the formation of a tightly knit Continental grouping also posed a number of major challenges to the makers of post‐war Australian foreign policy. The Menzies government soon began to wonder whether attempts to create supranational bodies in Continental Europe accorded with Australian political, economic, and security interests.     

Notes on the Underground: Monetary Policy in Resource‐Rich Economies

The central bank of a commodity‐exporting small open economy faces the traditional trade‐off between domestic inflation and output gap. The commodity sector introduces a terms‐of‐trade inefficiency that gives rise to an endogenous cost‐push shock, changes the target level for output, reduces the slope of the Phillips curve, and increases the importance of stabilizing the output gap. Optimal monetary policy calls for a reduction of the interest rate following a drop in the oil price. In contrast, a central bank with a mandate to stabilize consumer price inflation raises interest rates to limit the inflationary impact of an exchange rate depreciation.     

Voluntary Contributions with Risky and Uncertain Marginal Returns: The Importance of the Parameter Values

Previous research indicates that risky and uncertain marginal returns from a public good lower contributions significantly. This paper presents experimental results showing that this effect depends on the employed parameterization.     

WAS JAPANESE GROWTH EXPORT-LED?

In three periods of its modern economic history (1913–37,1952–73, and 1973–90), Japan grew up to twice asrapidly as did other major industrialized countries. The paperinvestigates whether growth in these years was export-led. Theresults of five very different tests suggest that domestic forcesrather than foreign demand propelled longer-run growth. Thiswas particularly so in the high-growth period of 1952–73.Exports may, however, have been crucial in initiating severalcyclical upswings.     

When Uncertainty Blows in the Orchard: Comovement and Equilibrium Volatility Risk Premia

We provide novel evidence for an equilibrium link between investors' disagreement, the market price of volatility and correlation, and the differential pricing of index and individual equity options. We show that belief disagreement is positively related to (i) the wedge between index and individual volatility risk premia, (ii) the different slope of the smile of index and individual options, and (iii) the correlation risk premium. Priced disagreement risk also explains returns of option volatility and correlation trading strategies in a way that is robust to the inclusion of other risk factors and different market conditions.