Economic Issues Facing Electricity Supply Authorities

The slowing in the growth of electricity consumption in the early 1980s was accompanied by a significant increase in real unit costs in all Australian states. This article examines the economic issues facing government-owned electricity supply authorities under four headings: policy objectives including the question of whether the authorities should act as agencies to redistribute incomes; the estimation of future demand, especially the need to relate future demand estimates to likely changes in costs; supply aspects, including internal efficiency, cost of capital and size and reliability of generating plant; and pricing policies, particularly the need for time-of-use tariffs to improve capacity factors.     

Making evaluation an integral part of injury programme implementation

Uncertainty about the nature of evaluation can lead to injury prevention programme evaluations being poorly resourced and poorly conducted. The aim of this paper is to demystify programme evaluation and, by stressing its function, offer a perspective on evaluation that may encourage its more widespread integration in the general activity of injury prevention and control. Programme evaluation is best understood simply as the process of getting answers to essential questions about a programme. Methodology used in evaluation needs to be based in empirical science but is otherwise unrestricted except by the chosen question and the practical circumstances relating to the programme and the community in which it is implemented. Discussion about which methodology is appropriate for evaluation research is (unwittingly) a debate about 'which questions should you be asking?'. If the right people ask the right (and properly formulated) questions and build the means of obtaining the information to answer these questions (using appropriate methodology) into the conduct of the programme then evaluation will no longer be a problem but an essential component of the overall effort to reduce the community burden of injury.     

Openness, Technological Change and Labour Demand in Pre-Crisis Indonesia

This paper examines the impact of export orientation, import competition, foreign ownership and the rate of capital accumulation on the relative demand for skilled and unskilled labour in pre-crisis Indonesia. Estimates from an interrelated factor demand analysis indicate that openness and foreign ownership, by themselves, acted to raise the relative demand for unskilled workers in the pre-crisis period, while the newness of capital was associated with increased relative demand for skilled workers. Overall, the relative demand for unskilled workers increased yet their relative wage position weakened. These contrasting relative employment and wage changes are consistent with the examined demand shocks and the greater elasticity of supply of Indonesian unskilled relative to skilled labour.     

The breadth of preferential trade agreements and the margins of exports

Review of World Economics - The paper uses recently available data on the core economic provisions of PTAs to identify which (types of) provisions seem to promote bilateral exports and the...     

Real exchange rate determination and the China puzzle

Traditionally, real exchange rates are seen to be influenced in the long run by forces that return economies to purchasing power parity and by differences in productivity growth across sectors and across regions, as per the Balassa–Samuelson hypothesis (BSH). However, minor and realistic relaxations of the assumptions underlying the BSH greatly generalise the set of possible influences over real exchange rates. This paper surveys the literature on real exchange rate determination, investigates short‐run behaviour, and addresses puzzles over the trends in China's real exchange rate. While China was widely expected to appreciate against the advanced economies following its first growth surge in the mid‐1990s, it actually depreciated slightly until the early 2000s. Then, after 2005, its rate of appreciation was more rapid than expected. These puzzles are resolved by accounting for the effects of the trade liberalisations associated with World Trade Organization accession, China's excess saving, and the tightening of rural labour markets.     

Air pollution and the housing market: A neural network approach

Using the neural network method, this research explores the impact of total suspended particulate (TSP) and sulfur dioxide (SO₂), two major air pollutants, and of air pollution controls on the median real price of housing in Jacksonville, Florida. The results of this case study confirm the adverse effect of air pollution on the price of housing. The simulation of the model further suggests that pollution control measures improve property values. The findings imply that, in addition to other measures influencing the price of housing, property owners and buyers take air pollution and pollution controls into account.     

Poverty,Preference or Pensioners? Measuring Material Deprivation in the UK*

Indicators of material deprivation are typically based on a two-part question, asking, first, whether respondents possess a series of deprivation items and, second – if they do not – whether this is because of a lack of resources or is by choice. This second subquestion, or ‘enforced lack’ criterion, is ubiquitous but its efficacy has been questioned by a number of authors. In an important critique published in Fiscal Studies, McKay (2004) claimed that older people were more likely than younger respondents to report that they did not want the items they lacked, despite their lower incomes, and also that the enforced lack criterion introduced a subjectivity which, in effect, required respondents to feel poor in order to be classified as such. This critique has potentially profound implications for poverty measurement. In this paper, we seek to address the question of whether, if we are to employ indicators of material deprivation for poverty measurement, we should include the enforced lack criterion or not. In seeking to answer this question, we draw on data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and present tests of reliability and validity on indices of material deprivation, with and without the enforced lack criterion. Using odds ratio and analysis of variance methods, we find that the inclusion of the enforced lack criterion provides a measure of material deprivation which is both more reliable, and more valid based on a subjective measure of deprivation as well as on a majority of more objective forms of deprivation. Amongst the remaining minority (ill health for both methods and income quintile for the analysis of variance method), the divergent results can be explained, at least in part, by the older age profile of respondents in poor health and on low incomes. Thus, while there are legitimate concerns about the performance of such deprivation indicators amongst certain subgroups – in particular, amongst older people – on aggregate the enforced lack criterion helps to distinguish between poverty and preference.     

Trade Liberalization and Technology Choice

This paper considers the links between trade liberalization and technology choice in the nonliberalizing country. Trade‐liberalization‐induced changes in relative product prices have direct effects on equilibrium relative factor returns. The consequent changes in relative input costs may also lead producers to switch to alternative technologies, which will in turn induce a further indirect change in relative factor returns. Will this indirect affect exacerbate or ameliorate the direct effect on relative factor returns? It is found that this depends on the relative cost savings across sectors and factor cost shares.     

Globalisation and factor returns in competitive markets

The standard competitive trade model, extended to include many goods and factors, is used to analyze the effect of goods and factor market integration on average international disparities in the real returns of internationally immobile factors. It is shown that goods market integration decreases international real return differentials for all factors. We derive sufficient conditions for this result to hold for the subgroup of internationally immobile factors as well. While there is a presumption for similar results to hold with international factor market integration, we show that this is true for international migration but in general not for international investment.