Bribery and corruption in Australian local councils

This paper explores public concerns about corruption and bribery in Australian local government and provides guidance for policy-makers on how to control bribery and corruption. Lack of regulation is a major reason why local councils are not taking appropriate anti-corruption or bribery measures. The author urges regulators to impose radical and mandatory requirements, especially reporting requirements, on local councils. Australia should also look to other countries for successful measures to curb bribery and corruption.     

Long term effect of trade openness on economic growth in case of Pakistan

The present empirical work aims to investigate the long term effect of trade openness on economic growth in the case of Pakistan from 1971 to 2009. A composite trade openness index is developed by using principal component analysis (PCA) and is employed in the JJ cointegration, autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration, dynamic OLS and variance decomposition. The results suggest the existence of a negative and significant association between trade openness and economic growth. But new evidence provided by this study is that there is a strong complementary between human capital and trade openness index in terms of enhancing the real GDP.     

Financial system and technological catching-up: an empirical analysis

This paper explores the role of the financial system in technological catching-up in the expectation that financing mechanisms affect the production and the exports of new or “new to the market” commodities. We have developed indices of related export variety (REV) and of unrelated export variety (UEV) by using the informational entropy function for a sample of 97 countries using NBER & UN trade data for the period 1992–2005. We used these indices sequentially as dependent variables with the bank credit ratio and stock market capitalization ratio as independent variables. In addition, we include the education system, natural resources and four principal component factors characterizing the cost of doing business, political system, quality of governance and the degree of openness of the countries as control variables in our regressions. Our pooled regression models show that the financial system is an important determinant of both types of export variety for all countries but that, for the most successful developers, the banking system and the stock market play different roles, with the former being relatively more appropriate for REV and the latter for UEV. Such specialization of different forms of the financial system seems to confirm that stock markets are likely to be relatively more appropriate to fund the exploratory type of innovations which are required to increase UEV.     

Price Elasticity of Demand and an Optimal Cash Discount Rate in Credit Policy

While the provision of a cash discount is equivalent to a reduction in price, the role of price elasticity of demand in determining credit terms has been neglected in the extant literature. In this paper, this role is investigated and it is shown that the optimal cash discount rate is affected by the price elasticity of demand for the firm's product. The comparative effects on the optimal cash discount rate with respect to exogenous changes in the fraction of credit sales paid after taking cash discount, the cost of short-term funds and the bad debt loss ratio are investigated. A trade-off between the time value gain and the price elasticity of demand is established. We find that firms which sell in locations having different price elasticities for their products, and/or which face various costs of short-term funds in different locations, should vary their cash discount terms accordingly.     

Hans Singer's model of the severity of recessions

This paper draws attention to the innovative but neglected workof Hans Singer on the dynamics of unemployment. Influenced byKeynes, in the late 1930s Singer enquired into the relationshipbetween the inflow into unemployment—resulting primarilyfrom (involuntary) separations from employment—and thesize of the resultant fluctuations in the level of unemployment.His focus was on the determinants of the severity—measuredin terms of how far unemployment rises—of recessions.We illustrate his approach by looking at quarterly data forthe claimant count and its associated inflow and outflow inthe UK over the period 1989–2003, a period which includesone major recession episode. In addition to drawing attentionto Singer's ideas, the paper also extends his model by takinginto account recent empirical evidence on the behaviour of oneof the key variables in his model. We argue that, with thisextension, Singer's elegant and parsimonious model of unemploymentdynamics is a useful complement to Keynes's ideas on the fluctuationsin aggregate demand and output, and is of contemporary relevance.     

Economic implications of alternative mill mud management options in the Australian sugar industry

Sugar mills produce a range of byproducts during the process of extracting sugar from cane. Mill mud is one of the byproducts produced in significant volume. The practice of spreading mill mud onto cane fields close by the mill has been the primary means of disposing of mill mud for many years. The continued application of mill mud at high rates, without appropriate recognition of its nutrient content, the soil condition, crop nutrient requirements, slope of the land, or proximity of application sites to environmentally sensitive areas has raised a number of concerns in recent years, including overfertilization, heavy‐metal contamination, leaching, and offsite impacts from drainage to waterways. This study develops a regional mathematical programming model to determine optimal rates of mill mud application for various soil types and distances from the mill in the Mackay region in central Queensland, Australia. The optimal application rate of mill mud varies according to soil type and by distance from the mill. Lower rates of mill mud application are economically desirable at greater distances from the mill. However, when the cost of mill mud application is shared between growers and the mill operator, the optimal application rates are reduced at some locations while increasing at others.     

The Great Recession of 2008: Impact on the Bangladeshi economy and international business implications

This article examines the current global financial crisis (GFC) and its impact on Bangladesh's economy and discusses international business implications for the country within an institution‐based analytical framework. The article finds that the macroeconomy of Bangladesh has shown remarkable resilience in the face of this massive global crisis, and the impact has been minimal and limited to a moderate slowdown of the economy The country thus could be poised for taking advantage of international business opportunities as the global economy begins to recover. Further, JPMorgan's Frontier Five and Goldman Sachs's Next Eleven classification of Bangladesh indicates enormous potential for growth and development. The article suggests that the Bangladeshi diaspora could serve as a connecting hub so that “brain gain” could be achieved through labor migration and remittances. Strategic alliances among home and foreign firms are also important to the future capacity building of the country. However, strategic management in the form of further institutional, structural, and policy reforms are critical in enabling the country to develop an international‐business‐friendly environment conducive to taking advantage of evolving global opportunities and realizing its full potential. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Impact of Integrated Weed Management on Cotton Producers' Earnings in Pakistan*

In Pakistan, weeds are a serious problem for the cotton–wheat cropping system, and they are causing even more damage than insects. The damage caused by weeds varies in the range of 15–30 percent. Farmers in Pakistan carry out several practices to control weeds, including hoeing, herbicide application and crop rotation. Farmers integrate different weed management practices; hence, in the present study, the multivariate probit model is used in an analysis of cotton farmers' joint decision‐making. The propensity score matching results indicate that farmers adopting integrating weed management practices have higher demand for labor, higher yields, higher household income and higher net returns from the cotton crop.     

Scenarios for economic development in an inner city community in the district of Columbia

Summary, Conclusion and Limitations Despite the considerable amount of commercial activity taking place in LGA, the area reamins economically challenged. The low participation rate of residents in the labor market is a likely contributing factor to this paradox. Nearly 13 percent of residents in these areas are unemployed, nearly 30 [ercent of the adults are living below the poverty level, and almost half of the adults are not in the workforce. One of the reasons for these infortunate conditions is that the area’s social institutions have unquestionably failed to help a large number of residents become and reamin employable and find gainful employnment.