PRICE AND SUBSTITUTION IN RESIDENTIAL SOLID WASTE

Many per-unit curbside recycling and garbage collection pricing systems were implemented in the 1990s. A detailed data set is used to estimate the effect of an increase in the per-unit price change for a long-running pricing system across time in one city. A fixed-effects regression controls for collection district and explanatory variables including weather, time, and employment changes. The elasticity estimate is within the range of previous work but with a higher cross-price elasticity to recycling. This shift to recycling results in significant financial benefits to the city and a small decrease in social welfare. ( JEL Q5, Q53)     

The Determinants of School Participation Rates: A Cross-Sectional Analysis for New South Wales and Victoria*

Using data from the 1976 Australian Census of Population and Housing, estimates of the influence of family income. labour market conditions, religious denomination, foreign origin, locality and teenage income on the school participation rate of various teenage groups are obtained. These results suggest that family income is the most important determinant of school participation. The effect of the level of unemployment upon school participation is only modest. In some instances the direction of its influence is contrary to conventional wisdom .     

COMMON PROPERTY AS AN INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSE TO ENVIRONMENTAL VARIABILITY

Relationships between the potential productivity of land and property rights generally are couched in terms of measures of central tendency or means. However, risk or variance as a measure of uncertainty also is critical in relating property rights and organizational arrangements developed within various property regimes. Meteorological and hydrological research results support the appropriateness of risk-spreading property regimes, especially in semi-arid and arid lands. Spatial diversification models indicate that common property regimes can be a rational response to environmental variability. Efforts by the public sector to privatize and fence grazing lands on the extensive margin may have limited appeal to pastoralists throughout the world .     

Occupational Attainment and Immigrant Economic Progress in Australia*

Using data from the 2001 Australian Census of Population and Housing, on adult men in full‐time employment, this paper augments a conventional human capital earnings function with information on occupations. It also estimates models of occupational attainment. The results from both the earnings function and model of occupational attainment indicate that the limited international transferability of human capital skills results in immigrants entering into relatively low status occupations when they first enter the Australian labour market. Comparison with similar research for the USA suggests that the different immigrant selection regimes (primarily family reunion in the USA, skill‐based immigration in Australia) do not impact on the negative association between current occupational status and pre‐immigration labour market experience.     

TEST OF THE CONVERGENCE HYPOTHESIS ALLOWING FOR CROSS‐SECTIONAL DEPENDENCE

A large empirical literature has investigated whether per capita output converges around a common trend across national and regional economies. The methods used in this literature assume no cross‐sectional dependence even though it is likely to be present and might be important in practice. Chang has devised a promising method of testing for unit roots in heterogeneous panels with cross‐sectional dependence. We apply her method to test whether convergence takes place across three samples of economies: 15 advanced industrial countries; a broader group of 57 countries; and the 48 contiguous US states. We find evidence of convergence for the 15 advanced industrial economies but no evidence of convergence across either the broad group of countries or the US states.