Patenting and the supply of inventive ideas in colonial Australia: evidence from Victorian patent data

One of the least studied aspects of Australian economic history is technological change. This article addresses the subject by using patent statistics from nineteenth–century Victoria to examine the determinants of the supply of inventive ideas in the late colonial era. Such an examination indicates that, while both demand– and supply–side features clearly had roles to play in influencing the volume of ideas that emerged, it was the expansion and diversification of Australian markets in the latter half of the century that was most important. These findings also suggest that development and introduction of new technological ideas in pre–Federation Australia were predominantly economic activities shaped by local considerations.     

Heritage site management: from dark tourism to transformative service experience?

This paper investigates the managerial perspectives of dark heritage sites and considers how visitors can benefit from and ideally be transformed by the overall experience. Initially the paper provides a review of dark tourism literature and considers the relevance of the servicescape concept for this context. An in-depth case-based method was used to investigate site managers’ perspectives and key issues related to visitor's experience and engagement. Heritage sites no longer want to be seen as dark places and are striving to become sites of sensitive heritage where the focus is on visitor and social engagement. The contribution of this study to services theory is in its illumination of the integrative role of socially symbolic dimensions for heritage sites. The role of the servicescape is central to the co-creation of individual, personal socially symbolic experiences and to the longer-term societal mission of social change and global citizenships.     

我国矿产资源法研究综述

自2003年启动的<中华人民共和国矿产资源法>的第二次修订仍在进行中.文章对1949年以来我国矿产资源法的研究进行了简要概括,对当前我国矿产资源法的研究热点问题进行了较详细的阐述和分析.     

Japanese labour in the 1990s: stability and stagnation

We review the state of the labour market and employment practicesin Japan over the past 15 years and try to evaluate the natureof the changes that have been occurring. We also look at howgovernment policy has reacted to the conditions in the labourmarket and what implications this has for the future. Althoughthere has been a continual shift of resources away from manufacturingand agriculture into services, employment practices have notbeen changing so rapidly, and job protection is actually stronger.This, along with wage restraint, accounts for why unemploymenthas only increased by some 2.5 percentage points during almosta decade of stagnation. We also note that much government policyhas acted to maintain existing employment practices and thatlabour economists are divided as to whether or not this is agood thing.     

Technological Development and Foreign Patenting: Evidence from 19th-Century Australia

Poor patenting performance is often taken as a sign of low inventiveness. This article explores this belief by looking at the case of 19th-century Victoria, where the level of foreign patenting consistently grew at a much faster rate than that of local patenting. By mapping movements in both foreign and Australian revealed technological advantage in Victoria in this period, this article demonstrates that this faster rate of foreign patenting was due not to the technological weaknesses of the Australian colonies, but rather to the nature and timing of their economic development.