The ABS Survey of Employment and Unemployment Patterns

This paper outlines the main features of the recent longitudinal survey that should provide a valuable information base for study of the Australian labour market.     

Occupational Status: Why do some Workers Miss Out?

The difference in socioeconomic status between the 'haves' and 'have-nots' is widening in the Australian labour market. This is reflected in the data on both earnings and occupational status. This paper assesses the factors contributing to differences in the occupational attainment of workers with a marginal attachment to the labour market and workers who are part of mainstream Australia. Overall, 94 per cent of the occupational status differential is attributable to the inferior endowments possessed by workers with a marginal attachment to the labour market. Until the disadvantaged workers improve their skills they will not be able to gain access to high status occupations.     

ETHNIC AND GENDER DIFFERENCES IN INTERGENERATIONAL MOBILITY: A STUDY OF 26-YEAR-OLDS IN THE USA

This paper uses the traditional income framework and a non‐monetary framework to estimate intergenerational mobility in economic status for a sample of 26‐year‐old whites, blacks and Hispanics in the USA using data from the first and fifth sweeps of the National Educational Longitudinal Study (1988 and 2000). Intergenerational income mobility is found to be greater for males than for females, although there are differences between whites, blacks and Hispanics. Transition probabilities indicate that Hispanics are the most upwardly mobile in terms of educational attainment and occupational status. Ordered logits are used to estimate the impact of parental education and occupation on educational and occupational outcomes.     

Productivity spillovers from foreign multinationals and trade protection: firm‐level analysis of Vietnamese manufacturing

This paper examines how the presence of foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) affects productivity in domestic private firms in Vietnamese manufacturing in 2005–10. The paper also examines how import protection has affected these productivity spillovers and how spillovers from wholly foreign MNEs and joint ventures differ. The most consistent result suggests wholly foreign MNEs impart negative spillovers while joint ventures tend to generate positive spillovers. Theory and random effects estimates also indicate that import protection reduces local firm productivity and weakens the effect of spillovers from all MNEs; but this result is not obtained when a fixed effects estimator is used. Results are similar in samples of labour‐intensive industries, which include close to three fourths of all sample firms, but differ markedly for more capital‐intensive groups.     

Optimal infant industry protection during transition to World Trade Organization membership – A numerical analysis for the Vietnamese motorcycle industry

This paper proposes a framework to derive the optimal dynamic path of tariffs to protect infant industries when a country initiates a process to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). The framework is based on the model of Melitz (2005) in which externalities associated with dynamic learning-by-doing provide a rationale for infant industry protection. Unlike the original model, this paper assumes that there is a time limit for protection: after a fixed number of years, tariffs are required to be constant over time at a low level. This setup reflects the nature of the actual WTO agreement. This model is solved analytically to derive quantitative implications for the optimal tariff path, unlike in Melitz (2005), where only qualitative analyses are undertaken. An interesting result emerges: conventional wisdom is that a country in this situation should reduce the tariff rate gradually over time so that it converges to its long-run rate at the terminal date of protection. By contrast, this paper finds that, in some plausible scenarios, the optimal time path of the tariff can be upward sloping. A numerical analysis applied to the Vietnamese motorcycle industry, a typical infant industry in a country joining the WTO, confirms such a pattern.     

Is a Risk Index Approach to Unemployment Possible?

This paper examines the ways that productivity, personal characteristics such as birthplace and gender, structural factors and labour market history impact on the distribution of the burden of unemployment. It is shown that labour market history is a major explanator of unemployment outcomes in the Australian labour market. The results from the empirical analyses of unemployment outcomes are used to identify individuals at risk of being unemployed. When individuals classified as at risk of being unemployed are followed through time, it is found that they spend considerable time looking for work and have short working spells. This suggests a risk index approach may have considerable merit as a way of identifying the relative difficulty individuals experience in the labour market.     

How buyers' expected benefits, perceived risks, and e-business readiness influence their e-marketplace usage

The main objective of this study was to investigate how buyers' usage of electronic marketplaces was influenced by their perceived risks and expected benefits associated with such markets. A large scale survey involving 359 professional buyers was performed. Results indicated that buyers' perceived risks and expected benefits had an influence on their usage extent of electronic marketplaces. In addition, buyers' e-business readiness moderated the relationship between expected benefits and usage of electronic marketplaces. Managerial and theoretical implications of these results are discussed.     

Pitfalls in Including Current Earnings in Labour Market Choice Estimating Equations

This paper examines the conditions under which an empirical model of employment choice based on the differential in current earnings is an adequate specification when the theoretical model suggests the use of the difference in present values of the stream of lifetime earnings. The difference between the two approaches is shown to be variables for the growth rates of earnings in the employment states over which choice is being made.     

Choice of School in Australia: Determinants and Consequences

This article examines the determinants of school choice (government, Catholic or other independent schools) as well as the success in completing year 12 for cohorts of students born in 1961 and 1970. The results show that those attending Catholic and other independent schools have favourable socio-economic backgrounds. Ability has a significant and positive effect on the probability of completing year 12. There is no evidence of unobserved selection effects on the probability of completing year 12 for the 1961 cohort. For the 1970 cohort, there is negative selection into other independent schools and positive selection into Catholic schools. Decomposition results further reveal that selection on the basis of observed characteristics accounts for only a small part of the observed differences in year 12 completion rates across the three school systems. In comparison, selection on the basis of unobserved factors is an important part of the difference in year 12 completion rates. The school effects for both cohorts are much larger than those reported in previous studies.